Brave enough to allow what is to be.

I often get caught up with images of what an ideal Montessori classroom should look like. I have observed at many schools and seen (once) an impeccable interpretation of Montessori utopia (so I know it is possible). There is often an image in my mind which interferes with the reality of where our community is at a particular moment. I am guilty of superimposing qualities to my group which it certainly does not possess at a given time. Those images of normalization at time seem like the future to which I'm trying to rush into, but ever elusive like the horizon that keeps moving with me.

The tears sprung from my eyes when this weekend, at the AMI Refresher Course in Houston, my trainer casually said "This is exactly what a Montessori classroom should look like, crazy and deviated." Obviously, she meant that this is not the way it's supposed to look like FOREVER. "Don't judge it," she said, "work with it."

Dropping all pretenses of what the classroom should be like and taking a look at what is actually there, what IS, is the first step. In my zen audio books the monks talk a lot about how one can only take one step at a time- it is the only possibility in reality. So I am back in the classroom today, trying to be bold enough to face what actually is in there. Not judging it "the glass is half empty" or "the glass is half full", rather "the glass just is."