Above the Line: The Table She Asked For

Above the Line: The Visit Has to Go Somewhere

DeSmet School in Montana was 638th out of 649 districts when Matt Driessen arrived. He rebuilt it from the board and community up, then made classroom visits the engine of feedback. His version of the walkthrough is plain enough to miss: one thing, try it, I'll come back.

A parent once told Delia Presillas that her child had cried at dinner. At school, the child said, everyone waited to eat together. They came to the table together, sat together, and no one started early.

Why didn't they do that at home?

At Alief Montessori Community School, lunch is family style. Children eat in the classroom and wait for each other. Before they begin, one of them will say a poem, prayer, or some gratitude.

The parents said "I didn't know that that was very important to my child," Presillas told me.

Presillas describes this as bonding time so that students can talk about their day, home life, or their favorite games.

School built that into the classroom, the child cried to have it at home too.

Alief Montessori first came to my attention because it is Above the Line.

Evidently, when I asked Presillas what explained the results, she began with relationships.

She knows the children that enter her school. She knows that they do not all begin in the same place. One may start with math, while another reads.

I didn't fully understand what she meant until Presillas told me the dinner story.

Independence is both directly and indirectly taught at Alief Montessori.

Children learn from each others' behavior in the classroom and at lunch together.

This is good teaching practice in its quietest form: arrange the work so the habit gets practiced again and again.

This changes the teacher's job. They are not there to command each student's next move. The teacher only needs to prepare the room, give the lesson and observe the children; they're curating an experience for students.

"Experience curation" demands a high bar for teachers. At Alief Montessori, teachers train for three summers before leading their own classroom, writing the scripts for the lessons they'll give years from now.

By the time it's time to have students in the room, the planning is done and the teacher can actually pay attention to the children.

Presillas leads the teachers in the same way. Quietly, she walks through the classrooms without interrupting. After, she gives feedback "as another pair of eyes."

Alief Montessori uses the Texas state evaluation system: the Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System, T-TESS. Presillas tells teachers to look at the name T-TESS.

One E and two S's means double the support for every evaluation.

A teacher supports a child until the child can respectfully sit, wait, and begin lunch. Presillas supports teachers so that they can curate classrooms where that happens.

The point is not compliance; it's independence.

That is what the child brought home.

No adult from Alief Montessori followed her into the kitchen. There was no lesson plan at dinner.

She just knew what a table could be.

So she asked for one.