Occupations

While traditional education often teaches facts that are isolated from life outside the classroom, the Montessori adolescent program offers lessons with practical applications. “What will I use this for?” is an often-asked question of the adolescent, as he/she is determined to use knowledge to DO something in the world. The Middle School experience integrates a range of adult work, including campus repair and maintenance, kitchen skills, recycling and composting, community service, job shadows, and other elective projects throughout the year. Projects are real world opportunities for many lessons in using academic and practical life skills. Occupations are not only a source of meaningful work, but is work that can be valued by all the members of the community, work that challenges the mind and the body, work that is recognized as legitimate by the culture, work that has economic validity, work that is made noble by being done with integrity and passion. These occupations provide the means for the adolescent to belong and be valued.

The benefits derived from this productive real work lie in what Montessori characterized by four key observable behaviors:

1) Love of work, a kind of spontaneous enjoyment derived from the work itself

2) Concentration, a special absorption of genuine interest in the activity

3) Self-discipline, demonstrated by a responsible perseverance to completion

4) Sociability, characterized by a harmonious working relationship with others towards a common goal

"Education should therefore include the two forms of work, manual and intellectual, for the same person, and thus make it understood by practical experience that these two kinds complete each other and are equally essential to a civilized existence." (From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 65)