Walk into any of our classrooms this month and you will find children practicing how to push in a chair.

That small moment is one of the first lessons we give, and one of the ones we care about most.

Grace and courtesy is the part of our Montessori curriculum where children learn how to move through a room and how to treat the people in it. Our guides give lessons on sitting at circle time, pushing in a chair, carrying a water pitcher down the hall without spilling a drop, and moving from the circle into a line. These lessons get the same care as a math lesson, because our children need them just as much.

In our infant and toddler communities, our guides meet each child right where they are. A young toddler learns to hand a material to a friend with two open hands. That is grace and courtesy at its earliest.

In Primary, the lessons stretch. Children who have been with us a year or two step into something new each school year. They become the ones who show a younger friend where the line forms. They carry the pitcher first so a three-year-old can watch how it is done. Leadership arrives quietly in a classroom where the youngest children spend time watching the oldest.

Families tell us they notice it at home. A child who knows how to walk into a room and greet the people there carries that everywhere they go. They wait for a turn in the conversation. They ask for what they need. They spot the friend who could use a hand. These are the same habits that make a child a community partner.

September is when we lay the foundation. Every classroom practice our children will lean on for the next nine months begins in these first weeks, one small lesson at a time.