A disorganized girl, and how she became organized
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TRANSCRIPT
Hey everyone, Jesse McCarthy here.
Is your kid a mess? Like maybe a bit disorganized?
I’ve experienced quite a few children who have such ‘organizational problems.’
Today I’m going to talk about one of them, a unique student who taught me a little about organization, but really about something much deeper.
So I was a teacher in my early 20s, it’s relatively traditional school, and I was tutoring this young girl, whom I’ll call Rachel, for privacy.
She was very bright, brilliant in many ways, but also very disorganized. For instance, at age 12 she would write college-level essays – and then lose the memory stick where the work was saved. At 13 she would argue both sides of an historical debate, masterfully, and then after, when we’d all go outside for break, she wouldn’t be able to eat her lunch because, well, she forgot where she had put it. You know, this kind of thing.
When Rachel and I met for our brief daily “organizational tutoring”, I tried everything to change her destructive habits. We had sticky notes, we had planners, we had parent conferences, we had endless discussions … we had everything. Yet nothing ever really worked.
Until one afternoon.
School had just ended, and Rachel was trudging her way down the steps to our tutoring session, her backpack slightly open and dangling off her shoulder, it’s ready to fall at any moment, when next thing I know the door to the tutoring room swings open, I mean wildly swings open, and there she is, disheveled, books literally falling out of her hands.
She glances around the room, tosses her mess of a backpack down on the floor, and with a dejected look on her face, but mixed with a strange kind of triumph, she says, “I don’t know why we even have to do this!”
And that’s when it hit me. Rachel had said “we”: “I don’t know why *we* even have to do this!” In an instant, the fatal error in my approach became clear. At her age, she was an early teenager — so the stage of development where one genuinely craves and needs a strong sense of independence, of self-direction — this young girl had never truly owned her own challenges with organization. *I* had been the driving force in her attempted improvement; yet *she* had never even chosen to begin that process, let alone to direct it.
After a few moments of me being like that frozen deer in the headlights, thinking to myself, “Oh boy! What do I do now??“ I looked at Rachel and said, sincerely: “You don’t have to come to tutoring anymore. If you find that you want to work on organization (or on anything else really), let me know. If I think I can help, we’ll plan a schedule that makes sense for both of us.” And then I said goodbye. That was it.
I don’t recall whether it was a couple of days later, or a couple of weeks, but not long after that difficult afternoon, we began our tutoring back up. This time though, *Rachel* initiated the sessions; and *Rachel* chose the schedule (you know, how many days a week we’d meet and for how long). And wild enough, after a few months of dedicated work, with the to-be-expected hiccup here and there, Rachel got herself organized – and proudly, glowingly so.
And then shortly after that, our organizational tutoring ended. For she no longer needed it.
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What a lesson that whole experience was for me.
I mean, when I began teaching years ago, I had this view, somewhat arrogant actually, that I can change any child. Overtime though, through working with thousands of unique students, I came to see that such a view is more fittingly put as: Any child can change himself. A subtle shift in phrasing, but a fundamental distinction in education, in mindset.
Now this self-directed approach doesn’t mean the teacher, or the guide, is unnecessary, and that it’s a free-for-all where anything goes. The opposite actually: a thoughtful guide creates a deliberate, purposeful environment, in which a child can thrive. But that’s ultimately only through her own will, her own choice, as Rachel taught me back then.
Basically, Rachel made real for me something deep: that growth is impossible to achieve for another human being. Or, as Maria Montessori once put it: “the fundamental basis of education must always remain that one must act for oneself.”
I think many teachers and parents never get this point. And maybe understandably, as many of us grew up in an educational system where we ourselves were taught-at, whether or not we had any interest or say in the supposed teaching.
For me, I’m grateful I had Rachel in my life. She taught me something true about life: No one can force another human being to change.
And maybe something further: I’d say that any attempt we make to change a person — child or adult — is probably a sign that we have some changing to do of our own.
At least, that was definitely the case for me back then.
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All right, that’s it. That’s what I have for you today.
If what I’ve said was at all helpful or made good sense to you, let me know. Write me over at MontessoriEducation.com. And if you haven’t already subscribed to the YouTube channel or podcast where you’re listening, go for it.
And with that, my best to everyone out there, and talk again soon. Adios,