Wanda Montes: ''I fell in love''

Wanda has been in the Montessori project for 13 years in Early Childhood in the community of Cantera.

By Andrea Santiago Vicente 

Since 2007, Wanda Montes has been called a guide, guide to the Early Childhood Los Lirios environment at Manuel Elzaburu y Vizcarrondo school in Cantera.

After being a transitional teacher, Wanda arrived in 2004 at the Sofia Rexach School, now Manuel Elzaburu y Vizcarrondo, located in the Cantera Peninsula. There, she worked as a traditional first-grade teacher. After two years, in 2006, the school principal told her about the Montessori methodology with the vision of transforming the school community. Then, she and a group of teachers decided to take an orientation about Montessori philosophy.

''That day, a person came to give us an orientation and told us about the project. They started with the story of Maria Montessori, and it was very interesting. Then they brought with them some Montessori materials and presented them to us, they explained them, and I saw that behind each one of them, apart from its beauty, there was a goal, a very subtle skill, but it was there, it was there. How the child would be presented with an objective and how that material or process was given was to help the student. It is something that I honestly cannot describe, it came to me, and as I said before, I fell in love and said yes to the transformation. “I am here'', that is the guide's encounter with the philosophy.

Students can work on wooden tables of their size or the floor on carpets..

Traditional education and Montessori philosophy have several differences. One of them is the materials that make up the environments, the classrooms, and the role they play in the method; that made Wanda fall in love.

''The enrichment of the environment, having these materials with their different skills and levels of work and difficulty, helps prepare the children to reach that point. All these materials we have in practical life and sensory help them prepare for reading and writing. They carry a sequence in which they work from left to right from top to bottom that is the same way we read and write.'' the guide explained enthusiastically about one of the many benefits of the environment and its materials.

Wanda shared that the area that most attracts attention to children is the practical living area, where they have grains, water, glass containers, plates, brooms, and all that motivates them. An Early Childhood environment is divided into practical, sensory, mathematical, language, and cultural studies.

This girl uses practical living materials to work on a wooden table.

The guide mentioned to us that her experience with traditional education was that she had to do a lot to reach the student to make the teaching effective and that when she learned about Montessori, she decided to follow this methodology. 

Wanda has been in the Montessori project for 13 years and said she wouldn't change it.

''Montessori has touched my life in the aspect that has kept me passionate from day one. It is my vocation, and Montessori motivate me to impart and fill those aspects that students need to be good people and receive what they need in life to develop. For me, it is everything, it's all I'm always talking about Montessori, in the house, wherever I stand, I talk about Montessori.''