What Would You Do With An Extra Hour?

What would you do if you had an extra hour of time every Friday? Go home early? Leave an hour earlier for your weekend get-a-way? Go get a massage or your hair done? Catch up on some leisurely reading you've been wanting to do like rereading Twilight* for the third time (sorry if you're not a Twilight fan and have no idea what I'm talking about)?

Let me tell you what our staff does with their extra hour of time every Friday after we dismiss your child at 2:00 p.m.

Because a Montessori teacher's class time is strictly devoted to meeting the needs of the children, the early dismissal on Friday gives her the much needed opportunity to plan, record progress, and keep the website up-to-date. Unlike traditional teachers who are allotted 45 minutes to one hour of prep time per day, our teachers receive no such "down time" to accomplish daily tasks, leaving these things to be done after school or on the weekends. On a regular weekday, some teachers stay until well after 4:00 p.m., or choose to work later that evening from home, completing the daily tasks required to keep a Montessori environment functioning properly. Friday is no different and the extra hour they are given is like a lifeline to them, giving them time to catch up on, evaluate, and prepare for the next week of all the multi-tasking tasks they must take care of.

Preparing the environment for the next week is also a vital part of what the teachers do on Friday. They take this opportunity to prepare new works, straighten the classroom, assess what works need to be removed or added to the shelves, repair damaged works, and to evaluate the order and sequence of the works. Also consider how much more individualized Montessori is than a traditional classroom and how much extra planning that requires - ensuring that the individual lessons required for each child are properly prepared and placed on the shelves.

We also use Friday for our regularly scheduled staff and team meetings. Coming together each week as a staff and a team of educators to discuss continuity throughout all environments, school/family communication strategies, short-term and long-term staff goals, and curricular and extracurricular activities is vital to the life of the school and the academic progress of your child. Whether it is the entire staff discussing how to best keep parents abreast of academic progress or the latest Montessori research about teaching spelling or just the primary teachers discussing their classroom scheduling and parent contacts that need to be made, this time together is invaluable to the morale, stability, and sustainability of the staff.

So what could you do with your extra hour of time every Friday after we dismiss your child at 2:00 p.m.?

If you're still at work, or for any other reason unable to pick up your child, you can simply continue with what you're doing knowing that your child is engaged in fun and exciting after school activities. Mrs. Lange and Ms. Robison ensure every Friday that the children are having a blast either learning how to crochet, make grilled cheese sandwiches, or a host of other incredibly entertaining pursuits.

You could use this time to schedule doctor/dentist appointments or other such events that would normally cause a child to miss important class time.

You could arrange a play date with some of your child's friends. Go to the park or go bowling. If you have children in other schools, use this extra hour as special "one-on-one" time with your Montessori student, making a special trip to get ice cream or something where the two of you can visit about what's going on in his life. You could plan an early departure for a family weekend get-a-way. Take your student to the public library and check out some books. There is no end to what you and your child could do during this extra hour you have together.

OR you could read Twilight* (for the first or third time) and spend an hour with Edward. I, for one, would completely understand if you made that choice.

*The references to Twilight in this blog in no way represent an endorsement of this work of fiction by The Montessori School. Rather it is a representation of the sad addiction of one woman to the brain candy/cult phenom known as the Twilight saga. If you haven't read it, you simply wouldn't understand.