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?