As Montessori Education Week Begins

I was twenty years old when Montessori walked into my life.

Not because I was searching for it. Not because I had some grand vision of becoming a Montessori educator. A friend simply said they needed someone to cover a maternity leave. I almost didn’t go. I had worked in childcare before and I knew one thing very clearly: I loved children, but I did not love the way children were often treated. The pace felt wrong. The control felt wrong. Something in my body would always step back and say, this isn’t it.

She said, “No, this is different. It’s Montessori.”

And it was.

I remember standing in that first classroom and feeling like someone had turned the volume down on the world. The children were calm. Not because they were being controlled. Because they were trusted. The adults were not performing. They were observing. They were respectful. They were patient. The children were working. Real work. Purposeful work. And no one was rushing them.

It felt like coming home to something I didn’t know I had been looking for.

I tried to leave a few times. I thought maybe I should explore other options. But every time, I felt that same disconnect. I naturally stand back. I wait. I meet children where they are. I don’t need to be the center of the room. I never have. In Montessori, that wasn’t weakness. That was the work.

So I stayed.

I took my training and I knew. I knew I was meant to advocate for infants and toddlers. The smallest humans with the biggest dignity. This has never been about the materials for me. It has always been about the child. The trembling toddler on the first day. The infant learning that the world is safe. The parent handing you their whole heart wrapped up in a diaper bag.

I have never said “my classroom.” It has always been the children’s classroom. Their environment. I am a guest. I walk into their space with gratitude. I thank them, quietly, for letting me share their days. I thank parents for trusting me. I do not take that lightly. I never have.

Then Montessori changed my life again.

When I became a mother, I didn’t just believe in Montessori as a teacher. I clung to it as a parent. My daughters grew up in Montessori. Through sixth and seventh grade. And today they are independent in ways that sometimes take my breath away. Boarding planes alone at thirteen. Traveling for soccer. Advocating for themselves. Facing hard things like death. ACL surgery. And being diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes.

People think Montessori is just academics. It’s not.

It’s courage.

It’s knowing how to fall and get back up.

It’s knowing you are capable because you’ve practiced being capable since you were two.

And then my world broke.

When my husband died of cancer, my children were eight and nine. I don’t even know how to describe that year without feeling it deep in my chest. They went to school in second and fourth grade and they did almost no work. And you know what their Montessori teachers said?

“Showing up is enough.”

Because in Montessori, they understood the long game. The three-year cycle. They knew they would have them again. They knew healing mattered more than their work plan. They knew childhood mattered more than productivity.

They let my children grieve.

They held them without fixing them.

They trusted that when the time was right, the learning would come back.

And it did.

That following summer, when everything still felt raw and wrong, they had to go to camp. We were seven months into grief. They did not want to go. I had to work. A teacher at camp who knew what soccer meant to our family let them watch the World Cup every day. We do not do screens at school. We do not bend those rules. But that summer, compassion was more important than policy.

He understood they needed a thread back to their dad.

That is Montessori.

It is not a brand. It is not marketing. It is not pretty shelves on Instagram.

It is love.

It is adults who see the whole child.

It is community that wraps around you when you cannot stand.

It is teachers who understand that sometimes survival is the lesson.

Maria Montessori fought for children when no one was listening. She pushed boundaries in a world that did not welcome women doing that. She saw dignity in children before the world did. We are lucky she was born. We are lucky she did not back down.

Montessori did not just shape my career. It shaped who I am. It shaped my daughters. It carried us through death. It gave us stability when everything else was falling apart.

I am not perfect at this work. I am still growing. But I know this deeply.

Montessori has softened me.
It has strengthened me.
It has given my life purpose.
It has given my children independence.

And every single day, I walk into a classroom grateful.

Grateful for the children.
Grateful for the parents.
Grateful for a woman who believed in children fiercely enough to change the world.

That is why I keep showing up.
That is why I do this work.

And that is why Montessori Education Week is not just a celebration for me.

It is personal.