And to prove it.
Maria Montessori was an Italian educator who introduced a new style of teaching for pre-school and kindergarten children. Initially, she used her ideas to try to assist kids with 'special needs', rather than mainstream children. But so successful were here ideas, that they were then introduced into mainstream schools.
Today, many parents want their children to have a Montessori education, but maybe without fully understanding exactly what it means. Most people think that Montessori is all about letting the child learn without someone actually 'teaching' them.
Well, that's not the full story. Montessori education for the youngest kids involves a teaching phase and a guiding phase. There is some very direct, one-on-one teaching of basic activities that a young child needs to know, such as dressing themselves, doing up buttons and zips, cleaning their teeth, covering their mouth when coughing etc. These activities form the basis of Montessori.
The second phase is the guided phase, where the child is isolated from external influences or interruptions, provided with some sensory apparatus, and encouraged to play and learn on their own all about that item. So the apparatus might be something to help the child explore about temperature or sound or touch etc.
The teacher is not a teacher, but a guider or 'director'. Their purpose is to introduce the child to the apparatus, encourage them to explore, and to deliver a quick slap across the back of the head if the young kid tries to eat the apparatus.
As to why I am a qualified Montessori teacher (as well as qualified in other pre-school/KG skills). This is all part of my long-term project to seduce as many of the young, female teachers at my school as is humanly possible, (since the availability of decent women in Naypyidaw seems almost non-existent).
I do a lot of in-class teaching of the young kids, and that's all lots of fun. But I also train the local teachers in useful skills, such as good pronunciation, recognising kids with learning problems, and the best way to administer a backhand slap.
I hold regular training workshops on these various classroom skills, but some of the most naive teachers maybe need some more personal tuition - I'm willing to give them some personal help, perhaps after school hours