| @ the Perez's House | 6/11/2010 04:46:00 PM |
The house was located just inside the compound behind our parish church. My mother would drop me off in the mornings and I would be introduced to the multi-sensory wonders offered by the Montessori method of teaching. Everything about it was informal. Mdm. Perez and one or two assistants served as teachers. There were no uniforms. The living room was a makeshift classroom. There were few student, probably ten or less, including one very naughty boy who happened to be Mdm. Perez's son. This was to be expected of a school that was just starting out. At that time, the school didn't even have a name. I never received a report card either.
I can't quite remember all the lessons. I do remember my impatient self grabbing another student's work and attempting to finish it myself when I realized he wasn't quite halfway through with what we were supposed to do. At times I still have to stop myself at feeling impatient when someone I am teaching things to doesn't quite get it, and hold back the tempting thought of doing someone else's work myself.
Later on, the Montessori school transferred just behind the gasoline station nearer to our house. My next two younger siblings went there. I was always still welcome there in my early grade school days. Sometimes, when I didn't have classes, I was allowed to sit in on my younger siblings' lessons. It was there that I learned to wholeheartedly accept differently-abled children who were in my sister's class.
Whenever asked for the list of schools I attended, I would never include in the list the informal early childhood education I had in the Perez's house (which did not even have a name at the time I studied there). I believe though that earning at that informal environment enabled me to develop a lifelong love for learning and wonder at discovering new and better things each day as well as a better understanding of persons we may consider so different from us at first glance.
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3 other thoughts:
I remember my classmate Ava while reading this. She did a course on Maternal and Child health, and she told us about how their teaching modules were dependent on the child's mood for the day, on what he/she wanted to learn. It was a painstaking process...but undoubtedly, that's a lot of fun for the child too, very stimulating. Kind of like what happened with you. :-)
What seems so "informal" might just be the right pre school education you got. It's the learning and loving the learning that counts, not the name or uniforms. Had I realized back then I learned more of playing during kinder, I might have dropped out of pre school...hahaha!
great post JA
Thanks, Doc Remo. The old school house behind the gasoline station is no longer there, actually.
My youngest sister had her early childhood learning at another pre-school. I can't remember exactly where the school transferred, I think somewhere in Mandaue City.
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