Equity: A Whole School Approach
This is the third article in a series on Elizabeth Slade’s book Montessori in Action: Building Resilient Schools written for Public Montessori in Action International. You can read the initial article here and the second article here. In this post, I look at the second “Core Element” of Slade’s “Whole School Montessori Method” - Equity.
“In Montessori education, just like in any other educational spaces in the United States today, we’re novices in this work. People have so many assumptions about this work and oftentimes they think that they’re a lot farther than they are. But they’re really not far in their foundational work, they’re just pretty far in their assumptions, their already-held beliefs that have gone unchallenged for a number of years. I don’t think that people really realize where the starting line is, that it’s so far back because for so long, we have not done work on a systemic level in Montessori education. So, whatever our solution is, it has to be systemic, and it has to be comprehensive.” Britt Hawthorne from Equity Examined (2023).
Novices in this Work
Back in 2020, we invited the Racial Equity Institute (REI) to our school, a large public Montessori charter school in North Carolina, to provide the Groundwater Approach training. The training is intended to help practitioners “internalize the reality that we live in a racially structured society, and that that is what causes racial inequity.” The goal is to shift from thinking of racism as solely being the practice of racist individuals, and realizing that all our systems and institutions “emanate from the racial hierarchy, on which the United States was built” - to understand that inequity is systemic. Their metaphor is simple: we have a “groundwater” problem, and so we need “groundwater” solutions: solutions that are systemic and comprehensive.
I found the training to be fantastic, and I was so happy to be doing it as a whole staff - teachers, administrators, and board members. We were establishing a shared truth - that inequity is systemic - so that then we could start to build systemic solutions at our school. Or at least that was the hope. What surprised me was what happened next during the second half of the training, where we were asked to discuss: “How can we apply what we’ve learned to our institution?” Time after time, people spoke up to essentially reassert the status quo: they talked about how racism doesn’t exist at our school, how families of color love the school, how diverse the community is - both teachers and families, how Montessori is already a culturally affirming philosophy, how the Children’s House teachers already have diverse bookshelves and holiday celebrations. The whole vibe was: “We accept that racism is real, but it is not an issue here.” And then that was the end of the workshop, and the last time we did any follow-up from that training.
The American Montessori Society (AMS) recently published Equity Examined: How to Design Schools and Teacher Education Programs Where Everyone Thrives (2023) which contains the AMS Equity Audit, an assessment tool “designed to help schools and teacher education programs measure and understand the current state of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) within their organizations.” The book includes an essay by Maati Wafford and Mira Debs “Countering Myths in Montessori Education” in which the authors name several myths that exist amidst Montessori educators that need to be challenged, such as the myth that Montessori education is automatically culturally affirming because it follows the individual child. They argue that “Montessori is not automatically an anti-bias, antiracist method, but rather is influenced by teacher and social contexts of racism and other forms of systemic bias.” “It is not enough to be aligned with Montessori pedagogy,” says Maati Wafford. “If our spaces are not explicitly prepared to dismantle oppressive systems and bias then we are doing a disservice to our students and families.”
It is not enough to be a public Montessori school, and it is not enough to just be more diverse than a typical Montessori school. There is a lot that my school had to be proud of, but that didn’t mean our work was finished. To give my institution credit, leadership recognized after this training that we needed a different approach, and since then Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work at the school has shifted to a more systemic approach, focusing on measures that embed equitable practices into the policies of the school. “Systemic, so that it happens regardless of if a school has buy-in or not,” as Britt Hawthorne says (AMS 2023). Like the implementation of Montessori education, anti-bias, antiracist (ABAR) education is an ongoing and extensive process of self-reflection and action. It is about more than just teachers and individual classrooms; it is about school systems.
Honest Talk
We have to begin by accepting that inequity exists in Montessori education. Our Montessori schools are not immune to the systemic inequity of our country as they exist within and as a result of that system. And this does not just relate to racial inequity, but all the ways that children and families at our school might experience unequal treatment or outcomes, including, but not limited to, inequities related to race, ethnicity, class, gender, nationality, language, sexual orientation, religion, and disability. There are several ways this shows up in Montessori schools that need to be examined: inequity of access to Montessori (private and public), debates around “authenticity” and “fidelity” and the consequences of gatekeeping, discussions about whether children and families are a “good fit” for a school, and access to Montessori training.
“But Montessori is not a panacea!” my 3-6 trainer remonstrated in 2013. One of my fellow trainees had been pushing our trainer on the point of “counseling out” families - the act of guiding a family towards leaving the school because their child had proven to not be a “right fit” for that Montessori environment - and the trainee was questioning whether this was at odds with Montessori’s vision of the child. My trainer said that it was important to accept that we cannot always serve every child or every family, as this is not in the best interest of the community as a whole. This moment has always stuck with me because I believe that my trainer’s defensiveness was born of a certain private school mentality and privilege that is rife in our Montessori community. Perhaps I’m also a little bitter: I say this as a parent whose own neurodiverse child was counseled out of a Montessori 3-6 environment because the school wasn’t able to “meet his needs.” My local public school would never have even considered this as a possibility. Montessori schools loudly claim to be “inclusive”, but there are several structural ways in which children and families are quietly excluded. We see this same mentality play out in many public Montessori charter and magnet schools which still curate the diversity of their community. As Debs points out, “In many cases, Montessori is an “opt-in” choice school that families need to know about, and there are often barriers to enrollment that restrict access (waiting in line to register, paying for private preschool in order to access the public elementary program, providing their own meals and transportation to schools, which are often located in gentrifying neighborhoods)” (AMS 2021).
We are happy to slam “mainstream education” as Montessorians, but how many Montessori schools and teachers are prepared to serve a community where more than 75% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch? If we want Montessori education to be taken seriously as an educational solution, we have to recognize our own shortcomings as a movement and address them. As Slade says in Montessori in Action: Building Resilient Schools, “If Montessori education is to move toward greater acceptance within the realms of public education as a viable, effective, research-based curriculum and alternative educational pedagogy for students of color, there has to be a close examination of a radical shift in the way we are implementing the Montessori method.” (Slade, 2021)
Whole School Equity
What I most respect about Slade’s Whole School Montessori Method is that it is focused on systems. As Montessori teachers, we often see our practice through the lens of an individual classroom, and I’ve worked with administrators who similarly view the school on a classroom-by-classroom basis. The Whole School Montessori Method understands that for a school to be successful - to be resilient, equitable, and a fully implemented Montessori program - it has to be understood as a system, and, as such, change has to be systemic. Unsurprisingly, we can sometimes become a little too child-centered in our Montessori schools and miss the bigger picture. Slade invites us to consider how to create equitable environments for the adults in our community as well as the children. “How can our schools become fairer and more inclusive for all members: children, families, and school-based adults?” she asks. “What barriers exist in the way we function that limit people’s sense of involvement, dignity, and agency?” (Slade, 2021)
So what does it look like to do this work on a systemic level? The first step, Slade advises, is to get a baseline for where you are right now as an institution. This means using existing resources and experts to diagnose where your school exists on the continuum of becoming an equitable organization. Schools now have access to the AMS Equity Audit as one such tool that is specifically designed for Montessori organizations. Slade also recommends Crossroads Antiracism, or bringing in an ABAR consultant to audit your school. There are several excellent ABAR consultants working in the Montessori world, including Britt Hawthorne, Koren Clark, Tiffany Jewell, and Sheri Bishop, to name a few.
Slade goes on to say that the next step you can take as an organization is considering your community’s “Say-Do Gap”, which she describes as “the space between what we communicate and the actions we take.” (Slade, 2021) As an institution, are you really doing what you say? For example, in my school’s post-training discussion, many teachers said that families of color love our school and feel safe and welcomed there. But how do we know that this is true? What measures do we have to prove that this is the case? In fact, after taking data on our families through numerous surveys, this was revealed to be a reductive story that we were telling, and it turned out that several families didn’t feel welcomed or included in a number of different systems in our school for a multitude of different reasons. Finally seeing these gaps or blindspots and having that honest, data-driven self-analysis meant we could then move closer to actually becoming who we wanted to be as an organization.
To be truly “systemic and comprehensive” we have to apply this level of self-analysis to all the systems in our school environment. Slade asks, “What are systems that support equity both in and out of classrooms?” and also “What are the systems that without awareness are creating greater inequity for adults and children?” (Slade, 2023) She identifies 10 Core Elements that must be restructured in order to work towards a more equitable Montessori environment:
Curriculum and instruction
A fair and just discipline system
Data collection and reflection
Family engagement
Onboarding process
Staff exploration of systemic racism
Shared language
Staff identity formation
Student identity formation
A consistent student evaluation system
Each of these areas needs a system established to ensure the work of ABAR education is ongoing. Each system needs in-depth discussion and analysis to unearth existing inequities and then restructured to meet everyone’s needs moving forward. Individuals who have been historically left out of these discussions need to be brought into the discussion and their voices need to be centered. And it needs to be recognized that this is an ongoing process that will need constant renewal, as there is no real endpoint to this work.
“The core element of equity is a critical lens. Without it, we will see only part of the picture and be unable to serve all students completely - as we intend.” (Slade, 2023)
References
American Montessori Society. Equity Examined: How to Design Schools and Teacher Education Programs Where Everyone Thrives. Bookbaby (2023).
Slade, Elizabeth. Montessori in Action: Building Resilient Schools. Jossey-Bass (2021).
