The Montessori Approach to Grace and Courtesy

A large part of the Montessori curriculum includes lessons that help students work and become successful members of the community. These lessons are often referred to as “Grace and Courtesy.” Montessori education includes explicit instruction on social behaviour and are on par with lessons in math, music, and language. The lessons of Grace and Courtesy are often shown to the whole class and involve how to quietly push in a chair, how to walk around someone’s rug, how to make a polite request, and so on.

These vital lessons often set the stage for classroom management for the rest of the school year. Grace and Courtesy lessons also involve showing students what good learners do and how they can work together within a community of learners who interact with each other.

By explicitly teaching students how to maneuver through different social behaviours like saying “thank you,” holding the door open, or resolving conflicts peacefully, Montessori students become engaged in understanding how to make what is taught in the classroom meaningful and transferable.

Through the lessons in Grace and Courtesy we “strive to provide an enriched, stimulating environment which fosters order, coordination, concentration, and independence and environments within which the child is an active explorer and learner and can develop self-direction and a true love of learning. Our role is to nurture the growth of the child cognitively, socially, emotionally, and physically.” (Personette, 2013) These are the lofty and important goals of “Grace and Courtesy.”