Parenting with Intention

by Cindy Acker

“One love, one heart. Let’s get together and feel all right.”

Do you recall that Bob Marley song? When I visit my daughter (Jenn) and son-inlaw (Patrick), it is typical that I hear some version of reggae or Bob Marley playing before I go home (even perhaps in his chiropractic office). It is with intention that they move in life, down to the music they listen to. Pat even renamed his chiropractic office in Seattle to reflect being intentional in life—it is called Conscious Chiropractic. I often tell myself that I want to grow up to be like Jenn and Pat, being so intentional about everything that I do. I have found myself of late, borrowing the words from Bob Marley’s song, when the information on the news or on The Rachel Maddow Show is just more than the heart needs to bear: “One love, one heart … Let’s get together and feel all right.”

Montessori education is respected in research for its strength in the sciences, including social sciences and mathematics. Montessori is a science-based method of responding to the developmental and educational needs, challenges, and abilities of children. Compatible with brain-based, multi-sensory teaching, Montessori education maintains more focus on critical thinking and mastery of skills, and less focus on test-outcome teaching. And it is a method of education in which the arts and sciences are not diametrically opposed. There

The miraculous thing is that Montessori education combines this science-based educational methodology with—of all things, peace education. One would think they have no connection. However, if one can be so creative as to design solutions to complex math and science problems, one can create solutions to environmental challenges, disease, and war.

is an exactness involved in Montessori education that can be confusing when you watch it, until you understand that there are building blocks that have to do with pure science, and with spatial recognition—what goes

where, and how do you go from there, how does this fit. From critical thinking to expressive reasoning, the mind can go in many different directions, when adults don’t direct it, and this gives rise to creativity.

But the miraculous thing is that Montessori education combines this science-based educational methodology with—of all things, peace education. One would think they have no connection. However, if one can be so creative as to design solutions to complex math and science problems, one can create solutions to environmental challenges, disease, and war.

This makes Montessori education a unique pedagogy. It is a complex scientifically based methodology, which responds to the entire being of the child— from how the brain responds to stimuli via many different modalities, to the psychological development of the human being, which directly responds to the brain’s ability to take in knowledge. And peace resonates with the brain: it feeds it; it nourishes it. When the brain is positively engaged, there is more access to complex reasoning, more internal space to take a step back and do more—more pathways in the brain to create different solutions, to look behind you, then ahead to see where things are going, to observe, reflect, hypothesize, to see the causal effects of things.

When you think about it, many acts of violence happen in a moment when the brain perseverates over anger. Think about the result of engaged children who are so interested in what they are learning, who from toddler age on, are challenged to discover the joys of geography, geometry, history, science, and the arts. Think about the result of older children being in the living laboratory of the classroom, where children are encouraged to think about what they are thinking about.

The other natural extrapolation that occurs within an atmosphere bounded by peace on all sides, is that both love and gratitude become “brain changers.” In Greater Good Magazine, Joshua Brown and Joel Wong share gratitude research and its effect on the brain. They randomly divided participants into three groups. They asked one group to write one letter of gratitude to someone every week for three weeks; the second group was asked to write their deepest negative thoughts and experiences; and the third group had no assignment. Of the groups who wrote, those who wrote gratitude letters reported significantly better mental health for 4 weeks and then 12 weeks after the exercise was over.

What was interesting, was the research that followed. The group that wrote the gratitude letters was compared with the group that did no letter writing to find out if their brains were processing differently. “Most interestingly,” they posited, “when we compared those who wrote the gratitude letters with those who didn’t, the gratitude letter writers showed greater activation in the medial prefrontal cortex when they experienced gratitude in the MRI scanner. This is striking as this effect was found three months after the letter writing began. This indicates that simply expressing gratitude may have lasting effects on the brain.”

If this is true, being centered in love, grounded in peace and bounded in gratitude, we model a life strengthening gift for our children—as parents, at home; as teachers in the classroom; as school leaders in our schools.

If it is true that the arc of history bends toward justice we must extrapolate; if the arc of gratitude and love is long, it must bend towards peace. In our classrooms, we want our students to be engaged and joyful; to learn and play; to hold solid values and to stand up for what is right. To be intentional and attentional. To be caring and kind. To be, as Bob Marley says: “One love, one heart.” In our world now, we must learn and guide children to be change-makers who help “get us all together, and we’ll be all right.” 

If it is true that the arc of history bends toward justice, we must extrapolate; if the arc of gratitude and love is long, it must bend towards peace.

Cindy Acker

is an education professional for over 25 years, Cindy Acker has founded 6 private schools. She is founder/principal of The Child Unique Montessori School and public policy adviser for Montessori Council of California. Cindy has a BA in human development, and Masters degrees in Cultural studies/ spirituality and another M.A. in Educational Leadership. In the public policy arena, Cindy has served two terms as president of Professional Association for Childhood Education (PACE) and as vice president of The National Child Care Association. She is active in state and national policy concerning education and pediatric health.