The fourth week on the farm


And so the last week is here and time is running out quickly and tension is in the air. Everybody’s looking forward to going home. A lot more people are sitting at school in the evenings, finishing what needs to be finished. It’s easy to see how people are helping one another, trying to be useful.

On Friday and Saturday we all have personal conferences – what the whole stay gave us, what the main goal is, and what we would like to change when we get back home.

What did the whole stay give us? Speaking for myself, it brought me a lot of new experience, a lot of new knowledge and most importantly, a lot of new friendships. Living for four weeks under one roof with completely unknown people also brought me a lot of knowledge about how different we all are, and yet desire the best for our children, and so how much alike we are inside, because we’re here, in order to find a new and better path for the future of our children and ourselves.

 

What is our main goal? To try to reach out to adolescents, who are going through a new phase in their lives. To try to be a good guide to new knowledge in their lives. To try to understand them. To try to give them as much as possible of freedom, independence, and mainly love, because they really deserve it in this period of adolescence.

What would I like to change when I get back home?

I would like us, parents, to start perceiving our children as a gift, and not just when they’re born, but throughout their whole lives. Sometimes we forget how many things we can learn from our children.

Someone told us here: somewhere the sun is setting, but elsewhere the sun is rising, somewhere something ends, but somewhere else something begins…


The teacher offers the gift,

The child accepts the gift,

The child returns the gift. (David Kahn)


People will forget what you said

People will forget what you did

But people will never forget how you made them feel. (John McNamara)


The adult must help the child do things entirely on his own. For if the child does not reach the point of ceasing to rely on the help of adults and becoming independent, he will never fully mature intellectually or morally….. Freedom is the key to the entire process, and the first step comes when the individual is capable of actin without help from others and becomes aware of himself as an autonomous being…. I took almost a vow to become a follower of the child as my teacher…

(Maria Montessori)

 

 


Renata Špalková, Táňa Kadlecová and Helena Matoušková from the Czech Republic took part at the AMI Orientation to Adolescent Studies (ages 12 – 18) in cooperation with NAMTA in July 2016 in Montessoriskolan Lära för livet, Rydet, Sätila, Sweden.  The three ladies are all active in the growing Czech community of adolescent studies. In three places in the Czech Republic they build their Adolescent communities.

http://montessori-zlin.cz

http://www.montessorimozaika.cz

http://www.zsperlicka.cz