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When you get used to a routine and you keep yourself busy, time flies, days become weeks, weeks become months and before you know it, you are ready to go back home.

But getting used to that routine takes a while. 

What does a typical day look like?

We arrived at Pebble Creek Life School at around 8.30 in the morning and some of the times we did practice for half an hour, until lectures started. That’s just because it was cooler in the morning. 

First block

At 9.00 am, Greg would enter the lecture room and fill it up with his smile and positive energy.

He would start every day with a song and then go on with presentations and we would start writing or typing. It was so funny, if you stopped for a second and listen to the background sound, it was all about fans and fingers touching keyboards. 

Some days we had some issues with the sound system and the lectures started a little late. But even that was fun, watching Greg and the crew having soundchecks like we were about to attend a Metallica concert.  

Recess and second block

At 10.30 we had our first break and we would go downstairs to have some tea and biscuits. We would chat, joke, laugh and pray for no power cuts in the second lecture session. Because, yeah, power cuts were pretty often, especially in May. And a room full of 90 people, with no AC or fans, at 43⁰C temperature is not very pleasant, even for 10 minutes. 

Hypnotized by Montessori presentations 

After the break, Greg would go on with his lectures and we would go on being amazed by everything he showed us.

I remember sitting in the second row and being hypnotized by his presentations, just like a 6 years old child. Sometimes I even got frustrated that I wasn’t in a Montessori school when I was a child and I had to go to a traditional school and learn everything, mostly by memorizing.

Actually, some of the concepts I only understood after I saw the Montessori presentations. For example, reaching the binomial formula using the Montessori Binomial Cube.

It finally made sense! And when you think I had to memorize it, just like parrots do!

Lunch

At 12.30 we had one hour break, to have lunch and relax for a bit. I used to eat fast and do another 30 minutes of practice because the room was empty and I could get any material I wanted. 

After lunch, the energy for everybody was kind of low. But not for Greg. He maintained the same enthusiasm the whole day. Sometimes I wondered if he was human! But I guess, that’s what happens when you do what you love: train people to embrace Montessori. 

We, humans, were all sleepy after lunch. And you could actually see people falling asleep on their chairs, during the last part of the day. 

Afternoon: Supervised Practice of Montessori materials 

Well, 3.00 p.m was time to stand up from our lecture chairs and move to the practice room we were assigned too. Every day it was a different practice room, which wasn’t very appealing.

The room downstairs was great, it had all the materials we needed, plus AC and fans. But the two rooms upstairs, on the last floor, weren’t that good. The materials were kind of different and the heat was unbearable. There was no AC and the air was almost unbreathable.

My bottle of water would become so hot in those rooms, that I couldn’t even drink the water anymore. 

But I had to adjust and make it work. 

In practice, not only we would do presentations and assist our colleagues doing theirs, but also take care of the environment. That means, every day, after we finished doing our practice, we had to pick an Area (Geometry, Language, Music) and clean up the space: wipe the dust, arrange the materials and make sure nothing is missing.

Some of us took care of the plants, some of us moped the floors etc. We all had small tasks for each day, just like we would require children in their own environment. 

Kind of like: practice what you preach! 

Explore the Montessori materials

And that helped us a lot, because it made us explore all the materials and learn their place on the shelves. Plus, it made us feel like we were contributing to the environment that offers us the chance to practice and get better at our presentations. It was a win-win situation! 

As for practicing, it was so fun that sometimes we would just burst out laughing with tears. We would take turns in being the guide and the child, and repeat the presentations introduced to us by Greg, that very day.

Sometimes, we wouldn’t remember certain steps and make fun of each other, like saying we were asleep when he introduced that or that our mind was flying away, on a beach in Hawaii. 

Ask your questions to the Montessori trainers

We had trainers in training which were supervising us during practice, and we would bug them with all sorts of questions and unclarities. And when they were nowhere to be found, we would go looking for Greg and bug him.

Once, I looked for him in the entire school only to come back in my practice room and find out he was there the whole time, but I just didn’t see him. 

When practice was over, we would walk out of the classrooms like robots. Our only settings were: go home, take a shower, rest for an hour. But when we reached our homes, we always had the same thought: “We have so much work to do! No time for rest!”. So we sat our desks and started typing on our laptops until it was time to go to bed. 

Cause the next day, we would start all over!

Don’t get fooled by all the enthusiasm from my previous articles!

Going away for a course like this is not all rainbows and butterflies. Especially if you have to travel 5000 km and stay there for more than 3 months.

Yes, the Montessori Elementary Training is amazing!

Yes, you will discover things you didn’t even imagine!

Yes, your whole mentality will change and you will feel like a different person.

A Montessori training full of obstacles

But the road is full of bumps and obstacles and you have to learn how to face them.

You are responsible for your own choices and you can only rely on yourself for that matter. Even though some people will offer you their help, you can’t always count on that.

There will be moments when you will feel overwhelmed, when you will have trouble breathing and you will want to get on the first plane back home.

There will be moments when you will want to scream and shout and punch a hole into a wall! There will be days when you will feel like nothing works for you and there is no point in going on.

But those are the moments that make you stronger, that build you up and make you a better person. Those are the moments that test your patience.

Choose your people: you won’t get along with everybody!

Not all people will accept you and embrace you, just the way you are! And you will have to learn how to deal with that.

Some people will judge you on the simplest things, like the food you eat, the beer you want to have at the end of a long week of studying, the way you prefer to study (by yourself or in groups), your daily routines and even the way you dress.

You will no longer be amongst loved ones, surrounded by family and friends.

You will be surrounded by strangers.

And not all of them are interested in becoming your friends, or getting to know the real you.

Some of them will just put a tag on your face and that’s it!

Discovering different people and cultures

In the beginning you might feel offended by their reactions towards you. But after a while, you understand that we are different human beings, with different values, traditions and customs.

And you will learn how to accept the fact they are not accepting you!

You will focus only on the people who like you, who want to be around you and whom you get along with!

And it gets better. You build up strong and solid relationships. You confide in each other and sometimes share deepest and darkest thoughts with them, while stargazing on the roof of your house at midnight.

It is a tough journey but, in the end, when you count the amazing moments, the great relationships you built and the knowledge you acquired, it’s totally worth it! 

As a Montessori guide you become the key-keeper. You have to own the keys to every area that might be of interest to the child.

And you have to be ready at any time to offer the precise key to any child, when he is asking for it. 

The many areas of Montessori elementary education

So, when Greg told us that we have to introduce children to every area I got a little worried.

Because God knows I weren’t a straight A student in school and for some of the subjects I just always weaved my way through. The areas I had worries for were:

• Geography
• History
• Art
• Music

A lot to worry about, right? That’s what I thought too! 

For the first two, it was because of the way they were taught in my school: you had to memorize some numbers (years, population, surface, statistics) and names (rulers who conquered land by leading bloody battles, capitals of countries, names of rivers etc.) and if you weren’t able to memorize all of them, in the order they were introduced by the teacher, you would get bad grades and be considered a fool.  

But for art and music, it wasn’t the fact that I didn’t like them or the way they were presented to me.

I just never had a gift in drawing and I used to believe my voice was far from giving shivers down anybody’s spine. If I were to compare, I used to think I had the drawing skills of a sleepy, right-handed, three-year-old, who draws with his left hand.

And as for singing, I was sure I could make a deaf man shush me. 

Experiencing before presenting to the child

From this point of view, attending this course gave me more faith in my own strengths and abilities to improve in any area.

The fact that we sang every day, before lectures, made me more confident about my voice and made me want to practice singing more.

So, when I got back home and went to my Elementary Classroom, I wasn’t that afraid of introducing songs to children.

It came naturally! And they loved it!

The same happened with drawing. If at first, I was shy and didn’t even know where to put the pen on the paper, after doing some drawings for the course, I noticed I wasn’t that awful at it.

If I put a little effort in it and even a little feeling, my drawing would become close to “cute”!

I don’t think I’ll ever have my own gallery opened, but at least my children won’t laugh at me when I draw them the parts of a plant. 

This course has not only given me information about how to guide children in an Elementary Montessori Environment, but also made me discover abilities I didn’t know I had and made me want to improve them.

I always look for all positive aspects of every event in my life and I can honestly say, this course changed my perspective, my believes, my life! 

When you are a trainer and have almost 90 people in front of you, it’s a risky business to say “If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me!”.

Especially if those people are future Montessori teachers, eager to find out every tiny detail about every statement you make during presentations. 

Endless questions about Montessori education

Since the first days, when we got into the theory part, into Cosmic Education and the child’s capacity to Self-Construct, people had a lot of questions and wanted to clarify a lot of aspects.

At first, it was understandable that any student taking the course would want to get every step, clearly and precise. But after a while, when after a 5 minutes presentation, we had a session of questions that lasted almost 30 minutes, things got pretty annoying.

I mean, yes, it’s everybody’s right to ask questions but what would happen if after each presentation, all 90 of us would have a question for the trainer and he would take 1 minute for each answer?

I know, that’s also a question. Oops!

Don’t misunderstand me, I had a lot of questions in my mind, during the first 3 months block.

But I didn’t need the microphone and all people’s attention for all of them, because I knew some of those doubts I could clarify later on, during break or at practice.

I knew how valuable were the lecture hours and how many beautiful things were prepared for us and I realized that if I can get the answer in other way, there’s no need to put 89 people on hold. 

Again, I don’t want to be misunderstood or thought of as the grumpy blonde lady who tries to find faults. Some of the questions asked were really good and their answers deserved to be heard by everybody. But others were really not worthy of everybody’s attention and could’ve been easily dealt with at the end of the day, during practice. 

Help me discover by myself

So, in my opinion, when you attend a course, and you have some doubts about what the trainer is presenting, think of it that way:

• Am I really unable to discover the answer by myself?
• Will the answer to this question benefit only me or the whole class?
• Is it something only I didn’t understand or is it confusing for everybody?

And one more thing: we are training to become Montessori teachers! And part of the Montessori’s way of life is discovering by yourself for yourself.

So maybe the trainer isn’t supposed to give you every single hint and maybe some times you are supposed to use your mind and imagination, and figure out things on your own!

How can we expect children to be willing to do further research and discover more and more every day, if we are too lazy to do it for ourselves, and we always need right-away answers from the trainer?

Do you know that feeling when your eyes are hurting, you want to shut them but the things you read are so interesting that you wish you could keep them open with scotch tape? Yeah, exactly like in Tom&Jerry. That’s what I felt from the very beginning of the Montessori Elementary Course. 

Oui, exactement comme dans Tom&Jerry. C’est ce que j’ai ressenti dès le début de la formation Montessori.

A very intense Montessori training course

Our schedule was so busy that we barely got time to breathe properly but the things we were discovering were so amazing that neither of us dared to complain much.

We were like tiny robots, waking up in the morning, drinking gallons of coffee, getting dressed and reading or typing on our laptops until it was time to go to school. There, we attended the lectures, did practice and clean up the environment.

Then, we went back home, where we picked up where we left of in the morning, with the reading or typing. It was like a vicious circle, and our vice was the Montessori method! 

I remember one moment when I was writing at my desk, at our accommodation spot, and I felt a backache so I decided to stand up and move around the house for a bit. I went out of my room and I looked around at my colleagues.

They were all in the same position: sitting at the desk, with a hypnotized look on their faces, staring at the laptop’s screen, fingers moving at a constant speed and pressing on the keyboard, and from time to time you could hear them sigh.

I remember I started laughing so hard, that they stopped and looked at me like I was crazy. Mostly, I was laughing because I knew I was in the same spot few seconds behind, before I unplugged. 

And another thing I fondly recall is the way people fell asleep during class. It never happened to me, but after lunch time, if you would just turn around and take a look around the classroom, you would see at least 5 people with their eyes closed and their head falling on the side.

Some of them used to bring their laptops and type during lectures and you could hear them fall asleep, because that very second their laptop would fall from their lap. 

The first block was tiring but we were happily tired.

It’s a sort of feeling of overwhelming satisfaction that you are learning things that might help children change the future of our world.

You go to sleep at night asking yourself: “What was I thinking, coming all this way to take a course, being so far from my loved ones, my home, my routines?” but when you wake up in the morning, you are curious of what amazing new things you are about to discover and the feeling you had a night before just disappears.

You understand that it’s worth it, you smile and you say “All is well!”. 

It’s time for a new day, a new story which will lead you into becoming a Montessori guide; the best Montessori guide!