Building an Inclusive Community

Other Good Things

We were transfixed by Donna Bryant Goertz’s book, Children Who are Not Yet Peaceful. Not only did it offer a reasonable engagement with the current state of traditional education, it also sought to ascertain the shape of another way forward, utilizing a treasure trove of Montessori values and principles, in clear, expository narratives.

Donna Bryant Goertz, the founder of Austin Montessori School in Austin, Texas, shares her thoughts in easily-digestible vignettes. Comprised of a series of highly-relatable, concrete examples, her experience shines through, in these wonderfully rich and immersive stories.

Here’s a great example:

Laila, an elementary student, rode the bus to school every day. One night, when her parents routinely asked her how things were going, she decided to share with them that she was being teased by a boy on the bus. Naturally, her parents inquired further, trying to learn more about the situation and how it could be quickly resolved.

‘Have you told Donna?’ her parents asked her.

“‘I thought about it,’ Laila said, ‘but I know what she would say. She would say, ‘What do you think you could do about it?’ So I decided to ask myself that question. ‘What should I do about it?’ I haven’t decided yet.”

Talking through the situation, with reason, compassion and a willingness to figure things out, Laila developed an innovative approach. She would deflect the boy’s untoward comments – primarily that she was not nearly as smart as he was – by asking if he could help her understand the difficult books that she was trying to get through on the morning commute.

This is how she decided to approach the boy – “See this really difficult book. I am reading this book to get as smart as you. Can you help me? Will you read it to me? If I come to a very difficult part, will you read to me for a while? If I don’t know a word, can I ask you?” – and soon thereafter, her tactic worked. Her peer, who was unrelentingly agonizing and persistent, entirely abated his unfounded comments. She literally disarmed him with her charm.

“ I just thought of what my teacher would say. I know she would say that things that take time, and grownups take a lot of time to change. ”

As adults, our inclination is often to turn to other adults, to work to fix the problem on our children’s behalf. Instead, Laila turned to herself. The entire text of Children Who Are Not Yet Peaceful is peppered with great, wonderful, meaningful stories – just like this one. We highly recommend this text, both for its loquacious precision and it’s ability to jumpstart importance conversations.

We leave you with a few of the wisest words we’ve read on “rethinking education”.

“Building an inclusive community requites unrelenting work and constancy of courage, profound good cheer, and hope – hope in the face of despair, disinterest, and distraction. An inclusive community starts where old patterns of relating to children stop and new ones begin. The adult becomes just as polite, gracious, and respectful toward the child as the idealized model of the child he imagines.”

You might also like to read our interview with Donna Bryant Goertz here.