Spotlight Felicia Zulhendri

Spotlights

It’s extremely rare in life to meet individuals as passionate about their chosen profession, as Felicia is about Montessori. When you meet them, you know it right away. It’s infectious. Their attitude and outlook on life is inspirational. You know they’re destined to do great things, and you somehow want to be a part of it. You can’t help but get swept up in their vision. With that in mind, we couldn’t be more pleased to Spotlight Felicia Zulhendri. We hope she inspires you, as much as she inspires us.

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Your background, your interests, your dreams?

A: I usually was the one that ask these questions to the people that I meet; having to answer questions about myself is really weird for me.

I was born in a small city called Medan in Indonesia. I have two older brothers and they are twins, this made me quite the feisty girl. When I was in third grade, my father decided that he was going to start his own company with the support of my mother. In my opinion, watching my parents built their enterprise while growing up truly shaped my attitude toward life in general.

I have always been interested in learning about other people’s success stories, what made them rise to where they are in life and learning from it. This is why I reached out to you guys when I got to know you guys were visiting San Francisco.

When I think about dreams, I don’t have any particular material thing in mind; however, I always want to make an impact in this life no matter how small it might be.

Q: When you close your eyes late at night, and imagine waking up and starting a new adventure: what is that adventure?

A: I always dreamed of traveling, being able to wake up one day, pack my bag and just go wherever I feel like going that day. My parents always said that we have to create another savings account just for travelling the world; there is no point of making the money without being able to see the world. I also have a bucket list of Montessori schools in the world that I would like to observe, obviously, I am going to sneak in the three hour observation while travelling.

Q: Switching to Montessori, what advice do you have for people experiencing Montessori for the first time?

A: This is the one question that is the toughest to answer because I am still struggling in these areas and trying to give these advices to myself everyday.

Sometimes it is very easy for us to criticize ourselves, passing judgment on our own children, and having the thought of “the child is supposed to do this by now, but he is not there yet” especially, after coming out of the training. My amazing trainer, Polli Soholt, called it the “Montessori guilt”, but it is important for us to give grace to ourselves and reflect on our accomplishments along the way. A child might come in without knowing how to change his shoes, and toward the end of the semester, he is capable of doing it himself. In my current environment, I have 4 children that came in with diapers, and toward the end of the semester, they are now diaper free. I have a child that came in crying for more than 2 months and now coming in smiling and even soothing another child that came in crying. All these are accomplishments along the way that are worthy of a pat on the back.

I was also lucky that I understand early on the importance of having a mentor and guide that will pull you up in the right direction when you are feeling down. A lot of people undermined the importance of the power of association. Having the humility to listen to people who have the fruits in the tree would take you far, especially in this field. We become whom we hang around with and we need to be watchful of whom we listen to. If we think of it, this field is really difficult already; there are many opinions and “white noise” that we need to protect ourselves from to be able to continuously being inspired working with children.

Q: Could you tell us a bit about your path to Montessori? We know you’re just getting started, but we can already see how far you will go!

A: I truly appreciate your kind words. I cherished kind words like this because very few people genuinely received it, and I am blessed to have gotten this from you!

I always wanted to be a teacher when I grew up, I didn’t always have good teachers when I was in school, but there were those handfuls of teachers that touched me and made me want to make an impact the way they impacted my life. I also knew that I wouldn’t want to be a teacher that teaches 20-30 children in front of the white board.

I came to the US to pursue my higher education at San Francisco State University, majoring in Psychology. I was volunteering as an after school tutor for the homeless children and found that I couldn’t really relate to the elementary age children. I was also nannying different families throughout college and found myself agreeing and disagreeing with different parenting styles, at that point, I thought I could work in early childhood education sector to help these parents and children.

`An acquaintance of mine was in the process of finishing her AMI Diploma, she has both Primary and Elementary Diploma but I couldn’t quite recall which one she was finishing at the time. She visited California during my sophomore year in college and mentioned about Montessori briefly and I didn’t think much of it at the time. When I was in my last semester of college, I was panicking that I wasn’t really clear of what I want to do, and suddenly remember about Montessori.

I asked her more in depth about the training and training centers, visited the AMI-USA website and found the training center in Northern California. As I browsed through the website, I decided to purchase the book “Montessori Madness” by Trevor Eissler and finished the whole book that month and told myself, “This is what I am going to do!”

“ I could still hear my trainers’ voice in my head and still have goose-bumps as I think of the time that I have in training. ”

These first two years have certainly been ups and downs especially with different characters and personalities in the field but I remind myself a lot that it is not about me and the people that are involved but it is about the principle and the children.

Q: Did you have a “Montessori Moment”?

A: In my first year of teaching, I just graduated from the training and I found myself being unsure of whether or not to intervene the children. I think I learned about this part of the job the most throughout the whole first year. One day, a 3.5 year old boy decided to do the Metal Inset and he picked up the white color pencil. I was really tempted to say something about it but decided to just keep quite and watched. He went on to set up the table and started to trace the shape on the paper and realized that there was nothing on his white paper. I decided since then that the children are going to teach me something everyday!

Q: What’s your favorite Montessori quote?

A: This is a really tough one! I love this about Dr. Montessori by E.M Standing, “It is enough to record that wherever she went she seemed to have made the same impression. Her profound insight into the soul of the child; her long and varied experience; her scientific outlook combined with a maternal tenderness and sympathy; the lucidity of her discourses and their originality; her strong yet charming personality, at once humble yet dignified; the passionate sincerity of her devotion to her mission- all these combined to make her the perfect advocate of her cause, which was the cause of the child.”

I love this from The Absorbent Mind, “The teacher, when she begins work in our schools, must have a kind of faith that the child will reveal himself through work.”

I also love this one too by Sanford Jones, “At the end of it, the children will not remember what you taught them, but they will remember how you look at them, your aura.”

Q: What do you think is the best introduction to Montessori?

A: I don’t know if I have the answer to this. As I am thinking of my own journey in Montessori, I totally got into it out of a coincidence, a beautiful coincidence. The contributing factor that made me serious about it though was the book “Montessori Madness” and watching different videos about Montessori. However, I do believe that it all started with the faith that there got to be a better thing for the children.

Q: What continues to inspire you about Montessori?

A: Meeting and having conversations about Montessori with inspirational people, like you guys. Reading different blogs, listening to different interviews and lectures, and having a list of books to read could really help me renew my spirit especially during tough times. I also decided to take time to visit and observe different classrooms anytime I have the chance to.

Q: When we met for coffee in San Francisco, you mentioned you had a dream to help impact things back home. Can you describe this vision…

A: I always believe that it is crucial for us to remember where we came from, our roots. Although I never wanted to live in Indonesia anymore, I would love to be able to contribute in what I have worked hard and aspire to be really good at, back to my home country. I have a vision one day to be able to build an orphanage and a Montessori school there and support the children and equip them better for life ahead of them. These are pictures of my family farm where I hope to build the orphanage and the school.

Q: What are the next steps for Felicia?

A: I am fortunate to be able to work in a start up environment where I could start with young children, and eventually grow with them until I have the full range mixed age high functioning Montessori Children’s House. I would love to be able to stay through despite the difficulties in building that up and see how it turns out to be. I have also sent my application for A to I training at Montessori Northwest to get my A to I Diploma that I am really excited about.

“ One day, I am hoping to be able to make a larger impact in this field by encouraging other Montessorians that are new to the field and of course, I am working toward making my vision of the orphanage and school a reality. ”

Q: What are your top reads outside of Montessori books?

A: To be honest, I still have plenty of Montessori books to read. I finished a book called “Good to Great” by Jim Collins recently, and I love how he emphasized the importance of taking the time on hiring the right people to make your organization great through his research. Like I mentioned before, I honestly think that associating with like minded people is really crucial. I also love “5 Levels of Leadership” by John Maxwell. If we think of it, our life is so much of being a leader, whether it is a leader of our own self, our family, our classroom, our school, etc. You can be the “boss” of someone positionally, but it doesn’t mean you influence others.

Q: Do you ever have a conversation about Montessori with your spouse? How “Montessori” is he?

A: My husband was the person that I always went to and share about the lectures that I just heard when I was in training. I think we only talked about the lectures and the exercises during dinner at that period.

One day, I visited my old classroom and went home so frustrated of what I saw happening in that classroom, I then shared it with him and he suddenly said, “Aren’t you suppose to show practical life exercises first?” I looked at him and almost cried! Apparently, he was listening to me all this time! I think he would be an amazing assistant for me.