Spirit in Action
Julie Harnisch/Children's House Montessori School
Julie Harnisch has been a teacher, administrator and advocate for Children's House Montessori School of Eau Claire, Wisconsin since 1980.
- Duration:
- 59m
- Broadcast on:
- 20 Nov 2005
- Audio Format:
- mp3
I have no hands but yours to tend my sheep. No handkerchief but yours to dry the eyes of those who weep. I have no arms but yours with which to hold. The ones grown weary from this struggle and weak from growing old. I have no hands but yours with which to see. To let my children know that I am out and out is everything. I have no way to feed the hungry souls. No clothes to give and to give the ragged and the morn. So be my heart, my hand, my tongue, through you all will be done. Fingers have I none to help I'm done. Tangle marks and twist and change the strength of your full mind. Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeet. Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Above all, I'll seek out light, love and helping hands, being shared between our many neighbors on this planet. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. I have no way to open people's eyes, except that you will show them how to trust the inner mind. My guest today on Spirit in Action is Julie Harness. Julie has been a teacher, administrator and advocate for Children's House Montessori School of Eau Claire, Wisconsin since 1980. Children's House students are primarily from at risk or low-income families in Eau Claire, mixing races, cultures and socio-economic levels in a fertile place to grow and learn. Julie grew up as an American Baptist but finds her inspiration and support primarily in the experience and inspiration of Montessori education. Good morning, Julie. Welcome to Spirit in Action. Good morning, Mark. I'm happy to be here. I'm glad you could take the time off from the Children's House Montessori School to come over here and visit with us. What are the children doing right now? They're finishing their morning. They've been busy having an active morning and ending it with story and be ready for lunch at 1130. Do you serve them lunches or do they do that on their own? They bring bag lunches or home lunches. We do have a family-style lunch eating. We hire a cook and have a nutritious lunch for all the children and they learn manners and to pass the food. I think a number of our listeners may not really have much idea of what Montessori School is like. Can you give us a little bit of the history of Montessori and what it is here in Eau Claire? Yes. There was a lady named Rhea Montessori, the first female physician in Italy, and after the 1900s began, she was commissioned by the government of Italy to take care of the young children in the tenement homes in the Roman slums. She built what she called Casa de Bambini. She set up children's houses for them. The parents needed to leave in the industrial revolution and work long days, and the children were left by themselves. And she devised, she observed, experimented, and devised her Montessori method where the children could become independent and happy and learn and take care of themselves and learn from each other. So how is that different than other schools? What is the significant difference that makes Montessori School different from a mainline school? Montessori education tends to empower the learner way more. Rhea Montessori taught us through all of her writing and her teaching courses that the environment can actually be prepared ahead of time. The opportunities that are needed for the child to develop correctly can be there in the environment, and she called it didactic learning materials, materials which can be manipulated. Montessori always has mixed ages, so there's always peer teaching, there's always collaborative learning, and the environment itself is way more significant than in our public school systems and parochial school systems. So if I understand correctly, instead of the learning coming out of a book, it comes from your environment, not to say they aren't books present, but you have something to play, manipulate, work with as opposed to hear, read about it in a book? Yes, that's right. That was what you just said was music to my ears. The Montessori teaching staff puts a lot of time and energy into preparing the environment. We observe the children, we set up separate curriculum areas, and we observe for the needs of the children, and whatever their needs are, we make sure that there's an activity available for them to meet that need. When you step into a Montessori classroom, you can always see the counting, the alphabet, sensorial materials to manipulate. You can actually see a place where there are maps and globes, and you can see an area that is open-ended art, and you would always see interaction between the children and the materials. So we feel like we as Montessori teachers are much more indirect with the children. They learn more from the materials and each other than perhaps from we the adult teacher. Is there insistence on a certain student-teacher ratio? It sounds to me like a lot of this can be or is self-directed. Do you need to have one teacher for ten children, or what's the norm? We are licensed by the state of Wisconsin, and our children's house Montessori School in Eau Claire chose to become accredited by the biggest early childhood association, which is called NACI, N-A-E-Y-C, the National Association for the Education of Young Children. So through the accreditation and licensing process, we are given mandated ratios of child staff, and we have always followed those and found that they work well to be able to individualize. About what ratio do you work with? It is by age, the younger the child, the smaller the group. When we did infants, it was three infants to one adult. When they're toddlers, you have six. And with our mixed ages of two to five-year-olds in Eau Claire, it's one adult for about eight children. We pro-rate and multiply fractions to get our child staff ratio. So what does a teacher, what does a staff person do in a Montessori school? If they're not writing notes on the blackboard and telling people, "Here's what you have to, you know, do examples one, three, four, five, and turn in your homework by Friday," what kind of interaction are you actually conducting with the kids? I really like your questions. The Montessori teacher does not do a typical type of lesson plan where we write that Susie needs to learn A through F next Tuesday. Montessori teachers become experts in normative child development. We become expert observers. As I mentioned earlier, we put our effort into fixing the environment so that the child will have just what they need to learn right in front of them. And then we can entice them to want to manipulate that material. It's somewhat eclectic type of being nacy accredited. We also read the best of children's literature to them every day. We also use rhythm instruments. We do all sorts of things that everyone visualizes in early childhood education. What we do that is special is put all of our energy into fixing the environment. And when I say environment, I mean more than the physical space. We think about the temporal environment. We think about are there too many transitions for the child? Does a schedule meet their bio rhythm? We think about the interpersonal environment, the effective domain and is the atmosphere, the psychological atmosphere, respectful, peaceful, cooperative so children are really stimulated to learn. The little boy went first day of school. He got some cranes and he started to draw. He put colors all over the paper for colors was what he saw. And the teacher said, "What's he doing, young man?" "I'm painting flowers," he said. She said, "It's not the time for our young man. And anyway flowers are green and red there. The time for everything young man and the rage have been done. You've got to show concern for everyone else or you're not the only one." And she said, "Flowers are a young man and green leaves are green. There's no need to see flowers any other way than the way they always have been changed." But the little boy said, "There are so many colors in the rainbow, so many colors in the morning sun, so many colors in the flower, and I see everyone." The teacher said, "You're sassy, there's ways that things should be. And you'll paint flowers the way they are, so weepy after me." And she said, "Flowers are a young man and green leaves are green. There's no need to see flowers any other way." And the other way, then the way they always have been seen. But the little boy said, "There are so many colors in the rainbow, so many colors in the morning sun, so many colors in the flower, and I see everyone." The teacher put him in the corner, she said, "For your own good, and you won't come out 'til you get it right, and I'll respond to you like you should." Well finally he got lonely, bright and tough, and then this hit, and he went up to the teacher, and this is what he said. And he said, "Flowers are red, and green leaves are green. There's no need to see flowers any other way than the way they always have been seen." [music] Time went by like it always does, and they moved to another town. And the little boy went to another school, and this is what he found. The teacher there was smiling, she said, "Painting should be fun." And there were so many colors in the flower, so let's use everyone. But that little boy painted flowers, and he'd rose and green and red. And when the teacher asked him why, this is what he said. And he said, "Flowers are red, and green leaves are green. There's no need to see flowers any other way than the way they always have been seen." [music] I've only met you one time previously, Julie, but I have a sense that this is not a job for you, that it's a life path. And those things I associate with a spiritual basis in one's life. Is this just a job for you? Is it something that you get to go home from and say, "Okay, good. I hope I can retire soon?" My husband is in the woods right now, but if he were in the room, he would say, "This is her life. This is her total commitment in life. It's been my journey to make sure that children, and especially children at risk, have a respectful place to learn that they're empowered. That differences are pointed out as okay and common egalitarianism, all of those values that I grew up with. It has been important to me to share with the children, and so my retired from the state husband now jokes that I'm also retired in that I only work about 40 to 50 hours a week now. Tell me a little bit about your history with Montessori. Is this what you grew up dreaming that you'd be? Is that what you studied for in school, or did you study to become a tennis star? I sure do like tennis. I grew up in a family of six children, and I was the oldest daughter. I have an older brother. My father was a laborer at Uniroil Tire Company. My mother had been trained as a skilled secretary and chose to be home with the children, and I realized now what wonderful values I was rooted in. We shared parenting. I was well raised for how I turned out. I was able to help raise all my other brothers and my other one sister. We had a very, very happy home life and traveled together, camped together, and so I do feel like I'm back to my roots working with these children. I went to college and got a degree in working with special needs children, and I found that very rewarding. And then when I became married and had two sons of my own and brought them to children's house, Montessori, and Eau Claire, that was when I did the full conversion to Montessori, when I saw its wonderful effects on my two sons. Did you teach in another environment with special needs children, or elsewhere? Yes, I did. In the 70s, I taught in a public school system back when special-ed children were isolated into a separate room. I had young preschool-age special needs children. Did that for seven years. Why did you take your sons to be part of Montessori school? That's a good question too. When I taught the preschool special needs children, it happened that this was in a very small community, and it was a rural, low-income classroom of special needs children. I struggled to get the psychological atmosphere I needed to empower them, even though they had special needs to learn. I started searching for ways to help myself help them, and I discovered some Montessori materials. I had some Montessori materials in my classroom way back then in the early 70s, and so when I had my own two sons, I started checking into Montessori and found the Montessori school, and knew that my sons would really feel respected there, and that it would be a very nice place for them to spend a half a day. Just never really left there. Did the fact that Montessori, at least in its authentic original form, reaches beyond class. It's not an upper-class institution. It's not like buying a private tutor for your kids or something. Did that have something to do with why you chose Montessori and why you feel such a passion for it? Yes, I realized I lived and was raising my two sons in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and there wasn't a lot of multiculturalism as in a big city, but that was a very important reason to have them grow up with children of other cultures and with a broad awareness of that. I want to go back to your own childhood. I want to go back to the times that you grew up. Were you part of a church growing up? Yes, my family were members of First Baptist Church in Eau Claire, and I remember well sitting with my mom and dad. We would usually sit near the back because we would have younger children that would make noise. And I went through all the Sunday school system. I sang in the choir and high school and college, even in the state Baptist Children's Association and things. And what values or attitudes did you receive and which ones maybe did you reject from that upbringing? I guess I've not really pondered a lot about it. My parents relocated to California. When I became married and my two young sons weren't enjoying the experience of church so much, I started realizing that maybe the organized part of church wasn't meeting our needs the best way. I guess that parts of the Baptist upbringing really didn't fit me totally right and that I was a part of it to please my parents. I suppose you're at the age where that's not a major consideration at this point. What I am curious about are if there's any values or attitudes that were particularly important, helpful. It's apparent to me that you love children. I'm not sure if that's just something that you got at home by raising your brothers and sisters. Or whether it's something that is part of some other wider community, your family, the neighborhood you grew up in, the church you went to, the schools you went to. I'm only aware of my love of children in nature coming from my family experience, but it's an interesting question for me to ponder more. Every family reunion I went to all of my life, I would always be with the younger children. I would be organizing them into fun games. Just all of my life I have been very interested in young children and animals and showing the most respect possible for them. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] May your feet be sure your heart be strong, lift your face to the store and wet your tongue. If you're not where you go, it's where you're from. Welcome little one, welcome, welcome little one, creation's wonder, daughters, sons, heaven be gifted of human thought. Welcome little one, as you fly up light a butterfly, embrace the cocoon that gives you life. We who love you will be your guide. Welcome to this life, welcome, welcome little one, creation's wonder, daughters, sons, heaven be gifted of human thought. Welcome little one, you'll raise for you and you'll raise for birth and life, death and decay, life's circle dance, come join come land, life to life again. Welcome, welcome little one, creation's wonder, daughters, sons, heaven be gifted of human thought. Welcome little one. [MUSIC] When I was in college, I took a class, minority poor education, and as part of that class, I spent some time, a couple weeks at an inner city school in Milwaukee, and I also attended for just a couple days, a Montessori school in Waukesha, where my college was. I would describe the Montessori school there as, I think it was for upper class people. I think it was for people who had enough money to shell out for it. It was an amazing place to watch the children learning. There's no question in my mind, but that was good, but I recognized a dramatic difference between what they learned, how they learned, and what the kids in the inner city schools were learning. My question is, does Montessori in general in the United States reach out to well off people, or is it something that's for the common folks too? That is my perspective as well, as I've traveled around, I have been aware of too many Montessori schools in the United States located in the upper class suburbs. It hasn't felt right to me. The proper "historical origin" of Montessori was with low-income children, and that was my journey. Even in Eau Claire, when I became a teacher at Children's Host Montessori, the majority of the population in the 70s and 80s were the families who could shell out. As you said, Mark, it was a conscious journey from me and the board to make sure that there was equal access for all families and all children. Montessori just works well with different socioeconomic levels and different learning styles and all of that. I feel that the at-risk families and children are the ones who really prosper and have a chance to start school, the public school on an equal basis. How do you go about getting that equal access? What I've witnessed is people of means generally have the education and the resources to go out there and search down the good schools and make sure that their kids get all the opportunities. Generally, people of low-income with less education don't know how to avail themselves of a lot of those resources. So how do you reach out and connect to them? It's been a very interesting emotional journey for Children's Host Montessori School. During the 1980s, we became the first partner with the Head Start Agency here. We struggled with that, that we felt at home. We met all the Head Start performance objectives and everything, but they weren't really recruiting for us. So for our population to change with now a preponderance of low-income children has been a struggle for us. It has been a slow happening, I believe in my heart, through word of mouth from satisfied at-risk families who told their friends and coworkers that we were a good place to have their friends' children come. I grew up in a large family and fairly low income, but in a town that was relatively well off on average, so I felt like I was in the lower class, if you will. And yet I probably identify myself as maybe upper-middle class now, not based on my income, but by my education level. And I say this just to confess that there is still a discomfort I have sometimes amongst low-income people, less command of the language, less resources. There are various, some stereotypical and some experiential differences I see. Do you find parents, mainline parents, who don't want their kids to be around under-educated kids from a bad home? As our journey progressed, we did, in fact, deal with what we felt was bigotry. We did have families who chose to take their child out of our children's house, Montessori School, so that their child would not get lice or learn to swear. It was a very emotional journey, but we also learned that a lot of good things happened too. The people that stuck with us helped us really catapult as well. There are a lot of good people in our society who believe in anti-bias education and multiculturalism and equal rights and all of that. So since 2000, we've maintained the 70% at risk percentage in our population, but every month we have a family event and all the families come together. We don't have events for Head Start families and then different events for private pay families, a family, a child, a child. And we have done a lot of staff development in terms of family support. That's been an interesting challenge to obtain grants and everything so that our staff can be taught how to support the family, the best way how to empower the family so that the child wins. Well, Claire is changing a bit, but when I first moved up here in '88, it was pretty much vanilla white territory. Do you get a better mix of the races and the cultures in your school? We do have a 31-year history of having more of a mix, I believe, than a lot of the other traditional child care centers. I can remember when I first became associated with children's host Montessori school, we needed to solicit people from the university. We would have a Japanese Foreign Exchange student come and share their culture, that sort of thing. And then as the '80s moved on in the '90s, we were able to get some different cultures enrolled in our population and it makes the school very, very interesting. Julie, are you the administrator for the school or are you a teacher or what role do you play in the school and how many staff are there? We run with a full-time staff of about six adults. Our payroll, however, is around 20 people. We have all sorts of supported employees who come and go for an hour or two at a time, helping us with the maintenance of all the environments. We have an office person, we have some part-time staff that come just to play with the children on the playground each day, that sort of thing. But the actual core teaching staff is six, and I fill out all the reports as the administrator, but we also have developed an administrative teaching team, which our staff really likes. We have three of us who teach 50% of the time and share the administration part. I think that that could be found possibly in other Montessori programs too, where the teachers also share the administration. It is not real common in a Montessori school to see a director that's only in the office. And why is that? Is that part of the values that Montessori wants to inculcate in the environment? I do believe so, and maybe I should write something up on that and publish it, because I don't think enough is written about it. But in Montessori teacher training, accredited Montessori teacher training, it is mandated that the Montessori teacher preparers also teach young Montessori children. And so that is how it came that I taught Montessori children in our Montessori school. I drove to the College of St. Catharines and taught teachers how to be Montessori teachers, and it was a natural flow then for us in Eau Claire to have a teaching administrative team. I was just kind of wondering, Julie, if it's some kind of a come down to not be the big boss. There's a lot of people who want to climb the ladder so that they become the CEO, head administrator, president. I think that you are president for the Nonprofit Corporation. Is it a little bit like dirtying your hands, slumming as they say, to be out there working with the students? The highest compliment that I can be given happens every now and then. I will be at the mall and a family will come over and greet me, a Montessori family. And the parents will have a hard time recognizing me because when they see me, I'm always at the level of the child. When they see me, I'm in the Montessori classroom on the floor with their child. And then to see me standing up, 5'7" walking in the mall, I don't look as familiar to them. True authentic Montessori people favor being at the level of the child and in all aspects being at the level of the child. So that's where I feel at home. It is not a come down at all. It is an honor for me to be at the level of the child. I have a very interesting sideline of teaching at UW Stout. Every Monday I teach the administration of early childhood programs class and it always was taught previously by someone who only was in an office. And it's been a very interesting part of my job to get the college seniors and graduate students to realize that the class isn't about me, Julie Harnish and what I know. That I'm not going to come every Monday and spoon feed them, but that I am also going to empower them to learn and shine and advocate for early childhood. It sounds like this is an important part of your values. And it sounds kind of, well, it seems very counter-cultural that you're not invested in wanting to be the head honcho to get rid of the common duties and just have the power duties. Is this part of your own spiritual values or is it a part of the values of Montessori or is it just both? It's probably both, but I'm goose bumping all over my body to hear you say that. I do spend, I'm thinking, I'm guessing, 15% of my time, 10 to 15% of my time I spend in advocacy for early childhood. I'm a member of all the associations. I have direct communications with all the senators, representatives, the governor. I view myself as a powerful person for early childhood because I can relate to them at their level and change a diaper when it's needed and support the natural development of young children. I will admit that a part of my advocacy is for equal wage. Early childhood people do not earn enough money. And I have put a lot of effort into that. I am one of the people that led the entire five-year movement here in Eau Claire for four-year-old programming with the public schools because in my heart connecting with the public schools is only going to make child care more professional and hopefully raise the income. There's a couple who used to be part of the Quaker meeting here in Eau Claire who when they had children at home and they're both professional people, they were hiring child care at home and they insisted on paying a living wage for their child care. What they told me was they can't think of a more important function in their home than how their kids are treated, the care given to the children, and to give this off to a minimum wage person did not seem like they were offering the proper care and incentive for the care of their children. How do you react to that idea? I'm goose bumping again. Our experience at Children's House Montessori School ended in closing our infant toddler room because we wouldn't consider having an infant toddler Montessori teacher who had less than a master's degree in early childhood, working with the most important years of life, birth to three, and we found we could not break even. We could not pay a fair wage to a teacher with a master's degree and license to teach. You just can't collect enough money to break even. So that was a hard reality for us to let our infants and toddlers graduate into our preschool and not replace them. We have been lucky Children's House Montessori School because of the teacher training programs and because we are viewed as an alternative type of education, we have been so blessed with committed staff who have not been paid what they should be paid, but they have stayed with us. We have staff who average 9-10 years working with us instead of the normal turnover in early childhood. Our staff tend to stay with us because they feel it's a benefit to work in the environment that is so peaceful and cooperative. The benefit of giving to other children and families, I guess, has meant more to them than the money, and I do want to stress that we are always striving to find ways to increase the pay of our staff. We have a very professional, competent, experienced staff, and so we keep forming partnerships such as the one with a school district, such as our partnership with Head Start, and we're always seeking grants, anything we can do to help raise the income level. Is it clear to you why you do this job? I mean, you've clearly put in a major part of your life energy there. What root values are you feeding in doing this? Is it patriotism? Is it specific, just love of children? Is it your concept of how the society would be most healthy? I'm really trying to find out what values underline your obviously deep commitment to this work. I did have a lifelong journey of awareness of all the unfair isms, and I'm still trying to find out why I feel so at home helping equalize everyone's opportunity. As I have aged, it is so apparent to me how it is harder and harder to raise a family. Society seems to be going in the wrong direction in so many ways, and so it just makes me feel so good to maintain the high quality of children's house in Montessori school and know that so many families and children are nurtured and supported. Being significant in the lives of children and families who are at risk has been my life, and I've been blessed with other staff who have joined this. My parents raised me, we would pick up a blind man and bring him to church every Sunday. There was a neighbor lady who was physically impaired that we would always check on. I guess I know no other life than helping people who are willing to accept it. When you were talking about the class you're teaching over at Stout, it seemed to me that you were saying that you use Montessori methods as you're teaching that class. And previously I've been exposed to Montessori, I've always thought it was just for children up to the age of five or six or something like that. Is Montessori applied over a wider age range than I thought? Yes, it is. We always have to keep the frame of mind that perhaps it's too often available to only upper middle class, but there are Montessori elementary schools, there are Montessori middle schools, there are Montessori high schools, and there's a St. Nicholas Montessori College in Ireland outside of Dublin. Montessori is applicable to all ages, it works well. I visited in the Twin Cities many years ago a Montessori adult program for refugees. Montessori works well with all ages. Where do you get your support, the continuing, where with all, to do this heavy work and large number of hours year after year? I take it it's not the money that's supporting you, that is buying you, you know, Bahama vacations in order to decompress after working 60 hour weeks endlessly. Where do you get your support, is there community, is there family, is there friends that are particularly important in making you able to sustain this in the long run? It's a difficult question to answer. My parents would say it's the Norwegian stubbornness in me to persevere and go on and work harder with every challenge that I've met. I have somehow been gifted with the attitude to keep my chin up and keep trudging on. I feel that I have the support of my family, my husband has been very supportive, being retired, he helps haul in all the groceries and helps with maintenance of the school. I've maintained some staff whose commitment has supported me through this. I'm a member of the American Montessori Society and early childhood associations. One of my sustaining relief measures I believe too is just staying current with cutting edge research and early childhood and being so fascinated by how far ahead of her time Maria Montessori was. So my master's thesis in 2000 was showing how Maria Montessori was dead on on all the current brain research. How long has this Montessori school been running in Eau Claire? When was it first created and does it have prospects going well into the future? It began in 1974 with one little classroom and it has sustained itself. We've been in four locations leasing from four different churches. It is built to an enrollment of around 75 children, has been the highest and it is a very uncertain future to sustain a program we perhaps could not. We're not guaranteed to stay where we're leasing right now. We have no capital fund or anything so our future will never be certain to have a space, the space we need to run this really important program. I wanted to ask a little bit more about you personally. Before the interview began you told me that you were a very dedicated tennis player. Talk to me about your history with tennis where you are a high school star. Aspiring a high school star but I did really enjoy as a young, a teenager young adult playing tennis year round and entering tournaments. I won the tournament. I scored the point when I severed my ACL ligament in my knee but tennis was a passion. I still love playing tennis to this day. It was interesting for me to try to figure out why when I have a tennis racket in my hand why do I feel so competitive when the entire rest of my life. I thrive on peacefulness and serenity and respect and humility. I guess it balances something out. Do you have competitive or cooperative games or any of those kind of things in the monastery school? Is that part of your curriculum? Our children off and on are very active and playful but the games are all non-competitive. Anything we play if we're playing duck duck goose type of game every child gets a turn and that sort of thing. There just is not a way that I can think of with Montessori to use competition. Is that your way of ensuring that none of them become tennis stars greater than you were? Good point. I guess that moderation balance is what's important and even preschool children need to experience and feel time management and those sorts of balances in their life if they're going to have the hope of a fulfilled adulthood. [music] [music] [music] [music] You talked earlier, Julie, about the way our society is going with respect to families and kids that it's going towards the crazy end and not towards the healthful end. What's your idea of what a healthy society would look like? I certainly have heard people complain for decades now about the over-scheduling of our children. What would a healthy society not only kid level but at parent level and maybe in terms of what the staff of a Montessori school, what their lives would look like? What would be healthy? Just think of how family life has changed just in the last generation. When I think about I put myself through college, got my first teaching job, paid cash for a brand new car, and had a loan payment for a house. Now my two sons are married and I am blessed with a grandson from each one of my sons and it is day and night different. I, as their mother, had the choice to stay home and nurture them when they were young, my daughter-in-laws do not have that choice nowadays. Nowadays, too many families have to have two wage earners and that sort of thing, so there are too many pressures on family life. Unfortunately, it seems like women and children are suffering the most from it. Are there other broad societal values that you think are unhealthy for the way that we raise our children? A part of my commitment and stay power with Montessori has been based on the fact that Maria Montessori in the early 1900s wrote a book about if children between the ages of birth to six. If they were treated with respect, if they lived with equality in all sorts of ways, she wrote in the early 1900s that there would be no war. If we could raise an entire generation of children feeling respected, knowing what humility, empathy, respect, compassion, if they could grow up between birth and age six, she wrote there would never be another war. I truly, truly think that that's what keeps me authentically at the heart of children's house Montessori, maintaining its high quality of services to the children and family in our area that society somehow seems to have gotten away from those basic rights of life to be treated equally and fairly with humility and justice for all. It's a core value I was raised with as a young child. I tried to raise my two sons and I can see that my sons are struggling now to teach their sons the same. They're not seeing it. They're teaching something that isn't modeled enough for them. I think that Montessori schools are not an American phenomenon. I think they're worldwide phenomenon. Are there countries with particular concentrations where it's really caught on and that more of the society is affected by this kind of schooling? Yes, it's very, very interesting to look on the internet and see how many Montessori schools are available throughout Europe, Asia, Australia. Montessori schools are all around the world and perhaps have more of a mix of socioeconomic levels everywhere else than in America. Is there any country that you can think of that comports itself as if a lot of its children were raised by Montessori methods that really reflects the values that are engendered by the Montessori education? I would want to guess that Asia perhaps signifies it the most to my understanding. They just seem to have the awareness of how important the early years are and yet now that I am hearing myself talk, I'm thinking about European countries such as Sweden, France, the countries that we're aware of now that the government has made family leave possible and there are much more family-friendly governments in Europe than perhaps what we're living with here in the United States, but I have learned enough about a lot of Asian cultures really value opportunity in early childhood too. Last year when Howard Dean was in Eau Claire, I heard him speak about early childhood education and he said a key point in his platform was that that's where we have to take care of the kids, that by taking care of the kids at that point will prevent all kinds of horrible things that happen later. Were you a Dean supporter? Yes, yes, yes, I was. I've been trying to stay abreast of the, you know, to just put it in monetary figures. I'll print out all the research I can find on every dollar spent on early childhood. The study I printed out that has the highest figure says for every dollar spent on early childhood education, $17 is saved later on where we don't need to do special education, remediation is saved through not being in the juvenile delinquency court plus that they become good wage earners and citizens. So we have proof that early childhood education does pay for itself and yes, we do need politicians to be more sensitive to it. Are you going to keep on doing this job until you're 100 years old or is there a time when you can actually foresee that you might retire? I am thinking that I can possibly keep affecting good high quality early childhood education if my body becomes too arthritic to sit on the floor with children. I hopefully can keep making my ripples and waves by doing teacher education and professional development for early childhood people. I don't picture retirement where I'm golfing and playing tennis only. Retirement will include playing tennis, won't it? Yes, it will with that brace on my left knee. If people want to learn more about Montessori, if they want to learn something about children's house Montessori school here, if they want to help out, if they want to offer you a new building to move into, how could they contact you? We've started a web page, so our initials of children's house Montessori school are our website CHMSEC.org. So I'll repeat that CHMSEC.org, children's house Montessori school Eau Claire.org. And we just have the home page and we have lots of plans for developing a website where we can disseminate lots of good information for families. In the phone book you can call children's house Montessori school, we lease from St. Pat's school building. We sure would welcome looking at any new type of partnership or collaboration that could help us move forward with any financial security. Do you accept volunteers there if they haven't had training in Montessori? Yes, there are all sorts of ways that people can read to children and that sort of thing. With licensing regulations, we have the minimal things we need to do such as a criminal record check, that sort of thing, and it's quite easy to get past that. I want to thank you Julie for taking the time to talk with me. Thanks for caring for the children, for all of the children of Eau Claire and making a difference for our country. You're very welcome. It was very easy to sit here and talk about my journey and my goals and my life, so thank you Mark. It's been fun. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin. Early one morning, Peter opened the gate and went out into the big green meadow. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] On a branch of a big tree, sat a little bird, Peter's friend. All is quiet, all is quiet, chirped the bird, Gailie. [MUSIC] My guest today on Spirit in Action was Julie Harnish of Children's House Montessori School in Eau Claire. Music on this program included Flowers Are Red by Harry Chapin, Welcome Little One by Carol Johnson, and a couple of songs that are played frequently at Children's House Montessori, including Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from the Nutcracker, and an excerpt from Peter and the Wolf. You can find more information about this program and other programs, as well as listen to them via the Internet at northernspiritradio.org. The theme music for Spirit in Action is "I Have No Hands but Yours" by Carol Johnson. Thank you for listening. I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. You can email me at helpsmeet@usa.net. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. I have no higher cause for you than this. To love and serve your neighbor, enjoy in selflessness. To love and serve your neighbor, enjoy in selflessness. Music on this program. Music on this program.
Julie Harnisch has been a teacher, administrator and advocate for Children's House Montessori School of Eau Claire, Wisconsin since 1980.