It starts with me

The school year is beginning, and we have a lot of work to do. We have lessons to give and systems to put in place. We need to create relationships with families and get everyone to learn the skills necessary to be successful this year. We have events to plan, PD to attend and projects to invest in. And we also have the task of doing the big work of educating for peace. As Montessori enthusiasts, we likely didn't get into this work for the fame and fortune of educating children. We got into this work because we believe in the idea that the goal of education is peace, just as Maria Montessori believed so many years ago.

Recently, we have seen a shift in corporate America and on many college and university campuses that has moved efforts away from DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging) work, as a portion of our society has taken DEIB, ABAR (anti-bias, anti-racist), and other social-justice-conscious work as an attack on their way of life and have therefore either done away with it entirely, as we see on campuses with whole departments being wiped out, or they have seemingly narrowed their approach to focus solely on inclusion and belonging. Will our work have the same fate? I sure hope not. It would seemingly go against everything we believe in.

Let's take a step back here. As Montessorians, we believe in the magic of childhood. We respect the development that children must go through to become functional adults. We recognize the big work it takes to grow and change with our bodies and our understanding of the world. We rely heavily on community and the ways in which a community can help or hinder the development of the child. We believe in the goals of education set forth by Maria Montessori herself. Thus, we need to remind ourselves that this is so for all children. This is so for all children of color, all children who are migrants, all children who live in war-torn communities, all children who need different supports to learn, who do not speak the same language as their classmates, who have different physical abilities, those who have what they need and those who suffer from systemic underresourcing. We have a duty to ensure that all children thrive, and to do that, we must ensure that entwined with our work is a foundation of community care that includes children learning about themselves and others and how we grow and learn to support each other toward that future of peace.

It is September now, and we have the power to shape our school year, as well as the future. If we do this well, we have more than enough time to create a plan and dive into topics that help children build strong identities and set the stage for them to honor, respect, and uplift the identities of others, which is one of the foundational blocks of peace. If you haven't yet, I invite you to start planning for how to do this imperative work, and to do so as a part of your commitment to children. It starts with you, and your work in helping children understand and honor the world around them can begin now. I believe that we, as educators, can truly see this work of education bringing about peace come to fruition. I know it starts with me. I hope it starts with you too.