Meditative Observations

by Dr. David Fleischacker

Take time to observe the child everyday!  You are not a finished work yet, God has more to do in you, and taking time to be present and only present in an attentive fashion to God’s child will help you to become more the human being that God intends for you. St. John Paul II said upon stopping in front of a Montessori classroom that this was the best sermon he had ever witnessed.  The child is God’s sermon for you.

One of the important facets in the life of a teacher in natural education is to be observant of the child: the interactions of children, the interactions of adults and children in the room, how children respond to one in various circumstances. how child interact with materials and the habits they have formed in doing works, how they shift from one work to another, the breaks they take and what they do, how and when they find new things to do, how they make decisions, the things that concern them, how their emotions impact things they do and how they perceive each other and the world, what areas of works they like to do, and how these shift over days and weeks.  One cannot start by attending to all of these events and relationships, so it is best to start with one. 

I would recommend starting with a particular child with the aim of seeing the world as that child sees it.  Watch what the child does with his or her body and senses.  What does the child watch or touch or interact with various periods of the day.  How does the child respond to others?  When others interact with the child, what does the child do after those interactions?  Try to figure out why.  Imaginatively reconstruct the child’s feelings in different activities and interactions with others.  Through this you will get to know the tendencies and disposition of the child.  Notice whether the child spends time asking questions and exploring those questions.  When the child is trying to figure out what to do, how do you think he or she goes about deciding?  Is it based on certain feelings, and if so, which feelings?  How does the child operate in terms of rules made up by adults, or from home perhaps, or by other students?  Are there fears?  Is the child attuned to what other children think?  Does the child care what the adults think?  Many children like to please adults, how does the child do that?  Is the child afraid of interacting with the adults?  If so, why? And over time, the time of the day, the week, the month, the seasons of the year, notice the shifts and changes of activities and interests the child passes through, and ask why.

Do not try to answer all of these questions at once, but start with one that interests you, and you will find the answers to one question leading to the next.  As a note, at first, this is not easy to do and it takes some time to get the insights.  Don’t give up.  They will come, and then once you start to get into the mind and heart of one child, the next one will be easier.  Pretty soon, you will come to know all of the children more intimately and more fruitfully.  

As you get a sense of one child, and then another, pretty soon you will come to understand a dynamic web of children and their relationships to the environment and each other.  This will help you to begin gaining insights into group dynamics and how changes in one child effect others.  Over time, you will get a sense of the flow of the week and seasons of the year.  And then, if you end up in a new environment, or a number of new children, your insights into them will flow exponentially faster, and you and the room will flow more readily into the peace the true work and authentic feeding that all the souls need.

To expand this, attend to the dynamics of adults in the child’s life.  Some of these are easy to observe, because they take place in the environment. Others will take time, namely family and extended family, friends outside of school and neighbors.  These too will impact the child’s state of being, and how the child then interacts with you and the environment.  Sometimes these factors make it very difficult to understand how a child is operating in an environment, but over time, as you gain more and more insight, this will become easier to spot and figure out.  Questions you can think about regards the child’s experiences at home, before school, after school, through the night, the games they play, the sports they are signed up for, the things they do with friends, how they interact with friends (especially if through social media or gaming!).  You do not need to know all of this to be a guide to the child, but you do need to begin attending to things you should, and raise questions, and the right questions.

There is no miracle in getting such insights into the life of the children in one’s classroom. It takes time and effort.  Treat such moments not as having the purpose of becoming a better teacher, or a more efficient teacher, or even a more effective teacher. That is to approach the child and your role in a utilitarian fashion. That is difficult to break because it is how we approach nearly everything and everyone in our culture. Rather, come at it within the framework of love, which simply wants to rejoice in the good of another, and the goods that are happening for another.  Sometimes evil things happen as well, and then your love will lead you to suffer, because suffering is the experience of something that is harmful and destructive, and suffering leads to the thirst and hope for overcoming it.  Love is the key though.  Just enjoy the soul of that child as a miracle from God, as a child in your presence, filling your soul with his or her being.  Let yourself enjoy this child as a child.  And observe from that place.  Begin each meditative observation with a prayer asking God to help you become present to that child as He is present to that child, and then to love that child as He loves that child.  The observations will always go well then!  And the mystery of the child will begin to unfold in your heart with grateful meaning.  

Sometime during the course of your observations, link together your interactions with the child to all that is going on in the environment.  This will include getting a sense of your personality and how children perceive you. It is important to gain that insight. Ask others to observe you and give you feedback.  This can be humiliating, and humbling, but such things can lead you to a deeper understanding of how you are perceived and what you are trying to do.  You are there to help the child grow in virtue so as to perfect their own powers of soul, which in turn brings them to a deeper understanding of themselves and a more solid and genuine identity. But this is not just to help the child, but it is the ongoing realization of your being as one who guides in love. That is what love is really about.  You are there to help them learn about all facets of God’s creation, but also to respect that creation, to build it up, and to hold it up high, to lift it up back up to God as a blessed offering of thanks and love.  And with God, we are all employed to help build up His creation and to help Him restore others from their evil situations and their own sinful states. 

Observation will give us a deeper sense of what we can and cannot do.  Too often, teachers think they are responsible for more than they can be responsible.  This is why many of them teach subjects as they do.  It is a moral duty to make sure every student is exposed and “learns” a certain range of subjects.  The state requires it. The parents expect it.  And so it seems to be the morally right thing to do.  But a higher morality is at work in natural education, and that is the formation of all the powers of the child.  That formation is limited not by what the state requires, or even what parents require, but what the soul of the child was made to be.  Much of that formation happens inside of the child, by the powers operative themselves, and by the inner teacher created as the light in that child, for that child.  We are more like the gardener who waters the plant and tries to get it the right amount of sunlight.  Sometimes we add some fertilizer.  But the rest of the growth is from the powers inside the plant.  We do not say we want a root here, right now to grow, or a leaf there. Sometimes we prune.  Sometimes we pulls the weeds.  In any case, we cannot determine all that grows and when it grows, though the more we know through observation, the wiser we can become to assist, especially if things get difficult or go wrong.  At most, we get the great opportunity to help them flourish a bit more.  I say a bit because most of that growth is from the great mystery within the child, and so we do not want to get into the way of that growth. That mystery comes from God himself, the only true Father of that child.  The whole of creation is this child’s mother, and it is concentrated in his personal mother who then is the vicar of earth.  Rejoice in your small but important task of helping out this great inner teacher and the child who is taught by that Teacher who creates the light within us.