At Aidan Montessori School, we have put on an annual musical every year for the past fifteen years. I hope everyone who was able to attend enjoyed this year's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. While we revel in our traditions, the question might be asked: Why do we put on a musical?
Easily, reasons why this is a valuable undertaking come to mind: Putting on a play nurtures the ability to work with others, in teams. Children who participate in the play build up their public speaking abilities, their composure, their ability to stand confidently in front of an audience. Putting on a play helps young people build up their perseverance, their "grit."
Beyond these valuable experiences, why do we, as a Montessori school, put on a play? There are about eight tenets of Montessori education that directly tie into our musical.
- Montessori values process over product. While we, the audience, admiringly attend the wonderful result of our students' weeks of work, the process that the students have undertaken is far more important than the play itself.
- The children work in a multi-age grouping, with older children helping and role-modeling for younger children and vice-versa.
- The children's learning during this process is interest driven. Sure, they are putting on A Midsummer Night's Dream, but they have folded in many genres of very post-Shakespearean music, and they have had the opportunity to re-write their lines to make them their own.
- Putting on a play embodies the experiential process that Montessori values as the children pursue their creative visions, experience them, revise, and experience them again.
- Rehearsals share with Montessori work blocks the characteristic of children engaging in long, uninterrupted periods of focused work.
- Montessori values children experiencing freedom within limits. It's A Midsummer Night's Dream and there are parameters within which the children must work, but there's also great freedom within those parameters.
- Through the arts, we are educating the whole child and individualizing their learning.
- Finally, Montessori education is nearly synonymous with peace education. And, this is not the peace that one passively waits and hopes for. Rather, it is the peace that requires hard work. Our children have experienced working within their community for the good of the community. Twenty years from now, they will be in other communities, working for the good of those communities. And, that is Maria Montessori's plan for world peace.
While we applaud our very capable children/actors, I applaud, you – the parents of these wonderful children – for making the conscious decision to educate your child/ren differently than the majority and committing to making the world a better place by way of education.
Sincerely,