The Class Directress

The role of the class directress is to prepare, direct the activity, function as the authority, and offer the child stimulation, but it is the child who learns through the motivation that he finds in the work itself.

The faculties are graduates of Manila’s finest schools and are fully trained in the Montessori System.

The teacher is trained to teach one child at a time, with a few small groups and almost no lessons given to the whole class. She is facile in the basic lessons of math, language, the arts and sciences, and in guiding a child’s research and exploration, capitalizing on interests and excitement about a subject.

She is trained to recognize a child’s readiness—according to age, ability, and interest—for a specific lesson, and is prepared to guide individual progress. Although the teacher plans lessons for each child for each day, she will bow to the interests of a child following a passion.

The teacher must know how to offer work, to link the child to the environment who is the real teacher, and to protect this process. We know now that this natural goodness and compassion are inborn, and do not need to be taught, but to be protected.

“The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, the children are now working as if I did not exist!”

~Dr. Maria Montessori