THE SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
OF THE TEACHER
FROM THE WRITINGS OF DR. MARIA MONTESSORI

Lecture by Mary Ellen Maunz, B.C., Montessori Master Teacher

August 29, 1992

Elizabeth Clare Prophet: Good afternoon, students of SU. This time I would like to introduce you to our first speaker at this afternoons session Mrs. Mary Ellen Maunz. Mrs. Maunz received her Montessori preschool certificate from the Association Montessori International’s Montessori Institute of Los Angeles in 1972. Mrs. Maunz joined the faculty of Montessori International in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1972 and taught preschool for two years in our church sponsored Montessori school. Mrs. Maunz received her Montessori elementary training from the International Center for Montessori Studies in Bergamo, Italy in 1975. In 1976 she returned to the US and taught grades one to three in Bethesda, Maryland. In 1977 she rejoined the faculty of Montessori International at Pasadena, CA where she taught for 2 years. In 1978 Mrs. Maunz received a certificate in the pastoral care of children according to the principles of the Montessori method from the Institutes of Religion in Huston, Texas. In 1978 she also took over the position of Preschool Administrator at Montessori International in Malibu, California, the headquarters of Church Universal and Triumphant. She held this position until 1984. She studied Montessori infant toddler development under Doctor Silvana Montanero in a ten day course in Tarrytown NY in 1979. From 1980 through 1983 Mrs. Maunz was personally trained by Dr. Elizabeth Caspari, student and friend of Maria Montessori and co-founder of the Pan-American Montessori Society. Mrs. Maunz was awarded her Master Teacher credential after giving 7 teacher training courses with Dr. Caspari. Mrz. Maunz trained teachers in Savana , Georgia in 1984 for the United Way Agency and conducted a preschool class and a teacher training course in Murietta , California in 1987. The same year she received her Bachelor of Science degree in child development from the University of Laverne at Laverne, California. She became Elementary Administrator of Montessori International at our Montana Ranch in 1988—a position she still holds. Mrs. Manz taught sixth grade for two years. She was Co-Director of Montessori International Teacher Training Courses from 1980 to 1984 and has been in that role from 1988 until the present. Mrs. Maunz sits on the Board of Directors of the Montessori Accreditation Council for Teacher Education which is the umbrella organization created to accredit all Montessori teacher training courses in the US . She has lectured widely at high schools and colleges in Southern California and American Montessori Society conferences and at selected Cities around the country as well as here at SU at the Royal Teton Ranch in Montana . She has had several magazine articles published on Montessori education. It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you my long time friend and colleague Mrs. Mary Ellen Maunz.

Mary Ellen Maunz: My topic this afternoon is the spiritual preparation of the teacher. It’s my great privilege to be here today, and I wish to thank you, Mother, for this wonderful opportunity to share the profound teachings of beloved Maria Montessori, now the Ascended Lady Master, who gave us such remarkable keys—simple yet deeply moving to enable us to clearly see the child in a new light, and by so doing, to also see ourselves in a new light.

Some of you will leave here and go out and work with children. Others of you will not. But we all teach in some way, and indeed the Ascended Masters have called us all to teach.

What is a teacher? Mother gave us the definition in a lecture delivered to SU on February 18 1980. She said, “The definition of the educator is the one who unlocks the flame of the heart”. We know that to teach we have to first become the teaching. If we would unlock the heart of the little child, we too must be in the process of unlocking our own heart. It is truly more than an academic preparation. In order to understand the spiritual preparation of the teacher, as Maria Montessori outlined it for us, it’s essential that we look first at the conception of education that she gave to us.

It is an education that when the world first found out about it, it was called the revelation of the soul. Montessori herself calls it “help to life”. In response to the question “What is the Montessori method” Dr. Montessori wrote: “If we eliminate not only the name ‘method’ but also its common conception, things would become much clearer. For the word ‘method’ we should substitute something like this: ‘help given in order that the human personality may achieve its independence'. The defense of the child, the scientific recognition of his nature, the social proclamation of his rights must replace the piecemeal ways of conceiving of education.”

The results that Maria Montessori first obtained in her schools in the early 1900’s have been replicated in school the world over for the past 85 years. The results, the revelation of new and finer characteristics within the child keep occurring because Montessori’s work is based on principles—principles that work. She tells us that the problems of education must be solved on the basis of the laws of cosmic order, and that respect for these laws is indeed fundamental. It is precisely because the principles she discovered are based on the inner law that they have worked and continue to work.

In Dr. Montessori’s book “The Child and the Church” she writes: “To discover the laws of the child’s development would be the same thing as to discover the spirit and wisdom of God operating in the child. This is the true mentality for the educator. That is the recognition of the divine wisdom as a necessary element in his work as an educator. To look away from these laws would mean to loose that direction which God as the guide of the child has given to us. And sadly enough the world has indeed looked away from these laws. Let us not be any longer guilty of looking away”.

So the first step in the spiritual preparation of the teacher is the willingness to include God in the equation. God and his representatives are our true teachers.

Second only to this recognition of God’s role in our work, a profound change of heart. A change in attitude towards the child is necessary. We must develop a new respect for the child, a deeper understanding of his dignity as a person and a new appreciation of the significance of his development that occurs through his freely chosen work. We would develop a reverence for the child as the creator of the adult to be. As the poet William Wordsworth said, the child is the father of the man.

How does one develop this new attitude, this change of heart deep enough to truly change our behavior? It is not done through study alone, says Dr. Montessori, but through a process she calls Initiation. She writes: “We insist on the fact that a teacher must prepare himself interiorly by studying himself, so that he can tear out his most deeply rooted defects. Those in fact which impede his relations with children. In order to discover these subconscious failings we have need of a special kind of instruction. We must see ourselves as another sees us. This is equivalent to saying that a teacher must be initiated.”

This does not mean that we all have to become spiritually perfect before we teach. If we did, education would close down. But it reminds us of the biblical injunction to first remove the beam from our own eye in order to more clearly see to remove the mote from the child’s eye. It directs us to the fact that Montessori said there are two specific areas within ourselves that we need to work on in relationship to children, and those sins are pride and anger.

Now in our social interactions with adults we get feedback. Those manifestations of pride and anger are curbed, are checked. That outward conformity to social standards is indeed one of two ways of dealing with our negative tendencies. Although Montessori notes that we don’t respond to social pressures with the same purity of heart with which we obey God. The second way to curb our negative tendencies is to go after them directly and to replace them with their opposite tendencies, in this case the qualities of humility and patience. We’ll speak more of those virtues a little later.

How does this conformity to social pressures work when we’re dealing with a child? Teachers often work alone, behind closed doors, with no one but the children as witness to their actions. There is no external check to their behaviour. Adults who have no check on their behavior can easily become tyrants. Montessori says, “Now a person in a position of undisputed authority, free from all criticism is in great danger of becoming a tyrant. The next stage will be that he comes to claim this undisputed authority as his right, and will regard any offence against it ipso facto as a crime.

Many teachers indeed do unconsciously come to regard themselves and their authority in this light, she says, claiming dictatorial authority over the child. Respect is now paid only from one side—the week to the strong. Any offence on the part of the teacher is acceptable. He can judge the child unfavorably, speak ill of him before others, even going so far as to strike him. But any protest on the part of the child, which in many cases is a vital defense of his own psychic integrity, is considered as insubordination; not to be tolerated.

We know this is true not only in the classroom but in many homes as well. Tyranny defies discussion, says Maria Montessori. Its surrounds the individual with the impenetrable walls of recognized authority. An adult to a child is divinity itself. He is simply beyond discussion. Children do not understand our irritation, our anger, our pride. They cannot defend themselves against us. They not only accept abuse—they blame themselves.

I understood just how deep this goes when a number of years ago I was doing some research on child abuse, and I visited a hospital where children who had been abused were taken. The director of the hospital showed me around. I saw a little child about 14 months old. He had 16 bones broken in his body. I saw a little child who had wet pants one time too often and had been dipped in boiling water. Yet these children, as soon as they are well, want to go home, to mommy and daddy who did it to them.

The child does not understand justice or injustice with his reason, but he senses that something is deeply wrong, and he becomes depressed and deformed. His unconscious reaction may take many forms: timidity, lying, crying without reason, errant behaviour, sleeplessness, excessive fear.

Those who wish to become a teacher must examine themselves and work to rid their hearts of pride and anger. For the child absorbs our entire consciousness. It goes beyond our actions and our words. It goes deeply into our thoughts and feelings—truly, the state of our consciousness.

When we have truly undergone a change of heart and see the child with his potential to become the Christ, when we see him in need of our loving and intelligent support to unfold his inner nature, we can more easily make the act of humility that allows us to enter into the right relationship with the child.

Montessori says: “It must be a conscious act of humility, even as a priest makes an act of humility before attending the altar. What is this right relationship we seek with the child? It begins by creating the correct environment and a correct relationship with the child where the unlocking of the flame of the heart can truly occur. Practically speaking, how do we do this? The beauty of Maria Montessori’s message is that she has discovered a scientific path for this to occur. The duty of the teacher is to present new activities to the child when the child has exhausted the possibilities of what he has been using and doing. This seems very mundane, yet the simple act of presenting the right work at the right time is the catalyst for the child’s inner unfoldment.

How is this work presented? First of all, Montessori counsels us to obtain the consent of the child. It implies a dignified respect for the child; it’s good manners, and it’s also good psychology. When we have the consent of the child, his defenses come down, and we can sow our seeds in receptive soil. Our introduction of a new lesson should be literally an invitation to the spirit of the child. Once the consent is obtained we focus completely and totally on that child and that lesson. We give ourselves fully in a cleared work area free from distraction, and by our genuine enthusiasm and our interest we demonstrate how the new lesson is to be done, how material is to be used. The giving of ourselves in our work is the essential point. During the Aquarian Age Child Seminar on June 30, 1991 the God and Goddess Meru told us: “Those who do not impart the gift of self are not worthy to teach nor to be God taught themselves.”

Once we have presented the materials to the little child and we see signs of genuine concentration, genuine engagement on the part of the child, we then allow the child to freely select his materials according to what his inner teacher wants and needs. Our role then becomes defined by the words of John the Baptist that Montessori was very fond of quoting: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” We are glad when the child is independent and doesn’t need us, because we know that the plea of his soul is “Help me to do it myself”.

Montessori tells us that true help does not come from obeying sentimental impulses, showing affection to a child by giving him anything he wants, by allowing him to do anything he wishes, but rather from subjecting our love to discipline, using that love with discernment. She likens the spiritual and the psychological relationship between the teacher and the child to the relationship between a man and his valet. The valet keeps his master’s dressing table in order, but does not tell his master which brush he should use or when he should use it. The valet serves the food, but does not tell the master he must eat. He remains silent, yet if the master seeks praise or appreciation, it’s freely given. The teacher’s job, as Montessori sees it, is to serve, but her conception of service is entirely new in the world of education. She says we must serve the spirit of the child, and serve it well.

Serving the spirit of the child, however, does not give us the right to probe and penetrate his mind and inner being. Montessori quotes the Bible on this subject: “for the servant knoweth not what his master doeth”. We do not want to serve the child’s body because we understand: his best development comes through increasing levels of independence. It is our job to help the child learn to act, to think, to will for himself. [As] says Montessori, this is the art of serving the spirit. An art which can be practiced to perfection only when working among children. So instead of looking at all the misbehaviors, all the defects of little children we must seek instead to root out our own defects, our own prejudices about children and deal rightly with the child.

Now child indeed may be rowdy, he may be misbehaving in one of the million little ways. If we’re not looking at these, not trying to stamp them out, what are we doing? Montessori says: “We must constantly strive to look for the child who is not yet there.” In short, our spiritual preparation includes learning to hold the immaculate concept. In Part 1 of the Trilogy of the Mother by Mother Mary published in the PoW December 15, 1974 Mary describes this science. I quote: “This is indeed the transforming power of the Mother, her ability to see beauty in her children, and in seeing that beauty to seal that beauty in her little ones by the action of the flow of the heart chakra. This is the meaning of holding the immaculate concept for all life, and this is where motherhood begins. It is a love that wells up within the heart that makes up the difference between the shortcomings of the children and the perfection of the Christ Self of each one. That gap between present imperfections and future attainment is always filled in by the love of the mother’s heart.”

So the preparation of the teacher includes the cultivation of her imagination. In her imagination she sees that single normalized type, says Montessori, that lives in a world of Spirit. The teacher must believe that this child, before her will show his true nature when he finds a piece of work that deeply attracts him. So what must we watch for? In a Montessori classroom of three to six year old children, we simply watch and wait for that one child or another who will begin to concentrate. To this the teacher must devote her energies. When a child finally begins to focus on his work, Montessori says, it’s almost as if a road opens up within their souls that leads them to all their latent powers revealing the better part of themselves.

I spoke earlier of Montessori’s discovery of new and higher characteristics of the child. This simple yet profound method for bringing these characteristics out is so simple, but it works. Children are normalized, meaning their negative behaviors fall away, their true nature shines forth through concentration on simple concrete materials. Montessori goes on to outline what the work of the teacher must be. First of all, it is to be the keeper of the environment. Although the influence of the environment is indirect, without that warm, clean environment filled with motives of activity that correspond precisely to the inner development of the child, no lasting work may be done. Her second role is in the early stages, before the science of real concentration come about, the teacher must make herself lovely and enticing, warm, gentle and graceful. Montessori says she must be like the flame which heartens all by its warmth, it enlivens and invites the child.

So the teacher entertains the children giving lessons, and until she sees the signs of concentration interrupting any and all negative activity, but not with reprimands, rather with demonstrations of affection. The constant interruptions serve as a kind of electric shock for the naughty child, and soon enough will bring him back.

Her third job comes finally, one day, when the children begin to concentrate. This initial stage of concentration is very fragile in a young child, and during this time the teacher may not interrupt. Just simply gazing for a long time at a little child, patting them on the back and telling them “Good boy” or “Good job” is enough to break that concentration. And it may be literally weeks before the child will once again attend with concentration to his work. This concentration is the beginning of real learning and real unfoldment for the child.

To really understand our role of non-intervention during this period, Montessori says it requires us to rise spiritually to the level of understanding that even our well meaning help can come from our pride. We speak of subtle manifestations of life. It’s not so easy in a classroom of busy little children to see and identify what we are really seeing. For example, there was once a little boy who had already earned a reputation for being a very naughty little trouble maker. One day the teacher noticed he was going around from child to child picking up their colored pencils. She was about ready to give him a reprimand when she looked again. He was taking the dull pointed pencils and replacing them with sharpened pencils. It was the first manifestation of helpful orderly behaviour, and the teacher almost ruined it by not seeing what was really going on.

So this brings us to another major consideration in the spiritual preparation of the teacher. It is learning to observe. In fact, Dr. Maria Montessori told us that a fundamental quality for a good teacher is the capacity for accurate observation. She says the first step to take in order to become a Montessori teacher is to shed omnipotence and to become a joyous observer. If the teacher can really enter into the joy of seeing things being born and growing before his own eyes, and can cloth himself in the garment of humility, many delights are reserved for him that are denied to those who assume infallibility and absolute authority in front of the class.

Observation can only be developed through practice. Consider a novis looking through a microscope at a cell—how little we would really see and understand! Yet the scientist could write a book about what he sees. It’s necessary therefore to be trained in observation. To begin to feel a lively interest, to notice details, notice patterns, notice the significance of what one is seeing. This truly creates the spirit of the scientist. It takes time to begin to see the seemingly unimportant details that ultimately will clarify the whole. It takes patience; the quality we would substitute for the anger and the impatience that adults so often display towards children. Adults try so hard to make children behave in ways that are convenient to us, neglecting to simply watch and assist the unfolding of that precious life. To be a good observer it also takes humility, a humility that considers nothing too lowly to absorb our full attention and that humility that desires that our children would go beyond us. Here we have the quality that replaces the pride of the adult ego thinking that we are the ones that form the child, [that] our world is the world the child must conform to, rather than perhaps considering that we can learn from the child.

A real scientist which Maria Montessori believes every teacher should be, when confronted with truth, is willing to let go of even his most cherished ideas to unite more fully with what he has found to be true. So can we let go of our prejudices, our ideas of children, and allow God to reveal to us the real treasures of the Spirit that are locked within the heart of the child?

Now if these great and noble characteristics of patience and humility and self sacrifice belong to the scientist pursuing any field of endeavor. How much greater, asks Montessori, is the nobility of the scientist who studies the human soul? Of the one who seeks the truth in the soul of the child Montessori says: “that one may say as John the Baptist did, ‘I am he who cryeth in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make His paths straight’”. Truly, we may prepare the way for the Christ to be born in each end every child we are privileged to deal with.

Montessori speaks to us of the blending of the qualities of science and religion. She says: “The spiritual life of man may blend with the virtues of the man of science only when the student and the subject of study can be fused together. There is a real mechanism of correspondence between the virtues of the man of science and the virtues of the saint. It is by means of humility and patience that the scientist puts himself in contact with material nature, and it is by means of humility and patience that the saint puts himself in contact with the spiritual nature of things. The vision of the teacher should be precise like that of the scientist and spiritual like that of the saint. It must be precise, because the accurate observation of the unfolding of life is truly exact. And as Montessori reminds us, we are following the laws of development, laws which operate as surely in the psychological and spiritual realm as they do in the physical realm. So it is the science of the Spirit, the science of the unfoldment of life that we seek, and much patient and exacting observation is necessary on all of our parts to gain true understanding.

The vision of the teacher must also be spiritual simply because the characteristics of the inner man which are to be observed are spiritual. But the means the teacher uses are also spiritual. The teacher or directress must act—and I quote Montessori—“as a vivifying presence which awakens the sleeping soul of the child. Her role may be compared to that of the sun, for she is one who brings light.” A new kind if mistress has evolved, says Montessori. Instead of facility in speech, she has to acquire the power of silence. Instead of teaching, she has to observe. Instead of the proud dignity of one who claims to be infallible she assumes the vesture of humility. To be a teacher as Maria Montessori describes her, is truly a spiritual office, a path of initiation where constant striving reaps rich rewards, both for the teacher and for the taught.

I would quote Montessori yet again because her words convey so powerfully and so sweetly her level of the conception of the teacher: “Now let us imagine an ardent mystic soul that observes all of the revelations of a little child’s mind, so that with mingled feelings of respect, love, holy curiosity and longing for the very heights of heaven; we may learn the way of his own proper perfection, and thus be able to bring it fairly into the midst of a class room filled with little children. And yet even he would not be the new educator which we wish to form, but let us strive to poor into a single soul the keen spirit of sacrifice of a scientist, and the inefible ecstasy of such a mystic—and then we shall have the perfect spirit of our teacher.

As one serves in this capacity, she will have the joy and the privilege of watching the unfoldment of the human soul. She will see that little hands will try to arrange things o, so carefully; little feet will try very hard to walk carefully and not step on their friends’ work mat…. She will see little minds calmly absorbed in this or that endeavor. She’ll see the little child seeking out the hardest task possible, because he is striving to make himself superior to all difficulties. The teacher must know and experience in her daily life the secret of childhood. Through this experience her understanding deepens, but even more importantly, she experiences a new form of love. The teacher’s own conversion begins.

When the children show their real natures, the teacher understands for perhaps the first time what real love is, and this revelation transforms her, writes Montessori. It is a thing that touches the heart, and little by little it changes people. Once these facts have been seen, one cannot cease from writing and speaking about them. The names of the children may be forgotten, but nothing can cancel the impression their spirits have made and the love they have enkindled.

Ultimately the spiritual preparation of the teacher, the changes in attitude, the change of heart, the self examination, the self giving in the day to day adventure of teaching; the experiences of learning to observe and rightly apprehend what one has seen, all leads to a transformation not only of the child but of the teacher herself. With this manifestation of the child’s spirit before the teacher the teacher humbly says, “I have helped this life to fulfill the tasks set for it by creation. I have served the spirits of these children and they have fulfilled their development, and I have kept them company in their development. Montessori writes: “The teacher, quite apart from the authority to whom she is responsible, feels the great value of her work and of what she has accomplished in the form of a satisfied spiritual life which is life everlasting, says Montessori, and a prayer in itself from morning to the next. This is hard to understand for one who has not yet adopted this life. No one understands that it is not sacrifice but satisfaction that is in question; not renunciation but a new life—a new life in which the values are different. Where real life values hitherto unknown have come to exist.

In our teaching, in the enriching of our own lives and in the lives of those we are so blessed to teach let us never forget the words of our Lord Jesus Christ: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me”.

I leave you with Montessori’s injunction as to what the true role of the teacher, the spiritually prepared teacher must be: “A teacher must be consecrated to bettering humanity. She must be like the vestal virgin who kept the sacred fire that others had lighted, pure and free from contamination. The teacher must be dedicated to the fire of the inner life with all its purity. If this flame be neglected it may be extinguished, never to be lighted again.

Thank you

Elizabeth Clare Prophet: Mary Ellen, you‘ve given us the capstone of Maria Montessori’s work. As Mother Caspari so often says, she gave us not a method but a message, but today I think that we realized that what Maria Montessori really gave us was a religion. And when we are a part of this religion, we are a part of her as the Ascended Lady Master Maria Montessori. We are a part of Mother Mary and Elizabeth who tutored Jesus and John the Baptist. They were the first Montessori mothers, and to their hearts Maria Montessori took retreat, and she was given the understanding of what it takes to nurture the Christ Child. We know that Maria Montessori was in a catholic country and a catholic religion and therefore had this very natural devotion to the blessed Mother, to Jesus and to the saints, also to the angels. This approach to the path of education is the only real approach. Nothing else has worked. All of the theories, all of the philosophies of education from the very conservative to the very liberal that that we’ve seen in this century to the ruination of our children’s minds and hearts, to their inability to spell or read—we’ve seen this go down even starting in the last century all the way to the present. And we have come to understand the robbery of the soul, the stealing of the Christ, the denial of it. We’ve come to understand the extinguishing of the flame by the institution of education. I am profoundly grateful that you are here, no matter what class you are in, because you are moving toward this total experience of being in the presence of the child as the guardian angel, the Mothering and the Fathering Spirit and the true presence of the teacher. What we really understand is the teacher of us all is the Holy Christ Self. If we don’t have communion with our own, how will we have communion with that of the child? Perhaps the answer is that the little child will lead us.

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