 There are renegade squash growing in the lot next to our house.
After months of being subjected to unhealthy yet normalized portions of systemic racism, discriminatory housing practices, and doses of humiliation by realtors and appraisers, we were finally deemed suitable to purchase a home in the hood. Alas, I love my house. I refer to it as my hood sanctuary. While I adore it, I also hate what has historically happened to the street and my neighborhood, which also happens to consist of homes, businesses, and land overwhelmingly owned by suitable white people. We’ve asked our state-sanctioned port authority several times now to be considered to purchase the lot next door. The answer is always some version of no, as we’ve yet to be deemed suitable in their eyes. Over the past four years, many remote workers quickly learned the psychological benefits of facing a window while busy at their desks, staring endlessly into their monitors populated by even smaller windows of people facing their own windows while in their remote boxes. Science tells us that viewing nature outside helps us feel relaxed and less restricted. I remember sitting at my desk on a Zoom call with "important" people who needed to hear "important" justifications about why DEI was so important. Meanwhile, from the window, I watched my son happily leave the confines of our home to get fresh air without a mask and walk to a small park at the end of our block. As I watched him cross the lot, it slowly dawned on me just how much red he wore. The hat, the shirt, and the matching gym shoes slowly distorted my relaxing, unrestricted view, making it one of impending doom and terror. I was hijacked by my own complex trauma and rendered useless in that "important" meeting that day with "important" people, and left early to retrieve my son from his leisurely walk outside. This was yet another instance of me as a Black woman and mother simply needing a reprieve and a bit of grace to regulate my nervous system. Yet, many of us are not always able to articulate the embodied impact of trauma or convince others of the insidious nature of systemic racism. I’m amazed daily by the complexities we carry while trying to do a good job and be valuable employees. We overly concern ourselves with demonstrating grace and courtesy to give our administrators and classroom observers the sense that we are practicing pure Montessori and have high fidelity, peaceful classrooms. We find minimalist virtual backgrounds that tell the world we’ve made it and somehow we can be unbothered by the realities outside our windows. On this fourth and last week of National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, I reflect on how easily we outwardly espouse our capacity and commitments to teaching practice and pedagogy. Montessori organizations make many performative claims of their ability to prepare liberatory learning products and environments for its community while simultaneously being led by people who struggle to claim authority over their own mental health and personal lives. That squash plant that grows outside my window in the lot next door isn’t doing anything miraculous. After all, we learn in preschool what seeds need to grow. What makes it a renegade in my eyes is the unconventional way it makes itself known; its willfulness speaks to me, and a person didn’t purposely plant it, that's what makes me smile. Even amongst the countless obstacles of its environment, such as the toxic waste and broken glass that deplete the soil, the context needed for a life-giving harvest and climate resilience, it still has found a way to grow. Nature is still out here winning y’all, and it can happen right outside our windows and in our neighborhoods, whether rural, suburban, gated, or gang-affiliated. My Montessori approach and practice are intentionally grounded in restoring mental health and well-being while unapologetically reclaiming the authority we have over our lives. As educators, we are committing to a very complex and political struggle each day. The aim of our profession is critical, and while at times it seems beyond the compass or scale, I’m asking myself how my commitment to sovereignty will save me. How it can soothe my psyche, and allow me to truly serve and get out of the way as our young people save humanity.  I was recently laid off. It was a job where I wholeheartedly aligned with the mission and vision and fully committed myself to my job description's stated goals and outcomes. I’d venture to say that's what most people do when they are hired to do work they truly believe in. As a clinician, I also recognize how having one's job unexpectedly eliminated can impact a person’s sense of self and overall well-being.
I grew up in the 80s playing Atari, first in arcades, and then in the ’90s, Nintendo somehow made its way into our living room. My brother, cousins, and I would hover around a floor-model TV and embody Mario and Luigi, hopping through different worlds, collecting coins that would give us life, all this to save the princess. That was the noble mission and vision we worked wholeheartedly towards in those days. The fixation caused us to abondon our outdoor play, left us all sleep deprived with every Mario Brothers sound effect etched in our brains and yet somehow joyful. Last weekend, my family experienced a virtual reality game for the first time. The best way I can describe it is that we freely roamed a virtual reality space where we were tasked with slaying fire-breathing dragons. In this virtual world, we had to rely on each other to succeed in our mission. The technology combined full-body motion capture and high-quality haptics, so we were in an entirely realistic and utterly immersive experience, needless to say, a long way from Atari. I began to reflect on these early game experiences after reading a blog article that discussed grind culture and how it doesn’t align with Montessori. While the piece highlighted a few good points, as a social worker and equity practitioner, I’ve always been more interested in what’s not stated. Who tends to be most susceptible to this game of grind culture and why? How do we see grind culture's short- and long-term impact disproportionately affecting BIPOC Montessori educators, leaders, and students? During this third week of Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, I’m reflecting on how our Montessori organizations maintain and perpetuate work cultures, systems, and ways of being that can damage the psyches of targeted and marginalized employees, faculty, and staff. Ultimately, I’m most curious about what’s behind a concept like grind culture how we all are subject to it, and its impact on our relationships with each other and broader humanity So, back to the fire-breathing dragons. Before we began, a man descended from the sky, outlining our mission and instructing us on what was required for success. He equipped us with tools and weaponry, delivered a motivational speech, and dispatched us on our quest. Despite knowing it was a game, that none of what I was witnessing was real - neither the spiders falling from the sky nor the eight-foot-tall robots assaulting us from all directions - I was wholeheartedly committed to completing the mission. My determination was genuine, evidenced by the sweat on my brow, palpitations in my chest, and the lingering pain that wracked my body afterward. Throughout the entire VR experience, I couldn't help but be curious about what was occurring in real-time. My attention was completely absorbed by the task at hand, and I discovered that attempting to process the events as they transpired only served as a distraction, causing me to lose focus. The man from the sky made well-timed appearances throughout the ordeal; just when we felt overwhelmed, he would reappear with another pep talk and new tools, reinforcing the power dynamics and reasserting our focus on the objective. What does any of this have to do with our mental health? I’ll answer by asking more questions for us all to ponder.
These are questions I intend to explore in my daily practice.  During my time as a Montessori intern, my first task was to set up a 3-6 classroom environment. It was a maze of cardboard boxes, wooden trays, empty shelves, plastic bins, and Montessori materials. My goal was to create a developmental classroom tailored to the sensitivities of the first-plane child. Although it initially felt overwhelming, I grew to love preparing these environments over the years. The precision and order appealed to my Virgo brain and calmed my nervous system. I realized these environments were like extensions of myself, physical spaces where I could honor my culture, passions, and unique sensibilities. The more chaotic our world became, the more I found solace in spending each day in a place where everything had a place and a research-based rationale for being there. I could leave at the end of the day, flip the light switch, look back at a well-organized space, and know it would be untouched upon my return. In our Montessori prepared environments, we create spaces that invite open and complex discussions on topics such as love, war, sex, religion, and politics. These discussions occur in primary, elementary, and secondary classrooms, making these spaces rich and occasionally messy. Here, limits are pushed, prejudices are revealed, boundaries get crossed, and teachers are certainly not exempt from contributing to its messiness. “We cannot fully create effective movements for social change if individuals struggling for that change are not also self-actualized or working towards that end. When wounded individuals come together in groups to make change, our collective struggle is often undermined by all that has not been dealt with emotionally.” -bell hooks I remember the first time I cried in my classroom; it was the day I attempted to solve a conflict but instead came face to face with my own bias. I was triggered by a little girl with ponytails and a wide-eyed boy, and both children looked like me. It forced me to acknowledge my elementary school trauma and explore how I carried it in my body and teaching practice. On that day, I had become both the oppressed and the oppressor. During this second week of National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, I’m reflecting on the psychological harm that can take place in our beautiful, aesthetically pleasing Montessori environments. I share this memory here, amongst friends because it marks a pivotal moment in my teaching career and shaped how I live out my cosmic task. It’s when my clinical training took its rightful place in my teaching practice and I learned the importance of radical truth-telling and the unique ways somatic healing and social justice are in conversation. For me, not only was I to follow the lesson and follow the child, but my lived experiences and background positioned me for the highly sensitive and specialized work of an equity practitioner. It’s not a role for the faint of heart. I don’t believe this level of critical analysis is happening in our Montessori teacher education programs. However, this is what I imagine for us. I see Montessorians working to truly embody the level of justice and self-refinement embedded in Montessori philosophy. I see all of this activated by our commitments to our own mental health and well-being. When we center our mental health and wellness, we lay the foundations for communities of critical consciousness and care. These are the sanctuaries that we need at the soul level. Our primary task as individuals becomes preparing our interior lives and bringing them into order. From there, we can clear away the irrational angst that pits our Montessori organizations against each other, thereby preventing the growth of the broader Montessori movement. No matter how big the institutional budget, how fancy the website, how pristine your classroom space, and even if you’ve never had to substitute a pencil eraser when your tiniest pink tower cube went missing, Montessori environments can only be as beautiful as what’s inside the hearts and minds of the adults who prepare them. These are the sanctuaries I strive to curate in my Montessori practice.  If lucky, our jobs and careers allow us access to the full human experience. We can bring all that we are, and if we can pay our rent, eat organic kale when it's on sale, send our children to school, or take a vacation here and there with enough gas money to make it from point A to point B, this may indeed be our bliss. Imagine a job that offers a safe space to make sense of the world while being our multi-talented, neurodivergent, disabled selves. We, indeed, would be the fortunate ones. When your job is your place of worship, it can be tricky. If you're not careful, you might mistake the organization for the altar when, in fact, we are the altars. We embody our own sacred chapels and read from our unique holy texts. As Montessorians, what we bring to our organizations through devotion, expertise, and love surpasses any credential, salary, or title that can be bestowed. As a Black woman, I am also acutely aware that many Black people in the United States have functioned as currency. Stolen, divided, bartered, multiplied, and sold, the signatures of Black and Indigenous people signed on generations of dotted lines and census forms have equaled the wealth and abundance tenfold of many white families and corporations of this nation. I use the word currency in its literal sense here, and even today, I find myself curious about how true this sentiment is in our present day and its impact on our psyches. When we step into our classrooms, teacher education programs, volunteer board positions, and administration and researcher roles, we bring the power and wealth of our lived experiences. The very experiences and histories that marginalize us, induce daily psychological trauma, and label us a minority and inferior also seem to be the same things that somehow give us value in this society. July is National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month. I invite you to find out more about it and its legacy. To honor this initiative, each week I’m reflecting on my 22 years as a social worker, mental health provider, educator, and equity practitioner. I’m also wondering about the health resources and care we receive in our Montessori institutions. When I put myself to use where I am useful, I become an instrument of the divine. I’m reflecting on how fortunate it is to go to work each day with a deep sense of purpose, to feel confident that one is working towards a bonafide mission, and to subscribe to a philosophy that aligns with our passions, culture and cosmic task. I also hold space for the reality that those spaces can be hostile to our presence and capitalize on our giving hearts and need for belonging. The fullness of who we are may be welcomed in some ways and on some days, yet somehow, at the same time, intensely despised. The mental health implications of what I describe here are often difficult to articulate. Therefore, they are easily swept under the rug in a society that values the written word and measurable outcomes. Yet these are some of the critical realities that can keep our Montessori movement at a standstill. What would happen if we no longer dodge these spaces in our hearts, handbooks, and organizational policies? What would happen if Montessori organizations centered on the well-being of adults, just as we are taught to revere the child? Imagine our reverence of the child explicitly, including ourselves as adults. There's always someone who will not want you to say what you know, and I get it. It can be a scary thing for all parties. Speaking the truth can be anxiety-inducing, and it can also be cognitive overload when forced to receive it. I sense there’s something far greater to gain from this important topic. I look forward to being in conversation with you all as I embark on this next stage of my Montessori learning and leadership journey. Quiet willfulness is buried at my core for sure. It is, and will forever be, the crux of my 40-plus years of life, where ritual, writing, counseling, and my Montessori practice all serve as a means of excavating my most authentic self. When my two children were very young, I taught them about self-care in practical, age-appropriate ways. When it comes to applying any salve, why that’s easy. “You scoop it out and rub it in til you shine like a brand new penny,” I’d say. This is how we care for our bodies and how radiance is activated. Our greatest lessons lie in these mundane tasks. If we’re lucky, we either have or can develop the foresight and faith to discern what shines beneath the surface. As my children got older, they came to understand salve in other ways. While yes, it can be found in a glass jar or tin canister atop a shelf, waiting to be scooped, slathered, and smoothed across ashy knees and knuckles, massaged into shoulders, stiff muscles, tendons, and temples. Our daily salves are also at the heart of our friendships, good, bad, and ugly ones. They come as quiet messages you only hear when completely barefoot on wet grass. Snatches of sleepy salve that wake you up at 4 a.m., but only after you prostrate before the altar you’ve built to yourself. This all brings us face-to-face with our unique sovereignty. I am deeply fascinated by the unique ways we have articulated, activated, and actualized sites of freedom. I am fascinated by how we have participated in willed radiance as our cosmic task or political stance, how it’s sought out and used as an internal compass, and how our collective psyches grapple with it being dimmed or violently snatched away. Daily salve reminds us to be intentional, for its very nature is to replenish and fortify. Sometimes, we neglect places precisely because some areas are hidden from the outside gaze. It takes determination to seek out these dull places of heart, mind, and body. Often, we simply need light to see what’s missing. These spots of tension beg for our attention. The care we apply behind the ears, the bottom of heels, between toes, and at that annoying unreachable part of our back are all offerings. This is what daily practice is for me. As a Virgo, it’s how I identify, dust off, sort, and polish what I encounter in life. Through counseling and teaching, I can piece together and mend the things that have been dulled and, in some cases, rendered useless. My cosmic task, of course, always begins with me. But sometimes we need community care. We need others to help apply pressure to get things to shine. That’s the elbow grease, the vigor that must be applied to this work where iron sharpens iron, and we need fire for purification. It’s indeed an ongoing elemental exchange. For under various pressure conditions, unique aspects of ourselves get illuminated.  |