CMTE/NY * About Montessori Education

Puerto Rican Passions

CMTE-NY Is a Partner in an Ambitious 'Fairy Tale' Initiative

This is a real-life fairy tale. A collective of public schools in Puerto Rico has launched bold experiment to bring Montessori education to the children of San Juan and surrounding communities. Spearheaded by Dr. Ana Maria Garcia Blanco, principal of Nueva Escuela Juan Ponce de Leon, the project involves the formal training of 57 teachers at the Early Childhood and Lower Elementary levels by staff from the Center for Montessori Teacher Education / New York (CMTE/NY) over the next two years.

Background
Public schools in Puerto Rico have had a difficult time. Many schools have become accustomed to violence on their premises. The school dropout rate is high, and the closing small neighborhood programs, consolidating them into larger schools, has cut schools off from their communities and the possibilities of partnership with parents.

Garcia Blanco was born and raised in Puerto Rico, received her doctorate from Harvard University, and is an educator/community organizer who "works miracles," according to those who have been associated with her. Her school, La Nueva Escuela, is located in a "barrio" or economically poor neighborhood in Guayanabo, outside San Juan.

She is driven by the determination to turn communities filled with despair and violence into places of peace and hope through the power of Montessori education.

Garcia Blanco and her staff have spent the last 15 years transforming their own school in a poor urban neighborhood, on the verge of shutting down-with a 50-percent dropout rate and a climate of violence-into a place of stability, excellence and peace in the Montessori educational tradition.

The very existence of the barrio and its school was threatened by a wave of development more than a decade ago. So Garcia Blanco organized the community and, together, they resisted the effort to bulldoze the barrio or close its school.

Since then, this dynamo of a woman has created a community-based school outreach program that has made La Nueva Escuela a central force in the neighborhood and a model for other schools contemplating the Montessori method.

Two years ago, a process to change the educational environment in Puerto Rico began with the orientation and transformation of teachers from an alliance of 13 sister schools. These women gathered to experience the power of silence, of meditation, of conscious community building, and share their dreams. This provided a sea change in the ambiance of the classrooms of teachers and schools that have joined this collective.

CMTE/NY attracted the interest of Garcia Blanco because of the successful experience of some of her own elementary teachers in training in New York.

The CMTE/NY-Puerto Rico program for 29 Elementary and 28 Early Childhood teachers began in October. Four and five-day training sessions will be held every month or so over the next two school years.

The Department of Education has agreed to give teachers time off from their classes to take part in the course.

Garcia Blanco has arranged with the Universidad del Sagrado Corazon (USC) to grant a master's degree to the teacher trainees and has obtained funding from the Angel Ramos Foundation and the Banco Popular Foundation to fund almost the entire cost of the training program for these teachers.

Las Escuelas Hermanas
The model gave birth to the 13 "sister schools of La Nueva Escuela" from which the 57 teachers who comprise our project are drawn. Many of them are veteran public school teachers committed to transforming their schools into the kind of model program represented by the mother school.

Five of the schools are committed to becoming full Montessori schools, while the rest are in various stages of considering what kind of affiliation they want to have with the Montessori approach to education.

Some schools have already set up Montessori environments, with shelves, appropriate materials (including teacher-made bead bars, sandpaper globes, moveable alphabets, and more), group tables and chairs, and rugs for work on the floor. Maybe most importantly to these children, there are peace tables -each one with a candle, items of beauty to contemplate, often with soft music playing. These elements must compete with the extraordinary cacophony created by trucks, fans, air conditioners and the echoes of feet and voices on hard concrete surfaces. Yet the peaceful energy is powerful.

Many of these classes have already implemented multiage groups and some have teams of Montessori teachers. Assistants are also learning to give children more opportunity for choice.

Other schools have not gotten that far yet. But teachers have begun the conversation within themselves and with their children. Many of these teachers have changed their rooms and their goals-greeting each child at the start of the day, beginning the morning with quiet time and the scent of a candle and arranging their rooms so students can relate to each other at group tables.

The Plan
Core CMTE/NY staff members will fly in to give presentations with the support-and volunteer translating services-of those teachers who trained with CMTE/NY in New York. During the first year of the program, CMTE/NY staff members will also be doing consultation visits to the schools to help them move forward, in proportion to their desire to become full Montessori schools. Student internship visits by CMTE/NY staff will begin in the second year of the program.

Even before the formal CMTE/NY training program began, for the past two years, Garcia Blanco had been arranging for workshops and orientation into Montessori education with veteran Montessorians who lived in Puerto Rico.

The teachers selected for the CMTE/NY training program-out of more than 75 applicants-have been participating in more intensive community building and Montessori orientation sessions to prepare for the training.

When a core of veteran teachers with the full scope of formal training has been forged, the role of CMTE/NY will be phased out in favor of a local training program staffed by Puerto Ricans and serving the larger island community.

When this course cycle is finished, CMTE/NY doesn't plan to disappear. CMTE/NY doesn't want to create another satellite, and it seems most appropriate to have a course for Puerto Rican teachers that is based in Puerto Rico.

However, CMTE/NY hopes and expects to continue working with the teachers and teacher-trainers in a consulting role. They also hope to present the first course for Infant-Toddler teachers and to extend the elementary course to Elementary II, the goal being to turn those levels over to local educators after one cycle.

Beginnings
Passion is a natural element of Latin-American expression. For the first five-day session in October, everyone was nervous. Students worried that the course would be too much, the expectations too high.

CMTE/NY faculty saw this program as a challenge because of the language and cultural differences between the teacher educators and the students. The kinds of transformation that will need to happen in the schools that are moving toward Montessori, and where the resources will come from, are daunting obstacles. CMTE/NY faculty are concerned about logistics, school visits, materials, etc.

But from the first time they visited interns (the five teachers who took CMTE/NY Elementary training in NY beginning in summer 2003), and spoke with Ana Maria, it was clear that this would be a different kind of project-more idealistic, more visionary, maybe more worthwhile.

No one knew what a strong, even passionate connection the teachers and students would make with each other almost from the very start.

The effort these teachers in training would make was huge, and CMTE/NY staff members wanted them to know they thought them brave and pioneering. The students told their trainers, in turn, that they felt appreciated for who they were, very quickly. It was a mutual admiration society between faculty and students, and, in the end, a celebration of fun, community and love.

The principal of Virgilio Davila in Bayamon sits next to her teachers in the training course and boasts about the enthusiasm of the parents in support of the Montessori classrooms.

The principal of Santa Rosa III in Guayanabo-who started as a teacher in the school at age 19-has her school halfway toward being a full Montessori school, and she shows off the classrooms like a proud mom showing pictures of her children. The school has no funding to buy Montessori materials, so teachers on the staff have either used money out of their own pockets or put in untold hours of work-and enlisted their husbands' help-in making many of the materials, along with suitable shelving and containers. One teacher even bought a supply of colored beads and made a beautiful set of bead bars for her classroom.

Some of the teachers involved in Montessori are trained in special education, and some are involved in programs with Title I funding. Both groups of teachers were attracted to Montessori for the potential it has for helping their children succeed.

At the end of the first weekend training session, many of those who took part spoke of their great excitement and feeling of personal transformation in embarking on formal Montessori training. Despite the long hours and demanding work ahead of them, they told of their passionate belief that this training will, in turn, transform the children in their classes and, ultimately, the broader world around them.

In Puerto Rico, people typically greet and leave each other with a kiss. The warmth conveyed in the kisses exchanged each day will carry those of us who come from cold northern climates for many months to come.

Michael Duffy is a teacher-trainer for CMTE/NY and the internship coordinator for the Puerto Rico program.

Robyn Breiman is overall elementary coordinator for CMTE/NY and co-coordinator of the Puerto Rico program.

Published by Jola Publications
Public School Montessorian/Winter 2006 Issue

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