Graduations for the four to five year olds of Nancy Elias' Children's House Montessori are attended by not only parents and siblings, but aunts, uncles, godparents, grandparents, and this year guests who came to Trinidad especially for the function held in La Boucan of the Trinidad Hilton.
Being a student at Auntie Nancy's school at No 24 Ranjit Kumar Street in St James, is to be taught not only numbers, words, colours, songs and shapes but table manners, respect and love for your elders and peers. I am convinced that any child who enters a school where the principal greets them each morning with a warm and enveloping hug, must return that love to those around him or her. Auntie Nancy's children neither enter nor leave without being hugged and kissed, and this could be the reason that many of her little ones do not really want to leave in a hurry for junior school.
Discipline is a must in the large, airy school room, where Auntie Nancy and her helper Luanna Garcia, provide individual attention for each of the thirty odd pre-schoolers. Punishment is gentle in the form of a "naughty chair", progress and success bring stars and sweets. For Nancy, a Montessori teacher for the past 15 years, bidding farewell to seven graduates whom she had seen "in the last few years grow and develop from babies into independent and very confident young girls and boys is a time of excitement but also a time of sadness. Goodbyes are never easy."
"People often ask me why I do all this" said Nancy at the graduation tea, her children in white outfits complete with gowns and mortar boards received certificates of achievement "and I ask them why not. Graduation symbolises the achievement of one level of learning to the next. And I stand before you this afternoon, secure in knowing that these children have achieved their first level and now they are going on to their second. And so we have reason to celebrate - And what better way is there than showing them how very proud we are of them all."