An original MMG framework · Free pocket card
The Compass Approach
Behavior is a signal, not a verdict.
A shared orientation for the adults in a Montessori school. Four cardinal points, a six-move Support Sequence for the hard moment, and a bias check built into its spine. The free one-pager below includes the whole frame and a print-and-cut pocket card of the sequence.
Why a compass
A compass does not move you, and it does not steer you. It orients. And it only works when the hand holding it is steady. Every child carries a direction of their own. A child in a storm has not lost their direction; they have lost sight of it. What that child needs is not an adult who pushes them somewhere, but an adult steady enough to help them find their bearing again.
So the compass points at both of us: the adult finds true north first, and then adult and child find the way back to the child’s own course, together.
The four cardinal points
The mnemonic is not a word you pronounce. It is the compass rose itself: Notice at north, Engage at east, Support at south, Welcome back at west.
Notice
Observe before interpreting. Behavior is data about a child’s inner state and unmet need, gathered the way Montessori taught us to gather everything: by watching, without verdicts.
Engage
The relationship is the instrument. Connection comes before redirection, and the adult’s own regulation comes before both.
Support
Respond with structure that preserves dignity: clear limits, real choices, and graduated steps that help the child return to engagement rather than pay for leaving it.
Welcome back
After rupture, repair. The child re-enters the community accompanied, not merely readmitted.
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Get the one-pager and pocket card
One beautiful PDF: the why-a-compass framing, the four cardinal points, and the six-move Support Sequence as a print-and-cut pocket card. Pocket card, not poster: this is adult curriculum.
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Go deeper · The full working document
The Compass Field Guide
49 pages, more than twenty fill-in worksheets and team logs, built to be written in and worn out. The Regulated Adult practices (your flooding map, the Steady Practice builder), the Shared Watch hand-off protocol with scripts, the full Support Sequence with the bias check, the three-harms sort, the five-question repair conversation with plane-of-development adaptations, the five-day Observation Week log, reframe rounds with session logs, the restoration story template, and a leadership section with a six-week rollout calendar.
See the Field Guide · $197 →The living version of the Compass — four staff pathways, team progress, and your school’s own data — is built into the Montessori Makers Alignment Map. montessorimakersalignmentmap.com