More Than Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic
Healing Adolescent Educational Trauma Through Positive Psychic Development
Why Psychic Development?
After my first few months as a Montessori adolescent guide, I (Andrew) knew I had a problem: one of my students, who loved reading and writing, was avoiding every language lesson and assignment I gave her.
I was doing everything I thought would make my adolescents great writers: requiring them to use rigid rubrics, answering prompts I provided, and using the five paragraph essay. Yet this approach, which I used as a student in a traditional high school, was extinguishing the joy of language from my students.
In my moment of desperation, I returned to Montessori’s appendices in From Childhood to Adolescence and uncovered the concept that would radically change my pedagogy: psychic development.
Meanwhile, I (Kelly) was working at a low-income, traditional public high school where many of my students had struggles outside of school that were much more important to them than learning math, such as not knowing where they would be sleeping that night or needing to work full-time hours after school to support their family.
These adolescents came to my class defensive after having numerous teachers before me try to place more significance on the subject of their classes than on these students’ lived experiences and their needs as whole people. I realized that the only way for these young people to be successful was if they first felt safe and seen; if they were supported as whole humans rather than students whose only task was to acquire academic knowledge.
In this article, we hope to problematize some of the practices around math and language pedagogy that adolescent programs take for granted, provoking discomfort and a closer review of Montessori’s writing on psychic development to heal educational trauma, develop math and language pedagogy based on developmental needs rather than tradition, and bring the best out of every adolescent in our care.
This article was published in the Fall 2025 AMI/USA Journal! We were honored to share our voices in this publication. You can read the full article, and the full AMI/USA Fall Journal, here!
https://heyzine.com/flip-book/dfacd9e72e.html#page/42
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Andrew and Kelly, Your stories reminded me of my experience in an adolescent environment a number of years ago. After some 20 years as an elementary guide and just two years as an adolescent guide in a small private school I'd been part of creating, I was hired to teach in a large charter Montessori program. Their math program was prescribed and I was sent to training. The first year, completely out of my comfort zone as a sage on the stage, I watched students check out under the pain of math failure; I watched the frustration of students who enjoyed math try to deal with the discrepancies as I tried to teach to the group. The training I'd received was not only uncomfortable for me, it was failing to meet the broadly diverse needs of my class of 8th graders. I tried engagement with Montessori materials to help the flailing students understand basic math operations. I tried separation into ability groups. Year two wasn't much better, but I was learning the curriculum myself and beginning to redesign the method I'd use in year three: I followed my Montessori secondary training, created a tool that allowed students to proceed independently through the curriculum, gave a week's worth of impressionistic lessons on the text options, and then....I offered them a choice of where they'd like to begin. For the remainder of the year, I gave lessons when asked, I observed, checked work, and coached. At the end of the year the students said they felt more capable in math than ever before. It took me a three-year cycle to use observation and my own learning of the curriculum to coordinate the two methodologies, but the end result validated what I still believe lies at the heart of Montessori philosophy: observe, offer choice, trust the student to arrive....repeat. Thanks for your work. I'm with you in the effort to break the paradigm.