Who Wouldn't Want To Take A Bus To Pleasantville? Just So Long As Or Isn't A Sunday... I Came To Upper

#100happydays keeping with my career theme - well any passions in life I have to say it makes me happy to see this building most the time I approach it and think of my lovely colleagues I'm about to work with. Also enjoyed a curry with my sis and her boyfriend this eve! :)

Dear tumblr friends,

My apologies if you have been waiting for more updates here. I have been largely updating via Facebook and I realise those posts do not come here. Here is a link to the trail so far!

I hope you are well and I will get working on the remaining segments!

Montessori, Vienna, Peace

May 2018

Videos that inspired me are at the bottom of ‘Keep Reading’

I have never been the best at keeping up to speed with writing regular blog posts. Strange seeing as I am certainly a talker when I get going. However, I suppose that given the fact that my topics of conversation often revolve around repetitions such as health and money matters and similar everyday stuff - it is probably just as well that I don't write a blog post every day!

I would though like to write with warm greetings from Vienna. I have been here since the beginning of March and I am here until the end of July - possibly longer. 

I lived in Vienna previously - for five and a bit years. I first came over with the European Voluntary Service to work in a Caritas refugee home. That was back in 2003 so before the current refugee crisis. I then got a job working in an International Montessori Kindergarten near the United Nations in Vienna. I was invited to start work and to train to be a Montessori teacher at the same time. It was my first time working with children in an official capacity (I had done baby-sitting, GCSE Child Development and had worked with children in the refugee home). However, my employer said that the Montessori philosophy seemed to be quite similar in ways to the philosophy that I had worked with previously in L'Arche.

I say it to almost everyone that I meet - that Montessori philosophy has really influenced all of the work that I have done subsequently. I used it when working with adults with learning disabilities, when woking as an learning support assistant in a primary school, when doing private tutoring, when working at the Natural History Museum and in the other heritage work that I do. Following that first time in Vienna, I spent ten years in London and have now just returned! With it becoming increasingly more difficult to make my CV fit into any decent size, it's a relief that at least now returning to my previous employer, I just need to do some alterations with the dates and do not add a completely new workplace!

Something that I really wanted to share in my blog is how inspirational I found the Austrian Montessori Symposium that just took place not too far from Vienna. I hadn't known what to expect from the symposium but was very pleasantly surprised. Something that has been on my mind for a little while and in particular when retuning to the Montessori Kindergarten was the topic of peace education and basically the cliched quest of how to make this world a better place. I was so thrilled to be able to listen to speakers and take part in seminars that enabled me to contemplate and learn a bit more about Montessori peace education. Peace education underlies all of the Montessori education from birth - but it really gets to greater depths when working with children from school age onwards.

Montessori philosophy as I have understood it from the Kindergarten age, is that peace education begins with enabling the child to understand their place in the world. This is developed through offering the child ways of interacting with the world around them, which includes learning about the world through the different senses and through specially devised materials and activities. An activity that has always felt special to me is the land, water, air activity that we did/do in the Kindergarten. Through collecting these elements one by one and through talking about them - beginning with our observations - we realise how lucky we are on this planet - to have all these things that we need and it encourages us to look after this planet.

The first lecture of the Symposium was by Judith Cunningham and she talked about peace education in Montessori. She talked about how this is achieved through Montessori's cosmic education. Some of the other key words I jotted down during the talk are: the great lessons (and great questions), grace and courtesy, the interdependency chart, the fundamental needs of people chart, one nation, my part in the world, the great river chart - need collaboration - as a metaphor for human collaboration.

I was blown away by the project that she set up which is the Montessori Model United Nations. Young people aged 9-15 get to be United Nations ambassadors and take place in a construction of the United Nations processes. It sounds absolutely amazing and works by giving the children the chance to meet children from around the world and to discuss the real issues of this age. The young people must represent a country other than their own and so they get to feel what it is like in another countries shoes as such. It makes the most of the knowledge that Montessori had that young adolescents are agents for change - that they have a huge sense of justice, human rights and civic responsibility. The aim is that young people feel empowered as opposed to the hopeless feeling that is so common in this day and age. The young people work in the way the UN do to come to a consensus on the issues they discuss and create resolutions and vote on them! Anyway watch the video - it says so much more than I can here. I also apologise if I have misquoted anything. They have also set up the Youth Impact Forum as a way of sustaining the goals the set out at the MMUN events.  Anyway I could say more about the conference (there was lots more) and I could probably say more better. However, I guess I now want to be responsible for working out what I can do to contribute more to a peaceful world. I am enjoying working with children again and using the Montessori Method and I also want to find out more about Montessori Peace Education.

Psychogeography: The study of the specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviours of individuals.

From Internationale Situationniste #1, Knabb, pg 45 in 'Psychogeography' by Merlin Coverley, 2010

....a visit to the famous Katz Deli...

South London Botanical Institute - Victorians through trade and and empire - one of three rooms for the  workshop - here year 4 our children were learning about Marianne North and her art. It is near the end of the hlf funded project. The children drew and wrote accompanying labels.  I was helping out on the day.

On my way to the subway for the cloisters I walked through Harlem and these ppl protesting for Malcolm X's birthday and shutting down the shops on the street for the afternoon

The Past on Glass: Sutton Archives, Heritage Lottery Funded Project

March 2016

In March 2016 I had the pleasure of being asked to further develop and deliver three accessible sessions for young people with learning disabilities from Sutton Mencap.The Past on Glass project was created by Sutton Archives with Heritage Lottery Funding. The project digitises and uncovers the stories behind the Knight-Whittome glass plate negative collection. I worked alongside Abby Mathews, Project Officer and Kathleen Shawcross, Borough Archivist and Local Stidies Manager.

Here is an extract from the blog post about that Abby wrote:

One highlight on our activity plan – and something that we have been looking forward to for a long time – was a series of pre-arranged workshops with Sutton Mencap, a local charity, established in the 1940’s by parents and carers. The charity supports over 80 children and 200 adults with a learning disability in the Sutton area ‘to have fun, learn new skills, socialise and make friends’.

Throughout March we ran a series of workshops for a small group of visitors from this charity based on the idea of self-image and photography – using our glass plates as a starting point to think about some of the issues surrounding portraiture, both now, and in the historical context.

We were very lucky to have the help of Sarah Glover an heritage education facilitator, in the running of these sessions. Over three weeks, a group of nine participants plus their carers attended both Sutton Central Library and a local historic building, Honeywood Museum, to learn about the collection and be involved in activities designed to explore the collection: what it is; what it represents; and to see if it held any resonance for them, as young people who have grown up in a world ruled by technology and convenience.

Read more here:

The Past on Glass Blog Post

Abbey Mathews wrote the following recommendation:

Sarah worked with us at Sutton Archives throughout March 2016 to deliver a series of workshops to Sutton Mencap. Her professionalism, creativity, delivery style and flexibility to the needs of the group made the sessions a huge success. It was a pleasure to work with her and we would recommend her without reservation to any Heritage projects looking to offer creative and worthwhile learning sessions.

reading and the lack of it

Worried about my lack of reading, I think i shall take the train a bit earlier to my course - in the aid of getting me reading.... too much time sending emails and organising and not enough getting down to it! I think I may need to take many a train journey in the next few months - not only to research psychgeography - but also to have a good place to read!

Connections: Vienna, London, Overground, Montessori, Psychogeography...

Taking a step back in time, this is a journal type entry I wrote a week back:

Having lived in Vienna for five years I know the feeling of being away from familiar surroundings and a constant wonder of if your new home will ever feel like a real home. There are inevitably a variety of factors involved in how at home you feel: who is around you, what job you are doing, any familiar objects (such as in the home). However, we are all inevitably affected by place. It is the overall feeling. I feel it in my bones – apologies if I am stating what may seem as obvious to others, but there is something in the saying. Our bodies are good indicators of how we are experiencing life and for me, beyond doubt, an outward expression of those feelings inside.

When I am away from home – either having moved somewhere new (whether it is in London or abroad) I increasingly feel like what I witness in cats when they move; The slow wandering into the new environment to find my feet – to return back to my base. I often don’t feel at home in my flat or house until I have made connections with the outside environment – place and people included. I often prefer to wander rather than be in a new home. I have also increasingly appreciated the sense of a need for a home base. I love traveling, but have always felt that I want a home base. Something I have not found really and in some places it is easier than in others. Crystal Palace has a huge potential for me. I am trying to attach myself even more to this area for reasons and feelings of nostalgia in the knowledge that our family has roots in the area – in particular my grandma – and in many ways her lost stories here. I hope I can find them in the space. I also have my own past connections with having lived in West Norwood for years before moving away and back again.

I like to think about how we form links and connections with places…

As I start my journey on the overground on this day, I begin my book about psychogeography. The first pages talk of psychogeography being a tale of two cities / London and Paris - that’s ok and that’s good as I know I am in a significant place to start my research. If I can go to Paris to try out a trail/walk there, then that would be a bonus.

I am obsessed with connections and links and making sense of the world. I think making sense of the world is key to any form of learning and something that we are often trying to do throughout or lives, even when it is more subconscious – it is something that my experience of Montessori practice has taught me. It has always intrigued me and it seemed to make so much sense when first reading about her philosophy. It is again something that may seem obvious to us but for me it was the first time I had thought of education in that way. The philosophy is based on creating materials that make sense and help children to understand different elements and theories, which in turn help them and us with out greater understanding of the world. Montessori was also very much for her education helping towards creating world peace and I think that is a pretty noble thing. I will try and find some inspiring quotes in due course. I am intrigued to find out whether any of it will have any relevance to my project!! Same with psychogeography!

On my journey, I pass by scenery that even if I have passed through it a few times before, I have never really looked at. A lot reminds me of Vienna and definitely triggered my thoughts in that respect.

At the Museum of London, I notice all the wonderful books about London – I am sure that is something that has increased in recent years. So many of the most intriguing seem to be on titles such as: ‘Secret London’ – It feels like a recent phenomena to me – that we are trying to find those hidden parts of the city to feel like we have found something special and unique.

I am interested in the choice of obscure places to create a trail? They often seem a bit more obscure, also off the beaten track- something that I will have to go out of my way to try out. This will make a new experience for me in itself. From the brief overview that I have at the moment, it seems like people have made some trails as part of a process for people in areas of change – and are in fact – probably quite political. Psychogeography is set to have one root in an obscure cemetery, linked to the dissenter Defoe… I still need to read more…

I am wondering what does child development and psychology in general say about place and time? Any links?