Our youngest is a second grader at a Montessori school here in town. It’s superbly run, culturally and economically diverse, and a seven minute drive from home (a daily jackpot when you’ve got three kids at three different schools).
Just writing this out grows my heart three sizes from gratitude. I know how fortunate we are.
I jump at every chance to spend time inside this place, and admittedly, rarely just to see my kid. It looks and feels a little like opening the door to Oz—suddenly you’re in a Technicolor dreamland where the smallest of us have it all figured out.
The classrooms, with two teachers for every twenty kids, are calm and quiet, sun-drenched by banks of windows open to the wetlands outside. Tiny masters of industry dot the floor and work tables in various states of flow—in collaboration with a partner, teacher-led through a group lesson, or completely on their own.
But even here, where care and intentionality reign, we’ve got a maelstrom of fear and anger in full effect within the parent community.
It’s panic, really, and it’s sad, confounding… fascinating.
After decades of operating as a Montessori ‘inspired’ school, our leadership team and board decided in 2022 to begin a process of truer alignment with the standard model. It involved supporting additional teacher training and accreditation, and moving from a two-year classroom cycle to the traditional three.
For anyone unfamiliar with Montessori, both primary and elementary classrooms traditionally hold three grade levels; it’s essential to the curriculum. Our son’s school is currently the only nationally accredited Montessori school operating within a two-year cycle.
Without getting into a primer on educational models, one of the main reasons why we chose this particular school for our youngest (his half-brothers are in public schools) was because a similar curriculum worked so well for me.
My early education, up until third grade when I switched to a public school, was itself modeled after the Montessori approach. In a converted auto repair garage in a small college town, delineated by areas versus classrooms, I was taught skills that most of us don’t develop until adulthood—autonomy, resilience, curiosity, deep focus.
We have the great advantage of living in an area with enviable public school options, and our older boys are doing great; but a resourced classroom doesn’t change the curriculum.
I pushed hard for a different approach with our youngest, even though it meant asking for financial assistance to do so.
There is zero doubt in my mind that we made the right decision. Our second grader is in his right place—he’s confident and resourceful, a polymath completely in love with learning and doing.
And he’s not alone. To a kid, the creative energy is palpable. Compassion, respect and self-sufficiency seem to hang in the air.
They’re thriving, beyond our real ability to measure, while over these last few weeks many of their parents are using words like ‘unsafe’ and ‘afraid’ to describe a change that has proven benefits for their child.
Parents are raising the volume during roundtable meetings and storming out of Q&As, accusations are flying and arms are resolutely crossed. The only feedback seems to be wholly negative, the loudest voices taking up the most space.
But in side conversations with the quiet parents, those sitting calmly in these meetings, listening with concern but without complaint, I’m finding a very different perspective.
Like me, many of them are feeling optimistic. They’re excited about the potential of new learning opportunities for their kids, and if they’re at all hesitant, it’s because the environment of fear has them feeling stuck and defensive.
Sound familiar?
Funny thing about humans, we’re built to comply.
We evolved not as individuals, but within groups—relying on the safety of conformity and the skills of cooperation.. Even now, though our lives don’t depend on it like they used to, our first defense is to find those who feel and act as we do, who have similar needs and goals.
We require safety, even when the threats against us are non-fatal. And that safety often looks ironically like deference—to the loudest voices, the leaders of the pack.
I’m obviously not talking about necessary rebellion here, but about what happens when fear becomes the dominant motive. When we’re surrounded by anger and vitriol, and the assertion of our own optimism becomes the threat.
How many times recently have you felt uncomfortable answering the simple question of ‘how are you?’ with an answer somewhere on the spectrum of ‘great’?
How many times have you felt guilty for enjoying something about your life when others are clearly and even acutely suffering?
And how many times have you kept your optimism to yourself from fear of judgment or retaliation?
These are challenging times—zero doubt, no argument. And also, we have decisions to make, by the hour, on how we’re living through them.
To our collective defense, our ability to choose our own experience has been weakened over time. We’re accustomed (and addicted) to oversharing, valuing reaction over response, our individualism atrophying from underuse.
And because we’re constantly required to react, we’re also leading with our most primal emotions.
Those reactions are immediate, they’re highly visible, and, as compelled as we are to mirror each other’s experience, there’s plenty of validation to go around.
As clear as it is to me that much of what’s happening at our little school is a sign of the times, I’m not about to fight fire with rainbows. When someone close to you is enraged, there’s no ground gained by bringing up the gorgeous weather.
We know this, about the nuance involved. But we’re also tired, and subtlety takes effort.
I’ve not once offered an optimistic counterpoint in any of the parent meetings about this classroom stuff, but I sure have in direct conversations. In public, the most upset parents feed off each other’s energy, survival style, making it near impossible to interrupt. And I’m not sure we need those opportunities to fling the door wide.
But in private, or in smaller groups of us, I’ve been able to share my own positive feelings, my optimism, in a way that’s less threatening and more, I think, helpful.
It’s been pretty surprising, actually, how many parents have said something like, ‘I’m so glad to hear you’re excited… I just wasn’t sure how to feel.’
The loudest voices often appear the most resolute. and adamance looks and feels a lot like fact.
It might not be happening on the world’s largest stages, but maybe optimism isn’t the right headliner anyway.
Optimism, at its most stabilizing, is more like the session musician—the Ron Carter of attitudes. It can sit in, anywhere and anytime, the steady but driving tempo that furthers the conversation but doesn’t dominate it.
When it seems like there’s no room for it, that’s likely the time it’s needed most.
Change puts us on the defensive, and unless self-initiated, can make us feel helpless.
By contrast, optimism can itself be a form of change, particularly when in response to what feels outside our control.
Considering the advantages, the possibilities inherent in any challenge, activates our creativity.
Fear keeps us frozen or fleeing; optimism gets us building. It’s working the options, playing the periphery, rerouting around the logjam. It’s not, however, looking at the logjam and calling it a dance party.
Toxic positivity is a thing no one needs ever.
What we do need is creative problem solving, and when we’re backed into dark corners, we don’t have the space we need to launch an escape.
When we consider, with reason and practicality, the ways in which a scary thing might work to our advantage, we’re turning the lights on. We might even see we’ve got more room to move than we thought.
I’ve learned to take care with my optimism, watching in real time how I can unintentionally fuel the fires I’m actually hoping to contain or repurpose. It’s a skill like any other, and it takes practice to make effective.
We’re doing hard things, all the time and with no end in sight… Que sera, sera.
Fatalism can feel like a way out, like a comforting dismissal of our own responsibility. ‘You’ve done this to me,’ is a valid and often accurate perspective, but it’s not an empowering one.
So what about those parents?
What do we do when it feels like there’s too much oxygen in the room, when the spark of alternative thinking can send the whole place up in flames?
We take it outside. We have smaller conversations, off the record, sidebars away from the action.
Agreement and validation are important when we’re in pain; it’s one of the reasons why political protests feel so affirming. It helps us feel seen, appreciated and supported.
Many of us are pretty adept at acknowledging our kids’ emotions when they’re running hot, while knowing there’s a point at which we need to help them pivot to a more productive way of thinking or feeling.
Grown adults need the exact same TLC.
Optimism is an alternatively constructive way forward. Instead of fighting what’s happened or happening, it’s working from a position of possibility.
It’s allowing what’s having a positive effect on our lives to serve as slow burning tinder, versus the powder keg of fear, anger and resentment.
We get to be deliberate with optimism, but we need to make space for it. It’s obviously not always the answer, but it’s a crucial part of the question.
Bree Stilwell 