Positive Discipline in the Montessori Classroom

In the fall of 1996, I began my journey as a Montessori teacher in a Lower Elementary classroom in Palo Alto, California, at the Children’s International School (now Bowman School). Like most new Montessori teachers, I entered my first classroom with a great deal of enthusiasm, hope for the future, a belief that I would advance the cause of world peace one child at a time, and, of course, an armload of albums containing the plethora of lessons that are the Montessori Elementary curriculum. However, like many of us, my hope and enthusiasm would soon be dashed by my seeming inability to manage common behavior problems in the classroom.

We all experience misbehavior in the classroom; it is one thing that is guaranteed every year when we welcome our students on the first day of school. Another guarantee is that we all make mistakes in our responses to misbehavior. Our approach to discipline is really an approach to cultivating healthy and respectful relationships based on well-established principles of human behavior and validated by neuroscience. Positive Discipline is a guide to progress on our road to creating classroom communities where children and adults find a sense of belonging and significance and discover how capable they are. Whether you teach toddlers or adolescents, or anywhere in between, you will find life-changing tools in Positive Discipline in the Montessori Classroom.

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