So, so what does it mean for schools to really stand for the child, the divinity, the, the, the worthiness of each child?

I mean, it's, it's a huge question because I think it's, it's gonna come in at every level of interaction, the way that we interact with each other as adults, the way we, we educate people about what Montessori schools do, what's gonna be expected of parents who buy into this particular model, and then also in each of the small moments with children.

And I think we do have these pressures around us.

The, this, the struggle that I f- I feel like is also erosive to our persistence as teachers is that each one of those metrics, because we know that the work that we're doing is so important, we know that we're creating the next generation, what is it that makes us think that we want them to be more like us, right? Like, that's where this kind of ties into my thinking around the spiritual preparation of teachers.

I think that this comes from a place of such fear that what if it's, what if we do it wrong, right? So we rely on the standards and on the external validation because it gives some, like, comfort to us that, okay, maybe I haven't actually served that child's full needs, but I have taught them how to read a grade level above benchmark before they were six, right? And so there's a, we, we buy into these different measurements of our own value and success because we can hold them in our hands.

We see them, right? It requires so much more trust to say, "I am really going to," you know, the, when we talk in Montessori about, um, looking at the child who's not yet there, that I'm looking at the world that's not yet there.

I'm looking at my own future practice as a teacher that's not yet there.

... and believe what you're saying is we're stepping away from the work which we know is part of their self-construction into who they came here to be.