Our school doesn’t have teachers.
“Montessori guide” is more than just a cool title
In Montessori classrooms, we don’t have teachers. We have guides. And it’s not just a matter of semantics.
This is a fundamental shift in how we perceive education and the role of educators in supporting young minds as they grow.
Left to their own devices, young children naturally want to learn and discover the world around them. They are active learners who are willing to do the work necessary to make sense of life.
In other words, kids don’t need a teacher to transmit knowledge to them, so much as they need a guide who can facilitate their exploration and help them develop their skills. That way, their discoveries will hold deeper meaning.
Therefore, Montessori guides are a different type of teacher. They empower their students to learn for themselves, which is more effective for the kids (and more fulfilling for the educators!).
A lot of parents wonder how we track progress in a self-directed environment like this, and we totally understand the concern. How do we support independence and competence, agency and rigor, especially in children under the age of six?
Here’s how it works at our school:
Guides prepare an idyllic environment for their students
At Guidepost, guides are in charge of preparing the classroom environment for their students. Traditional teachers do this as well — decorating their walls and labeling storage bins for kids — but for Montessori guides, this responsibility is so much more than creating a beautiful, organized environment.
Because Montessori classrooms are more than just rooms. They’re like assistant guides!
To make space for children to build knowledge for themselves, guides prepare a space where kids can be active. Not “active” in terms of running in circles, but “active” in terms of learning, growing, and discovering.
A properly prepared Montessori environment includes materials designed with the child’s cognitive needs in mind. Each material, for example, isolates a particular idea or skill so that the child can focus on it. It’s far easier (and more interesting) for a child to learn the names of colors or shapes when everything about the material is the same except for the one thing the child needs to focus on to grasp the concept.
Each material in the Montessori classroom has been carefully designed to make concepts pop for the children when they work with them. They’re designed to engage the child concretely, with all their senses, and to be able to be used independently.
Most importantly, they’re designed to build on one another in a carefully curated sequence. For example, what starts as a relatively simple activity to recognize the beginning sound of words progressively grows as the child moves from activity to activity — until suddenly, the child can sound out each letter in a word, blend them all together, and then recognize what the word means.
Guides synthesize lessons when students are ready
It’s no secret that traditional teachers present information through verbal explanations and gauge retention through verbal/written responses. Montessori guides for children under six, on the other hand, present information via hands-on materials and then synthesize key ideas using language at the end of the learning process.
So, once a child has worked with the Geometric Shape Insets for a while and is really familiar with circles, squares, and triangles on a visual, tactile, and intuitive level, the guide will then give the child their names.
Receiving the name at the end of the process comes like a revelation to the child. They have worked with the material for so long and now have a really good sense of what makes a triangle different from a square. But once the guide presents the name “triangle” or “square,” the child has a way to organize and remember what they’ve learned.
The learning happened while the child worked with the material, so now, the guide can help them order the experience in their mind. The child did the learning; the guide helps them package it all together and tie it together with a bow.
And this is only the beginning of a sequenced geometry curriculum. When they’re ready, the guide will help the child go even deeper and progress to new material. By kindergarten, it’s not uncommon for Montessori students to be ready to understand and do operations with fractions — something that often waits for 3rd grade or later in the Common Core curriculum.
But… how do guides know when kids are ready to learn more?
Guides closely observe their students
Traditional teachers are obligated to make their students fit into the curriculum. But at our school, guides are on a mission to make the curriculum fit each individual student.
They do this by closely observing children and understanding their needs, interests, and capabilities. Their job is to invite and inspire kids to engage with their curriculum in a purposeful, focused way.
This being the case, imagine that your child hates reading. Would their guide simply shrug and respect their disinterest? Of course not! As Samantha puts it:
“Indeed, an unengaged student is a Montessori guide’s call to arms. It is her highest mission to invite the child in and ignite their curiosity. Her goal is to inspire deep focus and enjoyment in every subject area for every child.”
Through observation, guides meet children on their level, inspiring them to learn independently, solve problems, and achieve mastery. They don’t leave a child’s education up to chance. When necessary, they intervene, turning school into an exciting adventure.
Because if a child hates literature, math, or history, they’re missing out on a potential source of joy and the promise of a thriving adult life. We want more for your kids — and we know you do, too.
This is why we love our guides so much. Not only are they experts within the prepared classroom environment, but they’re also masters of observation.
Here’s how this educational method makes a difference over time:
Guides and students benefit in a self-directed classroom
Traditional school environments make kids out to be rowdy and chaotic — but that’s not our guides’ experience.
In a self-directed environment, children grow to crave organization, beauty, and peace. They can focus on their work for hours at a time, every single day. They love to help their friends with their studies and are eager to learn more for themselves.
In Guidepost schools, this looks like:
Three- and four-year-olds learning how to sound out words and write sentences with joy
Four and five-year-olds naming every country on a continent and knowing every state by name, shape, and location because they were inspired by our puzzle maps
Five-year-olds reading chapter books and engaging with grammar concepts because learning to read and noticing patterns in language have been a pleasure from the very beginning
Five-year-olds practicing 3rd-grade-level math, including all four math operations with four-digit numbers, squaring and cubing, and fractions at a concrete level they love to eplore
In the absence of traditional teachers and in the presence of guides, children develop advanced literacy, numeracy, executive functioning, and social skills. This isn’t accidental; it’s the result of a paradigm shift.
Because kids don’t need teachers to instill knowledge, like their minds are empty buckets to be filled. They need guides to light their path and support their journey — and the guides benefit, too.
As Guidepost parent and educator Ros Roseman put it, “Getting to be a guide — to captivate a child’s interest in a material and watch as they become engaged and start to concentrate — is amazing.”
☀️ This week’s bright spots:
If you have one minute… Watch this video on a day in the life of a toddler Montessori student from our campus in Katy, TX.
If you have ten minutes… Read our previous guide on what a Montessori education looks like in middle and high school.
If you have one hour… Listen to this episode of the Montessorium podcast on independence and risk with Lenore Skenazy, author of Free-Range Kids.