| @ 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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