Our approach
From Schooling to Learning
If Chrysalide Education is rooted in the Montessori heritage, the approach we develop is more syncretic. Our teaching methods are dynamic and evolving. In that respect, we are particularly inspired by the Finnish educational methods, themselves developed from the Montessori, Reggio Emilia and Steiner approaches.
The common points between the Finnish approach and the Montessori approach are numerous:
- Learning largely based on play and sensory adaptation.
- Mixed age groups.
- Less than 10 students for a teacher.
- More free time than in a traditional school.
- Teaching adapted to the child’s rhythm and needs.
- Educational approach aimed at the acquisition of autonomy and sense of responsibility.
However, in the Finnish system as at Chrysalis Education, the approach is different from the Montessori approach in that
- Teachers interact more with students.
- Montessori material is not the only material.
- Children spend less time interacting alone with the Montessori materials of their choice.
- Group work and group games are greatly encouraged to develop empathy and sociability.
Last but not least, the strength of this teaching is the way in which the link is made between subject-based learning and project-based learning. Children, especially from 6 to 9 years old, carry out projects or scientific experiments that allow them to put into practice, in a playful manner and for concrete purposes, the content of the disciplines taught. This, in turn, promotes the acquisition of new disciplinary knowledge.
The Montessori Approach
Maria Montessori (1870-1952) was an Italian doctor and educator at the origin of a socio-educational movement that took off after the second world war and has experienced a renewal of interest since the years 2000, given its astonishing adaptation to the challenges of our time.This movement called “Montessori” consists in helping children fulfill their full potential whatever their social origin and developing all the aspects of their personality, considering that children are moved by an internal force that pushes them to learn so as to blossom and become autonomous.
The educational material is essential. It’s a range of didactic tools, abundant at Chrysalide Education, that the children choose freely during their work sessions. These tools release a process of concentration in children. To manage to use these tools in an optimal way, the child is naturally guided to self-correction.
The role of the educator is to facilitate this process of self-correction by guiding the child. Her knowledge of its developmental stage, of the functioning of each tool, her acute sense of observation and especially her way of intervening by being increasingly discrete so as to encourage the independence of the child, are fundamental qualities which necessitate a specific training, a state of mind and a power of conviction.
Writings on the Montessori Approach are numerous. To understand it, there is nothing like going straight to the reference book of Maria Montessori on the education of children from 3 to 6 years old: The Absorbent Mind. In our time, the first quarter of 21st century, most of the standard educational structures lack the adaptation to the individual needs of children.
They consider that the internalization of their way of functioning (regulation, discipline) is the essential element of their education. But, today, children receive external and diverse stimuli very early and evolve in an increasingly changing environment. Their social and cognitive needs are more and more personalized. Paradoxically, as the worlds of work and business are diversifying, a lot of public education institutions rely on a model prioritizing the collective over the individual, conformity and passive obedience over the development of human and behavior skills, called “soft skills”.
Incrementally, parents have become aware of the somehow anachronistic characteristic of this teaching. They seek for a more individualized learning environment for their children, from their early childhood. They feel that this framework will allow them to progress according to their own rhythm and to adjust to an increasingly competitive labor market which privileges, at equal qualification, these soft skills.
This explains in part, the renewal of interest in Montessori institutions: a more personalized pedagogy, a softer, more playful and stimulating environment that allows to better acquire this kind of skills than a standard educational method.
