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No one dreams like children. They are freer than adults and dare to dream big, not allowing obstacles to inhibit their desires. Ask children what they want to do or be when they grow up and you hear things that adults don’t dare to say out loud – actors, professional athletes, presidents, astrophysicists, princesses and dragon slayers. The world and all of its opportunities are there for the taking.
How do schools keep dreams alive? What do they need to do to create both a literate populace and promote these dreams? Realistically, we know that most of the children we teach will not become famous athletes, actors or presidents. However, they will be famous to someone or something. Following their dreams will ensure fame in an arena that they may not yet be able to identify or articulate. Adults who work with children of any age, and parents of children can best identify with the last line of “Famous” by Naomi Shihab Nye:
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, but because it never forgot what it could do.
Educators and schools have the obligation to remind children of what is possible, what they are capable of and to help them “never forget what they can do.” That, above all else, is the way schools can support children as they grow into capable and educated adults. The dreams are theirs, not ours.
Today officially ends the palindrome days of 2019. Nothing set my mind soaring like hearing that the dates from 9/10/19 through 9/19/19 are all palindromes – numbers that are the same when written backward and forward. I love this! As we finish out these days of the palindrome, I have more questions that answers. When will this occur again? How often does it happen? Google helped me learn some of the answers and left some for me to continue to ponder. One thing was clear – 
Much of what we learn in school is memorized, tested and forgotten. Dr. Maria Montessori believed that children must experience learning through multiple senses; sensory experiences are crucial in the earliest years of development. She developed materials that you will find in most Montessori schools. These materials allow children to explore a concept through their hands, their eyes and language. They provide more than one pathway to learning. 
Stories. They are part and parcel of all of our lives. If we are lucky, we begin our lives with stories being read to us from a very young age. The books of our youth are often worn out before we tire of them. Children never tire of hearing a favorite book or story. Stories teach us the rhythm of words, the joy of surprise and the comfort of resolution. Our family stories may not be written in a book, though are shared from generation to generation. They too teach us the elements of a good story and are sometimes embellished, though rarely forgotten. 
At Wilmington Montessori School, we have just sent out a new progress report and are in the process of conducting conferences with parents. As we worked to help parents understand the new format of the reports and think about the reasons for including each element on the report, I have been thinking about progress. Now, you may be nothing like me in this way, but in my life I have progressed and regressed many, many times – probably more times than I would like to consider. Interestingly, as we observe children and their growth, we look for and yearn for steady progress with few, if any, bumps along the way. Is this realistic?
I am a huge…unbelievably huge…fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers. I grew up in the days of the 