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Building Partnership through Family Meetings

Building Partnership through Family Meetings

Family meetings provide a dedicated space for open communication, allowing family members to discuss issues, make decisions together, strengthen relationships, and build a sense of unity by sharing concerns, celebrating achievements, and setting expectations, all while fostering important life skills. 

Benefits of Family Meetings

For children, family meetings promote:

  • Critical thinking
  • Active listening
  • Brainstorming skills
  • Problem solving
  • Mutual respect
  • A sense of belonging and significance

For parents, family meetings:

  • Avoid power struggles
  • Avoid micromanaging
  • Invite children to share responsibility
  • Allow you to model skills you want children to learn

Keep a notebook in a central area of the home, so issues that come up during the week can be recorded in real time and then used during the family meeting.

The family meeting is optional, but choosing not to participate means missing out on problem solving, offering suggestions for family outings, and receiving weekly allowance.

Family Meeting Agenda

  • Give Acknowledgments
  • Review Old Agreements
  • Discuss New Issues
  • Make New Agreements
  • Review the Schedule
  • Do Banking
  • Create a Family Outing Plan
Give Acknowledgments

Each person acknowledges everyone else. Acknowledgments are different than thank-yous; they focus on something about the person’s character.

Review Old Agreements

Review last week’s agreements. How did these work? Any there any revisions needed? If so, write these down in the notebook.

Discuss New Issues

No judgement, no criticism. Everyone is on the same team, committed to finding solutions. Everyone contributes. (Parents, be careful not to brush off children’s solutions.)

Make New Agreements

What are the agreements we are going to make to support the solving of the issues? Write them in the notebook.

Review the Schedule

Discuss the schedule for the week. What activities are scheduled? Are there any special events? Resolve any logistics that need to be handled.

Do Banking

Allowance is distributed. Allowance is not tied to chores, but rather to participatioin in the family meeting. Any debts acrued over the past week are paid.

Create a Family Outing Plan

Brainstorm ideas for fun activities to do as a family.Everyone gets a voice.(Parents, establish parameters – how much time, how much money, etc.)

Tips for a Successful Family Meeting

When first starting this structure, introduce and practice just one step of the process each week. In less than two months time, your family will be ready to implement the full family meeting structure.

Encourage participation by creating a safe space where everyone can share their thoughts and feelings. Set guidelines for discussion, such as taking turns speaking without interruption.

Meet at a consistent time that works for your family; weekly or bimonthly is recommended.

Rotate responsibilities so everyone gets a turn to play the different roles. For young children, props can be used to designate each of the roles.

  • Facilitator (talking stick)
  • Recorder (notebook and pencil)
  • Banker (coin purse or money jar)
  • Time Keeper (stopwatch)

Would you like to give family meetings a try? Check out some of the resources below to help you get started!

Resources for Empowering and Partnering with your Child

Active Listening Worksheet

Empowering and Partnering with your Child Through the Adolescent Years Powerpoint

Family Meeting Album from positivediscipline.com

Raising Grateful Kids in an Entitled World by Kristen Welch

The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money by Ron Lieber

Duct Tape Parenting by Vick Hoefle

Whether you have a five-year-old or a fifteen-year-old, you can find easy ways to create partnerships at home. During this webinar, you will learn steps to implement structures around family meetings, active listening, and allowances – all designed to support you and your child or adolescent in your partnership at home.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Goals in the 2023-24 School Year

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Goals in the 2023-24 School Year

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) work for Greenspring is, at its essence, the commitment to creating affirming spaces and environments, where we acknowledge everyone for who they are and actively work to honor their identities to the best of our ability. We work to increase our knowledge levels to be culturally sensitive by tuning into each person’s unique needs, whether it be a cultural practice, an access need, their correct terminology, or an accommodation.

We are so very lucky that 125 years ago, far ahead of her time, Dr. Maria Montessori built a peace education curriculum to support the work of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging, and was nominated for two Nobel Peace Prizes for her important work. Yet even with our unwavering adherence to Dr. Montessori’s tenets, we know we must forward the work, taking a stand for equity and justice as models for our children and adolescents. The lived experiences of children now are vastly different than 125 years ago, thereby necessitating new learning, modalities, and modeling to meet the needs of today’s learners. We do this work so that our children have the foundation to move through the world with a deeper understanding of and care for humanity.

To do this, we need to work with both the adults and the children in our community to build an appreciation and celebration of ourselves and others into our daily practices and to provide an understanding of our individual biases to help us all expand our ability to see and accept others. This work has been evolving continuously at Greenspring over the past five years. For a detailed history of our work, please take a look at our blog A History of DEIB Work at Greenspring.

What is our current focus of Greenspring’s DEIB work?
Our focus for this year is multifold.

  1. We are working to support the integration of our new Equity and Belonging Coordinator into our community. Our staff professional development and the lessons themselves are created by our DEIB Committee, a volunteer group of deeply committed, hard-working staff members invested in making sure that our community and children have the opportunity to discover and explore a wide variety of backgrounds and cultures. As you might imagine, this work has been incredibly time-consuming — and our Committee Chairs shared with us over the past two years that there was simply not enough time to do the work fully, and that we needed someone on staff dedicated to this work. We agreed, and this year we have brought on our first-ever Equity and Belonging Coordinator to support our efforts.

    Research shows that often people in these roles have short tenures in school communities, particularly when the role is a new one. Given the emotional nature of the work, the burnout rate is high. Thus, we are focused on integrating this role into our community and ensuring that we provide the support and guidance needed.

  2. Our community is engaged in an equity audit, using the American Montessori Society’s book, Equity Examined, which was created to give Montessori schools a comprehensive and step-by-step plan for evaluating our policies and practices through an anti-bias, antiracist lens. Our Guides and Administrators are working through a series of questions and processes to help us understand exactly where we are in this work, where we have unconscious bias, and where we need to be focused moving forward.

  3. We are continuing our professional development for our staff. Guides have been meeting by level, learning about books and other resources available to them as they learn and develop lessons to support inclusion of all. The focus, to date, has been on gaining comfort with and a deeper understanding of some key concepts of equity work, creating connections with each other, reading articles designed to explore how our biases can influence our behaviors, and collectively discussing shared needs and solutions to commonly-experienced situations, all of which we will continue to focus on as we build our antiracist, anti-bias practices. Our full staff will also be participating in a workshop in February on how to work with children when challenging topics arise.

  4. We are listening to our families. We have hosted Family Listening Sessions where those who attended shared their experiences related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging with us and with each other. The goal of these sessions is to create a space for conversation, listening, and understanding so that we can become more comfortable in these conversations and use each other’s questions and experiences to guide further discussions with each other and our children.

  5. We are continuing to implement lessonscreated over the past three years utilizing the above goals, growing our capacity to teach these concepts well. For instance, we have noticed that the lessons we created in the first year need to be revisited and supported in our classrooms, and the work of both celebrations and family structures keeps us quite busy. We recognize that families would like more information about this and are working on adding our DEIB structure to our Curriculum Guide to be shared with families in the fall of 2024.

We here at Greenspring hold each and every child who comes through our doors as unique, important, and valuable for just who they are. Our work is always to build a community for our students and the adults that surround them, that leaves them feeling seen, valued, and understood.

Dr. Montessori said it very well in her book, Citizen of the World.

“The question is to bring about a radical change in the way we view human relations, endeavoring to influence [human] consciousness by giving them new ideals, fighting indifference and incomprehension; to awaken in [their] spirit a sense of gratitude towards other [humans]. This can also be done with children. In fact, these endeavors should begin with the children, giving them the opportunity to reflect on the social value of work, on the beauty of labor carried out by others, whereby the common effort enriches the life of all.“

Centering the Spirit of the Child

Centering the Spirit of the Child

Dr. Maria Montessori dedicated her life to nurturing and supporting the child’s understanding and love of themselves, their community, and the Universe. Her mandate calls on us as parents and educators to provide rich and meaningful opportunities for each child to come to deeply know and understand themselves, providing them a meaningful connection to their spirit and to their own unique path and contribution to our world. She shared compelling words on the importance of love in understanding our own humanity:

“Love is more than the electricity which lightens our darkness, more than the etheric waves that transmit our voices across space, more than any of the energies that [one] has discovered and learned to use. Of all things love is the most potent. All that [one] can do with their discoveries depends on the conscience of [the one] who uses them. This energy of love is given to us so that each shall have it in [themself].” 

Yes, love is the most potent, and what better way for us to support our children and families in experiencing and expressing love than to center the spirituality of the child? Spirituality provides the window for our souls to connect deeply with ourselves, others, and the Universe at large. Spirituality requires introspection, gratitude, self-awareness, and reflection, providing us access to the deepest part of ourselves and each other. Spirituality is a pathway to love.

The terms spirit and spirituality are often associated with religious practice. Our endeavor is not a religious one. Instead, this is about centering the child’s spirit – the life force within themself that connects them deeply to others and the Universe as a whole – as part of their whole being. We can not fully serve or know the child without acknowledging and fostering their spiritual self as a critical and foundational element of their being.

Breaking it Down
Our work is guiding the child through the exploration and practice that provides them the opportunity to nurture, develop, and honor their spirit. Needless to say, this is no small undertaking. As we venture more deeply into this work, we will be focusing on four areas:

Spiritual Preparation of the Adult

This may be the most important component of centering the spirit of the child. Each adult in the child’s life is a powerful role model. Establishing daily habits that support an inner harmony and understanding of ourselves provides adults a greater capacity to nurture peace for our children. Our own cultivation of a peaceful inner life provides a strong foundation for bringing kindness and respect to each interaction with the children, and elevates and inspires our own spirits, as well.

In the weeks leading up to the start of school, our staff community focused on their own spirituality and began stepping into their own spiritual preparation as adults. This work will continue throughout the year. Please click here for a list of recommendations that we have shared with our staff that also can support families and children.

Self-Awareness and Mindfulness

Science shows that mindfulness is a gateway to spiritual discovery for children and adults alike (Lisa Miller). Watching infants and young children, we see that they are inherently mindful: bringing their full attention to each moment and being alert to the life around them. Yet often as we age, our focus on the future can prevent many of us from experiencing the fullness of the present – and really the fullness of life overall. At the same time, when we dwell on our past we also struggle with being present. Being fully present must be a priority for faculty, students, and families – and requires focused attention and daily practice.

Social Emotional Learning (SEL)

Social Emotional Learning are the skills and tools which allow us to be able to develop healthy relationships with others. This skill development begins at birth and continues over our whole lives. If children are given opportunities to learn to identify and understand their own emotions as well as recognize and empathize with the emotions of others, their ability to connect and have healthy, vital relationships is fueled for their lifetime.

When we can connect deeply with ourselves and the Universe through our spirit, we care to elevate the world and all its living things. Spirituality gives us a means to learn our purpose and SEL provides us with the ability to share that purpose with the world.

Meaningful Connection with Nature and Appreciation for Life’s Interconnectedness

What an amazing and awe-inspiring revelation that we are all a part of a magnificent web of life; you and I are connected to every bacterium, every spider, every tree, every star, and every human. Cosmologist Brian Swimme wrote, “Our ancestry stretches back through the life forms and into the stars, back into the beginnings of the primeval fireball. This Universe is a single multiform energetic unfolding of matter, mind, intelligence and life.” Dr. Swimme reminds us that we are not the rightful rulers of the Universe, rather we are in an energetic community with all.

This is what Dr. Montessori asked us to teach to our children and what is amazing is now science is showing us over and over that humanity needs nature – and the profound impact nature has on our young people. It shows that nature regulates and grounds us — and lifts our spirits, nurturing our sense of awe and wonder.

Our commitment at Greenspring is that each child and adolescent has the opportunity to connect deeply with nature and understand the interconnectedness of all living things. How can we awaken and nurture each child’s profound connection to all the Universe’s creatures and creations– supporting them in their love of nature and gratitude for all its gifts?

Research coming out now points to the desperate need for this work for our children, our adolescents, our families, and our planet. I am linking a thought-provoking video of Lisa Miller, PhD, a psychologist and professor at Columbia University Teachers College, here for you. Dr. Miller helps us understand the current research around spirituality, the brain, and our overall mental health. Definitely worth your time! Dr. Miller also wrote The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life, which I referenced in this email, and The Spiritual Child: The New Science on Parenting for Health and Lifelong Thriving – which I highly recommend for all parents. In this email, I also referenced the book Barefoot and Balanced: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children by Angela Hanscom.

In Closing
Much of this work is inherent in the Montessori method of education and has already been in place at Greenspring. Yet now we are digging in more deeply, supporting the staff in their own spiritual preparation and integrating training in these four key areas to meaningfully support this important work with our staff, children, and families.

We welcome your partnership in this important work. We are, as ever, better together!

Spiritual Preparation of the Adult

Spiritual Preparation of the Adult

During the 2023-24 school year, Greenspring Montessori School is focusing on the theme of the Spiritual Nature of the Child. As part of this initiative, our work will focus on the spiritual preparation of the adult. 

Below are several of the ways that Montessori educators and parents can support their own spiritual development and fill their cups in order to be fully present for our children. 

Provide space and time for spiritual exploration
In a busy world, it is easy to get caught up in the daily to-do list. By racing through life and checking things off, we are neglecting our need for quiet, peaceful moments of calm and self-reflection. Our staff summarized several of the ways that they are able to stop and slow down with a mindful moment. 

  • Spending time in nature 
  • Journaling
  • Yoga, tai chi, chi gung, dance
  • Meditation, mindfulness, and/or prayer
  • Silently repeating a simple word (“Peace, Peace”) or phrase (“May all beings be happy.”)
  • Walking a labyrinth
  • Reading poetry
  • Painting or other creative expressions
  • Create a gratitude practice

 

We had the pleasure of speaking with Rachel Shatananda on our Voices in Montessori Podcast, for an episode on Creating Space and Structures for Calm and Peace in an Age of Overwhelm. Rachel joins us to talk about supporting children with their spiritual development, including what it looks like for us to create space for ourselves as adults and to create space for the child. Rachel discusses these big topics and more by describing the practices and strategies she has used successfully in her classrooms.

Establishing daily habits that promote self-awareness and inner harmony gives us a greater capacity to nurture peace in our classrooms and homes. Cultivating a peaceful inner life is the foundation for observing and interacting with children with calmness and respect. There are mindfulness and awareness exercises, as well as excellent books that can help us learn to respond from our hearts.

As parents and educators, we have so much on our plates. Start with something small and doable, like taking slow, deep breaths for a minute or two. Then appreciate yourself for remembering to nurture your inner spirit. This practice, however brief, can help you to connect with and nurture the light and inner lives of the children. One of the beautiful things we’ve found is that these techniques can be used with children as well as adults.

“The present moment is one of power, of magic or miracle if we could ever be wholly in it and awake to it.”

– D.M. Dooling

Spiritually prepared adults bring their own joy and delight to the classroom daily. These strategies and others help Montessori educators and parents maintain a joyful heart and model ways to care for themselves. Part of our goal this year is supporting children in articulating their experiences and emotions of beauty, power, grace, brilliance, love, or even the joy of being alive. Join us in this important work!

A History of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Work at Greenspring

A History of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Work at Greenspring

Our work in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) has been ongoing over the past five years. We started this work when a group of families came to us highlighting the need for our community, and since then have spent a good deal of time educating our staff and developing lessons for students in several key areas of DEIB education.

We began by offering a year of staff professional development in 2019-20 to better understand this work and dig into our goals together. We were guided in this work by the book Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves from the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Our school follows the Four Goals of Anti-Bias Education from this book which can be found here.

Once we had that foundation, we brought this work into our classrooms in the 2020-21 school year, focusing first on Goal #1 of Anti-bias Education: nurturing each child’s construction of knowledgeable, confident, individual personal and social identities. These lessons are designed to support each child and adult in appreciating their culture, skin color, religious background, family structure, and the other identity markers that make them unique. We also worked on lessons around Goal #2: promoting each child’s comfortable, empathetic interaction with people from diverse backgrounds – helping children learn to honor and celebrate those who have different identity markers than their own.

In the 2021-22 school year, we continued our work in Goals #1 and #2, focusing on celebrations and traditions from around the world with books, lessons, and community volunteers to help us share the beauty and richness of many traditions. This work continues and we are grateful to have family members visit and share their celebrations with us all.

In the 2022-23 school year, we began developing lessons around family structures and offering our staff opportunities to learn about the diverse family structures within our Greenspring community. We continue this work with our children through books and classroom materials that reflect their unique identities and family structures.

Our staff professional development and the lessons themselves were created by our DEIB Committee, a volunteer group of deeply committed, hard-working staff members invested in making sure that our community and children have the opportunity to discover and explore a wide variety of backgrounds and cultures.