Abstract
The case study, H is For Hurricane and M is For Maria explores the public Montessori System of Puerto Rico as an educational philosophy of resilience. The authors present a counternarrative to early literacy development on the island by focusing in on two public Montessori schools from Vieques, Puerto Rico. The study was conducted one year after the passing of Hurricane Maria. Data collected, highlights the strong effectiveness of combining children’s home life experiences together with foundational early literacy development. Through this piece, teachers and parents share how they teach early literacy by making the absolute most of what surrounds them physically and culturally. Puerto Rico is poorer than the poorest state yet has had the fastest growth of public Montessori schools, than anywhere else in the United States. Major conclusions state that access to public Montessori education in Puerto Rico offers children an advantage in early literacy development.
Keywords
Introduction
This case study explores early literacy development in two public Montessori schools on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. Drawing on Paulo Freire’s (2010) Pedagogy for Liberation, the study interconnects cultural traditions from Vieques and early literacy development in two public Montessori schools. The study's goal is to understand the particularity of how the Montessori Vieques community supports early literacy development while reading the surrounding natural world. There is little in the extant literature on early literacy development in underrepresented communities such as Vieques and limited literature concerning literacy education in Vieques. This study of public Montessori schools in Vieques asks 1) What literacy practices do teachers promote in this Montessori setting?; 2) What literacy practices are promoted by families?; and 3) How do the practices at home connect to those in school?
Literacy as a human right
Eighty-three percent of children and youth in Puerto Rico live in high poverty (PRIS, 2016), with a median household income of $20,539 (US Census Bureau, 2020a). The World Literacy Foundation (2015) notes direct links between poverty and low-literacy. Eighty percent of single-parent households in Puerto Rico are female-headed and receive assistance from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The impact of low-literacy achievement is seen in 38% of adolescents not graduating high school and high crime rates, with 85% of deaths on the island attributed to violence, particularly among young men between 20-29 years old (PRIS, 2016). High rates of violence and poverty have been directly linked to poor quality education and high low-literacy rates (PRIS, 2016).
The progress of disparities in literacy begins in early childhood. The federal government’s National Assessment of Educational Progress has indicated that by age nine, Latinos lag behind their White non-Latino peers in literacy (Planty et al., 2008). A study led by the Flamboyan Foundation highlights the urgency for effective literacy development in primary grade levels in Puerto Rico (Soler et al., 2017). More than 36% of elementary children in kindergarten through third grade on the island fail standard literacy testing (Soler, 2017). English and Spanish are the two most widely spoken languages in Puerto Rico. However, 95% of the population utilizes Spanish as the language for education, business, and daily life contexts (PRIS, 2016).
Improving literacy skills is a critical first step in overcoming poverty-related obstacles that lock individuals into a cycle of disadvantage (World Literacy Foundation, 2015). Strong educational outcomes require the support of both schools and families. Children learn writing systems earlier when raised in households where they can participate in shared reading and writing situations (Rosemburg, 2013; Snow, 1983; Sulzby and Teale, 1987; Taylor, 1983).
Latino family engagement and literacy development
Family engagement in young children's education is widely touted as valuable but challenging, particularly for teachers in high need schools (Smith et al., 2014; Soutullo et al., 2016). Schools often fail to fully incorporate or tap into the wealth of information, skills, and knowledge that parents may hold (Gonzalez, 2005; Ortiz and Ordonez, 2005). Family resources are often overlooked due to different cultural expectations of the roles of parents and schools. Latino families are targeted to be trained to improve their parental skills (Torres and Hurtado-Vivas, 2011). Family involvement is reduced to having parents take on teacher roles at home and respond to teachers' demands to visit the schools or help them control their children (Ortiz and Ordonez, 2005), a practice that Epstein (2011) refers to as “school-like home.”
Cultural deficit mindsets amongst teachers, who privilege home literacy practices of the White middle-class, impact children's literacy outcomes (Chu and Wu, 2010; Volk and Long, 2005). Families across cultures have home practices that impact literacy development, such as singing, which is more widely used in some families than others (Anderson et al., 2010). Not all families engage in shared book reading, and among those who do, how families share books vary (Anderson et al., 2010). The disconnect between home and school is not, as is widely believed by teachers, that families are not supporting literacy at home, but that teachers are not aware of home literacy practices and are, therefore, not making connections between literacy practices at home and at school (Hammer et al., 2007; Schick, 2014; Volk and Long, 2005).
The work of Gonzalez et al. (2005) suggests the importance of recognize knowledge and resources held by families, the family’s funds of knowledge. Funds of knowledge require that teachers tap into families’ lived experiences as resources for educators. These interconnections between home and school life can support children in making meaningful connections with literacy development (Gonzalez et al., 2005). Similarly, culturally sustaining pedagogy encourages educators to support students in sustaining the cultural and linguistic competence of their communities while simultaneously offering access to dominant cultural competence (Paris, 2012). Freire (2010) notes that learning is not neutral; it either reinforces the status quo or challenges it. Thus, recognizing families’ funds of knowledge and employing a culturally sustaining pedagogy lessons the disconnect between home and school learning and challenges cultural deficit thinking.
The Montessori method
The Montessori Method grew from Dr. Montessori’s experiences working with a group of sixty young children of low-income parents who had been labeled as “developmentally deficient” (Montessori, 1912). Montessori spent time observing children and considering how to better support learning (Montessori, 1912). For example, her method of supporting graphic language was created through observations of children picking up a fallen twig and drawing in a sandy garden path in circular movements. Dr. Montessori created a wooden alphabet that allowed the children to touch the cursive letters repeatedly in the fashion of flowing writing. To further sensorial stimulation, she cut letters of the alphabet out of sandpaper. In this way, children achieved a marked improvement in writing without writing.
In contemporary programs, language is designated as a major curricular area in Montessori classroom environments (Soundy, 2003). Early opportunities for meaningful interaction in the classroom pave the way toward later literacy achievements (Soundy, 2003). In practice, core standard pedagogical materials include the things that Montessori discussed in her book, such as sandpaper letters, the moveable alphabet, and grammar boxes (Montessori, 1912; Soundy, 2003). Many young learners begin to compose three-letter phonetic words with the moveable alphabet. Two important aspects of Montessori’s educational method are the learning materials, and the self-directed nature of children’s engagement with those materials (Soundy, 2003). Language is viewed as a process in Montessori schools, and the context for skill-building is built in the child’s spoken language (Soundy, 2003). Children in Montessori schools work at their own pace on individually tailored, sequential lessons (Debs and Brown, 2017).
Much of the extant literature on the Montessori Method focuses on implementing the method itself (see, for example: Bărbieru, 2016; Powell, 2007; Richardson, 1997; Torrance, 2001). This study considers how teachers and families use the Montessori Method as an avenue for developing a culturally sustaining literacy program that supports a pedagogy for liberation (Freire, 2010; Paris, 2012).
The public Montessori school system in Puerto Rico
Although Puerto Rico is poorer than the poorest U.S. state, it has had the fastest growth of public Montessori schools in the United States, with 45 public Montessori schools currently on the island (Ayer, 2019). These provide quality education to underserved communities in higher-risk areas of Puerto Rico and contribute to the population and economic stabilization of these communities (Hinojosa et al., 2019). The Montessori schools also demonstrate strengths in culturally sustaining pedagogy, offering children an approach to literacy development that is relatable and adaptive to different cultural contexts (Debs and Brown, 2017). Maria Montessori advocated for a new pedagogy that promoted children’s appreciation of a multi-cultural world (Brunold-Conesa, 2019). These values, are built into the curriculum at every level, from preschool through high school. This is relatable for children in contemporary schools of Puerto Rico since the Montessori curriculum allows for children to see their surrounding world within the classroom materials. Evidence based research of public Montessori schools in Puerto Rico is scant. However, a study of public Montessori schools Milwaukee shows Montessori children significantly outperforming the children in other public schools in literacy achievement and other measures (Lillard and Else-Quest, 2006). This may have correlation with the Montessori methods strong parallel with culturally sustaining pedagogy (Brunold-Conesa, 2019).
Vieques, Puerto Rico
Vieques, Puerto Rico is a municipality of Puerto Rico with 8,386 residents, just seven miles from Puerto Rico's mainland (US Census Bureau, 2020b). Although a tourist destination, Vieques has felt the extreme effects of the mainland’s $120 billion-dollar debt through school foreclosures, dire maritime transportation challenges to the main island, and high levels of poverty and crime (IHRC, 2020). Vieques is a rural island in comparison to the main island of Puerto Rico. According to the 2019 Census estimates, 45.9% of the island’s residents live below the poverty line. The median household income from 2015-2019 in Vieques was $14,936. This highlights a stark contrast of disparity when compared to main island of Puerto Rico with a population of 3,193,694 and medium income of $20,539 (US Census Bureau, 2020).
In 1941, the U.S. Navy Purchased 26,000 of Vieques 33,000 acres for use in training Navy and Marine Corps forces. The entire island population was forced to be sandwiched in between testing areas on the island. Many on the island have been research subjects and remember the harmful and traumatic effects of a 60 year-long U.S. Navy invasion that conducted live bombing daily (Wilcox, 2001). Currently, Vieques has some of the highest illness rates in the Caribbean (Plete, 2016). People who live in Vieques are eight times more likely to die of cardiovascular disease and seven times more likely to die of diabetes than others in Puerto Rico. Cancer rates on the island are also higher than those in any other Puerto Rican municipality (Plete, 2016).
More recently, the arrival and aftermath of Hurricane Maria in September 2017 brought strong attention from the media due to the detrimental effects created by the storm on the island's infrastructure. Vieques was utterly shut off from communication with the mainland and was left without electricity for months (Benzal, 2018). The power outage in both Vieques and mainland Puerto Rico was the longest in U.S history, with over 3,000 deaths across Puerto Rico's municipalities (Benzal, 2018). The public Montessori schools in Vieques reopened shortly after the hurricane, despite orders from the Department of Education to remain closed (Chavez and Cohen, 2017). Chavez and Cohen (2017) relates that the school director had been determined to take in as many students as possible in hopes of bringing back a bit of order to the children’s lives.
Theoretical framework
Freire’s pedagogy for liberation recognizes human beings as active agents who can transform their social, financial, and political world (Freire, 2010; Shor and Friere, 1986). Freire (2010) proposes a pedagogy for liberation as a form of hope, and a means to achieve the specific needs of a community. The old order of schooling is based on a banking system, in which the educator is the only source of knowledge and students are empty vessels to be filled with little to no reverence to the students cultural and/or social context (Freire, 2010; Shor and Friere, 1986).
Freire (2010) defines praxis as the reflection and action directed at the structures to be transformed. Praxis supports educators and students to see themselves as subjects of their construction within a reality that is continuously in transformation (Freire, 2010). The combination of reflection and action allows the educator to understand both the practices and necessities of a student. Praxis, therefore, can be a necessary tool in the educational freedom and wellbeing of a community. In the case of this study, Montessori guides and children together develop a praxis that reflects the unique culture of Vieques and the day-to-day experiences that children and families have together. This kind of reflection and action allows for both the teacher and the student to construct reality and knowledge together, thus constructing meaningful literacy development (Freire, 2010; Shor and Friere, 1986).
A second key concept of a pedagogy for liberation is conscientization – a deepening of awareness (Freire, 2010). Foundational literacy is of great importance, but literacy must also be viewed within the broader sense of thinking and reasoning within a society (Ortiz and Ordonez, 2005). In a pedagogy for liberation, literacy must move beyond merely reading and writing the word to reading and writing the word and the world (Freire, 2010). Through conscientization, the student is introduced to a critical form of thinking about their place in the world and simultaneously understands the reality surrounding them (Freire, 2010). In this study, children encounter the literacy of the pedagogy of liberation through experiences in the Montessori classroom environments, through their work with Montessori materials, their home environments, and their interactions with family life.
Freire defines dialogue as a respectful, co-operative activity where true humanization or conscientization can occur (Smith, 1997, 2002). Unlike the banking system, dialogue allows the learner to discover and manifest themselves while developing a deeper conscientization. Dialogue does not involve one person acting on another but instead working together (Smith, 1997, 2002). Meaningful communication with others and a deepening understanding of backgrounds and beliefs are necessary for teachers to become more culturally competent (e.g., Allen and Porter, 2002; Diller and Moule, 2005; Keengwe, 2010; Lin and Bates, 2010; Smith et al., 2014). In this study, we encounter meaningful communication in relationships between guides and children, parents and children, and guides and parents. Each of these relationships is necessary for the thoughtful development of a shared pedagogy of liberation.
Methodology
This case study's setting is unique and thus worthy of study because of the broad employment of the Montessori method amongst underserved communities and the strong support of early literacy development through the Montessori method. The first author centers her positionality in this study as being raised on the island of Puerto Rico and learning how to read within the island’s public education system. As a child, early literacy textbooks had images and text of blond and blue-eyed children skiing down snow-capped mountain slopes, neither indicative of the experiences of a child in Puerto Rico. Therefore, the authors aimed to explore Montessori early literacy practices on the island with the goal of examining the cultural relevance of materials currently provided to children within public Montessori schools. This is a single case that is defined by two schools administrated by the same principal. This administrative oversight, leading to shared policies regarding the implementation of Montessori, defines the boundary of this case (Stake, 1995). All classrooms in both schools use the Montessori method, making them unique even with the Vieques Montessori school system's broader system.
Interviews and observations were performed in early November 2018, one year and two months after Hurricane Maria's passing. Data were collected through face-to-face-guided interviews, non-participant observations of two separate early childhood Montessori classroom environments, and recording of literacy materials provided and used.
The public Montessori school system began in Vieques, Puerto Rico, in 2006. The first public Montessori classroom environment in Vieques was created by one of the study participants, Mireya Padín (note: All names of participants (except for Mireya Padín, who requested that her name be used) and schools are pseudonyms.), with fourteen children ages three to six years old at the Maria Esther Robles school. Additional teachers were certified and added over time. All pre-primary and lower primary teachers in the two schools were invited to participate. Five teachers agreed to take part in the study. Two teachers, one in pre-primary and one in the lower primary from the same school, were selected for classroom observations, based upon their extensive experience working in the public Montessori school system in Vieques. Only two of the five teachers interviewed were selected for observation due to their disposition and willingness to be observed. The participating teachers were all Montessori-trained, and some had previous familiarity with Freire's proposal of a pedagogy of liberation. Six parents agreed to be interviewed. Participating parents were selected entirely on their interest and willingness to participate in the study and availability to be interviewed. For recruitment, the first author introduced herself and the research study to parents while they picked up their children at school. Interested parents could therefore decide if they wanted to participate. All interviews were transcribed.
Data collection
Interviews
The five Montessori teachers (referred to as ‘guides’ in Montessori settings) participated in forty-five-minute interviews. An open-ended interview style was chosen due to the complexity of early literacy as a subject matter. Questions for teachers and parents probed at literacy development practices and resources within the classroom environment and home. Parents were asked how they viewed their children's teachers' literacy practices, and teachers were asked how they viewed parents’ literacy practices. All interviews were audio-recorded after participants were assured of confidentiality and gave written consent. Interviews were conducted in the interviewees' preferred language of Spanish or English. All interviews but two were performed in Spanish.
Observation
The two classroom environments observed were in the Maria Esther Robles school. Each classroom environment had 16 children. The pre-primary classroom environment included children ages three to six years old. The primary classroom environment included children from six to nine years old. Dr. Maria Montessori found it beneficial for there to be a three-year age span in each classroom environment (Montessori, 1912).
The duration of each observation was thirty minutes. Pre-primary and primary were each observed twice. Twenty-four hours passed between each observation. These were focused on literacy lessons provided by the guides and children's interactions with the language materials. The researcher eased into the site slowly to grasp the classroom environment, discretely taking notes not to distract the children. The primary language observed in the classrooms was Spanish, although some children from the continental United States were observed speaking in English.
Data analysis
An intrinsic case study is particularization and not generalization (Stake, 1995). This study's objective was to understand the promotion of early literacy within a Vieques public Montessori context. Data were, therefore, compiled from interviews, non-participant observations, and literacy materials used.
The coding approaches were adapted from Saldaña (2015), with research questions serving as guideposts. The first codes emerged through close readings and re-readings of the transcribed texts. The first author developed the initial list of codes, including: what literacy meant to guides and parents; how literacy is supported by guides, parents, and surrounding culture; what Montessori meant to guides and parents; and impacts of Hurricane Maria. The first and second authors conferred and agreed that these codes were appropriate. The second cycle of holistic coding focused on successes, challenges, and supports in using the approach. Second cycle codes included: challenges to literacy development for guides and parents; joys in literacy development for guides and parents; resources for literacy development at home and school; how Hurricane Maria and Montessori together impacted community and resilience. The first author and second author agreed on the final coding process. The third cycle of coding was taxonomic and categorized the cultural knowledges people used within the community for literacy development. These included: riding horses to school; helping to fish as a source of income; gardening; digging water wells for new homes; and going to the beach for leisure. The following broader themes were drawn from three cycles of coding: 1) Literacy practices promoted by Montessori Guides; 2) Literacy practices promoted by parents; 3) Connections between home and school; and 4) Hurricane Maria.
Findings
Literacy practices promoted by the Montessori guides
The five guides interviewed included Mireya, Marta, and Waleska, from the Maria Esther Robles School in Esperanza and Kay and Yolanda from the Nelson Dieppa School in Puerto Real (Table 1).
Participants, Montessori guides.
According to the Montessori guides, the classroom environment and sensorially engaging materials were essential for effective literacy development. Order was apparent as an essential cornerstone of the Montessori philosophy. Materials were placed in covered baskets on wooden shelves and were organized from simple to most complex. The benefit of multiage classrooms was apparent as new children (younger and those transitioning from traditional schools) were reminded of procedures for materials by veterans about Montessori expectations.
Literacy development materials
Practices (Table 2) initiated with the letter flashcard and clustered together through to the nomenclature practice, depending on the child's progress. Presentations of materials and activities were mostly done on white cotton rugs that the children rolled and unrolled themselves, putting them back when done. The program, as is typical of Montessori programs, focused on a self-taught curriculum. Cursive was identified as the final goal in writing and described as a natural, fluid movement aligned with the children's movements. Additional materials included playdough, nonfiction books, and puzzles featuring the mainland of Puerto Rico, the small island of Vieques, and local elements of the island, such as fish and horses.
Literacy practices promoted by Montessori guides.
Materials in practice
During the school day, the guides would make ongoing connections between literacy practices and the children’s daily lives, promoting literacy as a liberating force with relevancy to the child’s context (Freire, 2010). The following observations highlight literacy as a liberating force, that supports the children in choosing generative words that support the understanding of their everyday reality.
Marta's teaching illustrates this through explicit connections to daily life and providing space for children to make connections to themselves: After singing their initial welcome songs, Marta held up a flashcard that said jueves (Thursday) and asked the children to sound out each letter. One child needed three attempts before making all the sounds for the letters in jueves. After congratulating the child, Marta stated, “When we read, we put the sounds together.” Together with their guide, the children put all the sounds together for jueves and proceeded to do the same exercise for noviembre (November). Marta stated that noviembre begins with the letter “N” and pulled out a flashcard with the letter “N” written on it in cursive. “What words begin with the letter ‘N’ she asked?” A little boy happily replied, “My name starts with the letter N!” Ivette had three small objects with the words neatly written out with the movable alphabet. She wrote down the words roca, ratón, mariposa (rock, rat, butterfly) in her notebook and took it over to Waleska, who was working with a child tracing the letter S on a sandpaper card. Waleska gently turned to look at Ivette’s work and rewrote mariposa in the little girl’s notebook. Both Ivette and Waleska read the word together. Ivette returned to her station and said in Spanish while scratching her head, “Quiero escribir pozo y sol” (I want to write water well and sun).
The student-centered pedagogies, promotion of parent involvement, and teacher engagement in public Montessori schools in Puerto Rico have significantly improved education in disadvantaged communities (Hinojosa et al., 2019). Public Montessori schools in Puerto Rico provide quality education to disadvantaged communities in higher-risk rural areas and contribute to the population and economic stabilization of communities such as Vieques (Hinojosa et al., 2019). Throughout the past decade there has been a massive depopulation within the mainland of Puerto Rico and Vieques due to its financial crisis (Hinojosa et al., 2019). This has resulted in high school closures of elementary schools. Combining children from different ages groups in a classroom is a unique feature the Montessori method offers in its self-paced curriculum and can eliminate the pressures of filling up classrooms. Indicators of improvement that have been observed throughout the island thus far are a reduction of dropout rates and increased parental and community participation in education, thus lessening the burden of communities such as Vieques, already suffering from depopulation (Hinojosa et al., 2019).
The guides suggested that this improvement in education is due to Montessori early literacy development being highly visual and kinesthetic. Children understand what letters sounds are like while touching them and feeling them, as illustrated above. Guides stated that self-directed learning resulted in children having agency over their curriculum, something that the guides recognized as necessary for the children. The guides promoted practices that reflected a pedagogy for liberation by committing themselves to the children and turning the power over to them to construct their own language (Freire, 2010).
Connections to children’s interests and adjustments to allow the incorporation of interests also supported literacy development. Kay explained how the children in her school developed an interest in reading and writing through their individual passions and interests. She recalled a child who had expressed no interest in tracing or working with language materials, but through geography had developed an interest in learning how to write:
“He was very resistant to doing any kind of tracing exercise. Instead, he just always wanted to spend his time in the geography section. I would observe him just staring at the maps for long periods of time and realized that this could be my strategy of creating an interest in literacy development. I had him begin to trace different countries on the earth’s globe and this began to awaken an interest in him to also eventually trace letters”
Literacy practices promoted by parents
The guides, particularly Yolanda and Kay, spoke in-depth on the importance of families including children in daily tasks at home. In Montessori, practical life activities in children’s homes reinforce literacy development. The child, therefore, becomes involved with everything that has to do with the home, such as helping with laundry, dinner, and/or sweeping the floor with a child-sized broom. In this study, practical life activities not only reinforces early literacy development but also encourages the child to develop a critical form of thinking about their place in the world and hence, begin to understand the reality that surrounds them (Freire, 2010). In this study, parents received encouragement from the guides to actively engage children in home life as a way of reading the surrounding world through lived experience (Shor and Friere, 1987).
The six interviewed mothers (Table 3) also emphasized this connection, stating that literacy development was highly important and should be promoted at home. Yazmin stated that literacy is everything: “You can’t communicate if you don’t have literacy skills.” Bianca echoed Yazmin’s sentiment. Katrina, who was raised by a father who did not know how to read, stated, “Literacy development can help children get ahead in life. Some of us didn't learn how to read or write in our childhood, and this can, therefore, sometimes make it challenging for parents to support their child's foundational literacy development.” Nancy, who also served as the school's Social Worker, stated, “It is challenging for someone to learn how to read if you do not take their experiences into account.” Kathy stated, “It’s important for kids to not just read but to think and ask questions about the world that surrounds them.” The mothers were able to take an active role in their children's literacy education, even if their own early literacy experiences differed.
Participants, Montessori parents.
Parents used a number of diverse practices to promote literacy (Table 4). Yazmin stated, smiling, “We make a game of it.” Yazmin shared that they sometimes do not even need to buy things and that she was able to make do with the materials that surrounded her in nature. “Sometimes, if we are outside, I have them draw me a butterfly, star, or heart with a writing rock. I will write the first letter of one word underneath the drawing and then hide until they finish that word, and we do it until we write all the words down.”
Literacy practices promoted by parents.
Bianca was fascinated with the concept of educational toys and was happy to see that her daughter likes to be read to a lot. She stated: “We have an area at home that is 100% Montessori. Everything is placed simply so that she may concentrate. I place her books with the cover clearly visible to capture her interest.” A second activity that captured her child’s interest was practicing her cursive on the sand when they would go to the beach. Katrina stated that while Kindles are fine, “I also like them to have physical books, though. I think it's important for them to touch them, feel them, and be able to turn pages.” Katrina further added that she was always involved at school to make sure her kids got what they needed. She additionally stated that she liked the process of learning as a Montessori parent.
Kathy encouraged her daughter to write letters to her friends and would let her pretend that she was a teacher while building words with scrabble letters. Kathy stated that this approach had worked much more than having her daughter sit and read. However, when sitting to read as a family, her daughter would want dad to read in Spanish and mom to read in English. An additional practice of supporting literacy development was cooking together and having her daughter read the ingredients. Through dialogue and praxis, Kathy was able to create a transformation in how she and her daughter approached literacy development, from supporting only school-like literacy tasks at home – like story reading – to including literacy tasks grounded in home life. These home practices and their recognition as legitimate means of learning reflect a pedagogy for liberation that supports co-learning and dialogue between adults and children (Freire, 2010). According to Freire (2010) the first phase of literacy is for the student to be intentionally immersed in their cultural and social context through dialogue. A pedagogy for liberation encourages the child to investigates the everyday life of the community (Freire, 2010). While the families may not have been aware of these practices as a means of supporting children's agency, they did realize that such practices were valuable.
Home and school together
The public Montessori Schools in Vieques, Puerto Rico encouraged children to participate in home life. Like Freire, Marta found that the interconnection between home and school life allowed guides to understand children’s interests while learning more about their strengths and weaknesses. What mattered most to her as an educator was how much and how fast she could learn about the students (Shor and Friere, 1987). Marta shared that when children come to her with something natural to them and of great interest, she looks up more information on the topic. “I educate myself in what interests them even if I don’t know about the subject.” Marta noted that she had learned that she could capture young children’s interest in literacy development if she presented topics that were relevant to them. Through their Montessori practices, the guides turned power over to students (Freire, 2010). Through this practice, children participated in the construction of their own early literacy development in a culturally sustaining manner.
P is for pez
Three out of five guides stated that fishing was very common on the island and that the topic emerged daily. Many of the children fish with their families for food or as an avenue of income. According to guides interviewed, children from fishing families would often find interest in learning how to read and write pez (fish). Yazmin confirmed that fishing was very tied to her family. Her son loves fishing because his grandparents were fisherpersons. She stated that he knows how to make Nasas (fish cages), though he is not yet ten years old. Katrina also stated that fishing was a family practice for her family. “We fish with my uncle at Mosquito Pier. The girls learn about how [the fish] bite, how to select the best bait, how to throw the line, and techniques for fishing.” Kathy shared that her daughter had her own fishing rod and that it was a special time for her daughter and dad.
Marta stated that at school, she learned new names and words for fish from the students. This was an investigation of the children (Shor and Friere, 1987), a process that then animated the children to study themselves, the text, and their own language and reality. “Sometimes, they'll say a name of a fish I haven't heard before when we do our flashcards,” Marta added that students love the fish puzzle that was available as a classroom material. It often served as a hook for engaging children from fishing families in developing fine motor skills necessary for writing by tracing the fish and all its main parts. She supported parents to encourage their children to build Nasas and reel in the fish with the fishing pole to support fine motor skills.
C Is for caballo
There are lots of horses in Vieques! Katrina and her children have five horses, and caring for their horses is very much an essential part of home life. Katrina shared that there are specific responsibilities and practices of caring for horses the family needed to do every day. Yazmin echoed the sentiment as her sons’ grandparents have horses and caring for them is considered family quality time. Yolanda has noticed this interest at school, stating: “It’s no wonder that they love the horse puzzle.” She added that after Hurricane Maria, a child developed a fascination with a horse miniature object in the classroom environment. The guide, therefore, utilized this as a hook to reinforce the child's literacy development and started him out with tracing the letter C for Caballo. The guide also encouraged parents to include the children in tending to the horses' hoofs as it reinforced fine motor skills. In this context, the Montessori method promoted children’s lived experiences and surrounding natural world as a useful tool in developing foundational literacy (Shor and Friere, 1987).
H is for hurricane
Although Hurricane Maria was initially not intended to be part of this research, it was a theme that emerged within most of the interviews. After the hurricane, the public Montessori Schools served as a center point for the community. Children wanted to come back to school, as their school environments offered them a strong sense of order and safety. Mireya stated that the Montessori schools opened three weeks after the hurricane, even though they were not supposed to open: “We painted the school and removed accumulated water and what had been destroyed. It was an effort from the entire community that really demonstrated the love that families and students feel for our school.”
Yolanda’s eyes welled with tears as she remembered that her classroom had been the most affected. Her classroom had lost all the windows. Yet, the community had been able to come together and figure out how to replace them. Yolanda stated that “all that we had was each other, we became a support system for the children and their big losses.” Her school was located in the mountains of the island and had experienced severe damage. Conversely, Marta, whose school was mere blocks from the ocean, stated that her students had been relieved to find no severe damage at their school.
Although the damage had differed between the two schools, both guides stated that opening the schools had created a sense of relief for the children. Yolanda recounted: “When we opened the doors to the school, the children told us everything that had happened. There were many children and guides that had lost their homes. In school, we were able to create a space that was safe for children, families, and guides. This was a big psychological help for all of us.” Mothers and guides shared that they had all worked together with a common goal of helping each other out. This improved communication between teachers and students and teachers and parents. Katrina shared how the public Montessori schools offered classes with no electricity. Together with mainland Puerto Rico, Vieques experienced the most prolonged blackout of modern U.S history (Benzal, 2018). She recounted: “For us, everything is a learning opportunity. We had a lot of damage, but we used seeds and tree twigs to trace in the dirt outside and practice our writing anyway.” Guides and mothers agreed that the Montessori philosophy's flexibility did not limit them to just books and notebooks. This flexibility and value placed on culturally sustaining practices that connected the school and home experiences allowed them to start much sooner than traditional schooling. Through the guides’ praxis, they simultaneously created history and became historical-social beings (Freire, 2010) in practicing an educational philosophy of resilience and being one of the first schools to open its doors to students after Hurricane Maria.
Discussion
Many studies tend to focus on the needs and disparity in education for culturally and linguistically underrepresented students. As a result, there is a dearth of asset-based literature pertaining to the individuals and communities identified in this study. This study focuses on these schools' success and the approach for learning that the teachers and parents utilize with the students. Although Montessori approaches are not new, this study contributes new knowledge to the ways that public schools could make use of some of the practices of Montessori schools. Unlike the traditional public education system on the island, public Montessori schools have had an increase in enrollment and demonstrated favorable results in standardized testing (Alicea, 2017). This may be due to its child-centered pedagogies, promotion of parental involvement, and support of teacher’s engagement (Hinojosa et al., 2019). This work acknowledges group-specific and culturally sustaining strengths that may have transferability to children, teachers, and parents from underserved communities (e.g., highly sensorial literacy materials and recognition of daily home life).
Finding a hook to support early literacy
Many factors contribute to children's effective early literacy development in the classroom. Knowledge cannot be presented like a corpse of information that has no living connection to children’s reality (Shor and Friere, 1987). Instead, literacy development in Montessori is viewed as a living process and the context for skill-building is built into the child’s own spoken language and experiences (Soundy, 2003). Therefore, according to the Montessori philosophy, as explained by the Montessori guides in the Vieques schools, guides are encouraged to educate themselves in their students’ interests when they are not familiar with the subject. When students arrive in a classroom mentioning names of fish that they had caught the evening before, the guide would take the time to learn more about these fish and incorporate them into the Montessori lessons. By observing cultural practices such as tending to horse hoofs, guides could find hooks that supported early literacy development. Through small adjustments to the planned curriculum and a watchful eye, the teacher can, therefore, connect children's multiple knowledge bases with the daily lesson (Tuck, 2009). The practice of drawing from children’s interest in fishing, to further early literacy development also simultaneously reinforced growth in the children’s ecological vocabulary and economic awareness. Well-trained teachers in a highly prepared classroom environment enlighten students as they develop language skills through auditory, visual, and motor skills (Montessori, 1912; Soundy, 2009) that also become useful and relevant to their everyday world (Debs and Brown, 2017).
Flowing and sensorial early literacy
While this study focuses on parents and guides literacy development practices with children, the findings address multiple hands-on resources inside and outside of the classroom (e.g., sandpaper letter, movable alphabet, fishing, horses, gardening), all contributing to children's early literacy development. Dr. Montessori noted that children began to absorb knowledge and developed a keen interest in working with materials (Montessori, 1912). As a liberating educator, children were challenged to know their actual freedom and their real power (Shor and Friere, 1987). This study suggests that the environment and sensorially engaging materials were essential for effective early literacy development. Furthermore, interactions with culturally sustaining, sensorially stimulating materials boost children’s interest and confidence in early literacy development.
Early literacy development and parental support
Findings suggest that the practice of daily living (e.g., cooking, fishing, tending to horses) shared between children and their families plays a significant role in children’s early literacy development. These findings offer important contributions to the literature on family engagement, parental support, and the enactment of a pedagogy for liberation. Participant parents in this study were not only positively influenced by the Montessori philosophy but had received a sense of permission for enjoying daily life practices with their children. Katrina stated, “There are many ways to read!” Katrina was moving beyond merely reading and writing the word to reading and writing the world and, in doing so, empowering her children (Freire, 2010). Family reading for them was focused on reading the directions of the sun, reading the ground in search of water wells, and taking care of their horses.
Family resources such as these reveal an alternate take that teachers can utilize for successful educational outcomes in underrepresented communities (Smith et al., 2014; Soutullo et al., 2016). Yazmin made do with the materials surrounding her in nature to support her children's reading and writing. Not all mothers were able to sit down daily to read to their children. However, all of them shared meaningful ways that they considered to be quality time with their children while creating interest or skill for early literacy development. None of these mothers saw their time with their children as homework, but instead time to be shared.
Home and school connections
Montessori guides consistently observed their students' interests and experiences. Thus, if a child comes in talking about the tasks that they were doing to take care of their caballo, the guide could very well present them with a sandpaper letter “c” to trace the first letter of caballo. Mireya states that the Montessori philosophy provides an enormous space to travel from Vieques to the universe through combining consciousness and respect for nature and lived experiences. Therefore, when walking through a public Montessori early childhood school in Vieques, Puerto Rico, it is not uncommon to see children tracing a map of Vieques, horses, and fish. Findings add to the growing body of literature of rich resources to be found within underrepresented communities aligned with the framework of a pedagogy for liberation.
Hurricane maria
It is important to note that the broader intention of this study was not focused on Hurricane Maria and its effects on the Vieques Montessori community. Rather, the participants themselves made a strong connection to Hurricane Maria and the Montessori philosophy as a vehicle to strengthen their school community in the aftermath of the storm. The public Montessori schools became spaces that were safe for many children, families, teachers, and guides who had lost their homes. The Montessori philosophy had prepared children, families, and guides to work with what was available. Although there was damage in both schools, children and guides used what was available (seeds and twigs) to continue developing fine motor skills. On an island shut off from the world and filled with devastation, Montessori guides circled back to the beginnings of the Montessori approach, where Dr. Montessori would observe children tracing circles with twigs in the dirt (Montessori, 1912).
This connection to using the materials available and the children’s own experiences to build educational experiences was a movement toward a pedagogy of liberation. Through praxis, the guides reflected and acted directly on the structures that needed to be transformed, constructing reality and knowledge together (Freire, 2010). The combination of reflection and action allowed Montessori guides to understand students’ and families’ necessities for safety, order, and nourishment within a space that had been completely transformed from one day to the next. Freire (2010), the humanistic educator, believed that those who commit themselves to people must re-examine themselves by pulling back and turning the power over to students so that they could construct their own languages. By considering the supportive relationships that children, guides, and families created in adversity, an emphasis was given to the educational community’s agency in overcoming barriers in efforts of educational achievement. It was a limitation of the study that only two observations were done in the observed classroom environments. This was necessary due to the availability of the sites. Prolonged engagement in the classroom environments may have led to stronger interconnections between early literacy development and the surrounding island.
Conclusion
This case study illustrates ways in which teachers and parents support early literacy achievement in the public Montessori School System of Vieques, Puerto Rico. As a community that has been often overlooked by both the mainland of Puerto Rico and the United States (Wilcox, 2001), the Montessori community within Vieques aligned itself with the Montessori philosophy of community and the importance of strong early literacy development. Educational institutions must move away from a deficit-thinking model of families to an assets-based model that acknowledges, values, and embraces the rich literacies of non-mainstream parents (Ortiz and Ordonez, 2005). Findings from this study suggest that the program has substantial benefits and should remain an educational option that is fully available to communities throughout Puerto Rico.
Culturally sustaining policies are needed to facilitate the implementation of teaching practices and curriculums that include the literacies and cultural ways of being for both those underserved and socially advantaged. School administrators can promote an assets-based school culture that strongly connects literacy achievement and children's home experiences with an active community and family participation. This can be promoted through professional development that offers training for teachers to further their skills in affirming the cultures and languages that children bring to school as valuable resources for learning.
The primary significance of this study is that it suggests that literacy has the potential to meet people's most vital needs and to stimulate social, cultural, political, and economic participation in underserved groups to address crime and a struggling economy (Fransman, 2006). This study highlights evidence that, when strictly implemented, Montessori education fosters academic skills that are equal or superior to those in traditional schools (Lillard and Else-Quest, 2006). Furthermore, within a Freirean lens, the public Montessori school system recognizes children and their parents as active agents who can transform their social, financial, and political world (Freire, 2010; Shor and Friere, 1986) through literacy development. Within this transformational pedagogy, the schools serve as a response to the massive school foreclosures and the need for culturally sustaining pedagogy. Children of Puerto Rico have the right to a quality education that acknowledges their environmental and cultural surroundings within the curricula. Through access to public Montessori schools, children can learn to read the word and the world, leading the way into a brighter social, financial, and political future for Puerto Rico.
