Self-Reliance, Real Confidence

We talk about reclaiming power through self-reliance and why feeling stuck often comes from learned thinking habits rather than a lack of talent. We connect Montessori principles, Socratic discussion, and practical tools that help us build confidence, clarify purpose, and act without fear running the show. 
• Marsha Enright’s path from loving learning as a child to building a Montessori school and founding programs for young adults 
• Montessori education as a system for curiosity, self-direction, and real understanding rather than memorising for tests 
• Socratic seminars as a method for independent judgment, active listening, and evidence-based thinking 
• Confidence as a byproduct of being taken seriously and learning how to make ideas clear 
• Why writing a book feels impossible, including fear of failure and organising ideas into a readable structure 
• Tools for self-knowledge and momentum, including journaling, learned optimism, and sentence completion exercises 
• Why “purpose” becomes a trap when we treat it like one big answer instead of a set of priorities across life stages 
• Building “AI-proof” skills through creativity, independent judgment, and self-reflection 
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Transcript

Welcome And The Breakthrough Theme

Cassandra 0:00

Good day out there to all my listeners, and I'd like to welcome you to Is Your Way in Your Way podcast. And for my new listeners, my new listeners, because I know I have some, my name is Cassandra Crawley Mayo, and I am your host. And the title of my podcast is the same title as my book, Is Your Way and Your Way. And this podcast is about talking about individuals that I would say are stuck, uh, blocked. Um, you know, like, for example, like there are things that you want to do, you've been wanting to do, perhaps write a book. I don't know, be a school teacher, uh, have your own business, or get out of a relationship that's not working for you, but you just can't seem to get out of it. So, one of the things that I like to do is we talk about topics related to personal growth, like transformational learning, so that we can explore how we can overcome those self-imposed barriers and what I call thriving in a complex world. And our topic today is reclaiming power through self-reliance from barriers to breakthrough. And who do we have today? I am I am so excited about her because I'm I'm calling this topic deep. You know, I love talking about things like this, about the mind and independent thinking and critical thinking and how all of that plays an integral part in the things that we do and how we carry out our lives. So I'm going to introduce Marsha Familaro Enright. Hi, Marsha. I'm glad I don't have to say your full name anymore.

Marsha 1:48

You did it perfectly. Thank you, Cassandra, and thanks for having me on your show.

Cassandra 1:52

Thank you. You're very welcome. But prior to us diving into this conversation, Marcia, I just wanted to give them a little background so they will be clear on what qualifies you to talk about what we're going to talk about. So, Marcia is an educational entrepreneur, a writer. She's a speaker with a rare blend of scientific training, liberal arts, scholarship, and institution-building leadership. She holds a BA in biology from Northwestern University and an MA in psychology from the new school for social research. Now, when I hear about research, I'm like, that's to me, that's a lot of credibility because she's really researched, what we're really getting ready to talk about. She has with intellectual interest spanning new neuropsychology, philosophy, literature, and politics. She is the founder of what we call Refi, Rife, Reason Individualism, Freedom Institute. She's a creator of great connection seminar, immersive, great books-based programs that cultivate independent thinking and intellectual self-reliance in young adults. She's also the co-founder and president of the Council Oak Montessori School, one of Chicago's top private elementary schools, and a longtime educator and curriculum designer, focused and focused on open inquiry, reason thinking, and personal responsibility. Wow. So listen, guys, this conversation is especially powerful because what we're going to talk about is challenging something what I call very foundational to all of us, how we think, how we learn, and how we choose our path forward. That's it, ladies and gents. So my first question, Marsha, is what was your reasoning on embarking on this type of work? What's what's your why? Because this is pretty hairy work.

Marsha 4:05

Which part? The Montessori School, the seminar, and by the way, our organization now has been renamed Reliance College because we're we're working to open it into a full college. Okay.

Cassandra 4:17

Well, this is what I like to know. I like

Marsha’s Montessori Origin Story

Cassandra 4:20

the trajectory, like the Montessori school, then the research, then you've changed from um, like you indicated, you were with young adults, now you're doing the college thing. So what's the why between all of these phases?

Marsha 4:37

Well, it starts out when I was a child because I always really loved to learn. And I was frustrated with other kids in the classroom who were goofing around until I realized that they were very unhappy and they were not enjoying the learning. And so I said to myself, when I was about nine years old, I said to myself, Well, I want to make sure I find a form of education so that my own children will retain that love of learning that the little children have. You know, when you think about really little children, like two or three-year-olds, you can barely stop them from learning. They're always poking around and asking questions and trying everything out and feeling it and tasting it and all that kind of thing. So, what happens when they go to school? And it's because what I discovered, it's because their learning needs are not suited for the environment of most traditional schools. So they become frustrated. And that happens to a lot of children. So I had this in my mind, you know, for years. And when I was about 20, I came across a write-up about the Montessori method. And I said, whoa, this sounds like exactly what I'm looking for. So then I went and educated myself as much as I could about it. And from there, my oldest child went to a local Montessori, what they call it children's house, uh, most people would say preschool, and he flourished there. And long story short, there wasn't a private elementary school in the area in Montessori. So I had ended up meeting some other people who were interested in that, and we started our own school, basically, so that my own children could have a Montessori education as long as possible. So our school goes to eighth grade, and I ran it for 27 years. It's now run by a wonderful woman who's doing a beautiful job with it, and my grandchildren go there. And the grandchildren of uh the two other founders go to the school also. Um yeah, and so from but my own interest in learn and teaching was always with young adults. And um, I think it's a very critical area of life, time of life, when uh I could engage with them at a higher intellectual level than with younger children, but they're still seeking their path in life, they're seeking their place in the world, their calling, you know, what they what they want to do with themselves, what kind of person do they want to be? What social groups do they want to be in? Um, what kind of work do they want to do? So I started this program, The Great Connections, in 2009, which was aimed at, I was bringing Montessori philosophy up to the young adult level. What does, since Montessori philosophy is very developmentally oriented, like what do you need at different levels of development?

Cassandra 7:23

Okay.

Marsha 7:23

What kind of learning do you need? The very, very young child to learn best, they need to do everything through their senses and moving around. And as you get older, you start being able to think more and more abstractly, and you can your work can be more and more abstract. But even so, you want to always connect whatever you're learning about with the real world so that you understand the meaning of the concepts that you're learning. So, and this is the beauty in Montessori is that it's it does that over and over and over again. And so the question is at the young adult level, say 16 to 24-year-old, what do they need? And so I I took what I knew about human development and I I created this program that I thought um included some critical things that they really needed to develop in themselves and uh in a week-long program. And I can tell you more about it, but the outcome was that I was even surprised at the outcome because at the end of the first week that we ever did this, about 75% of them told me that their life has been transformed, and now they could really gr um judge things for themselves. They knew they had gotten a lot of training during the week on how to do that. And many of them who came from the first time and years afterwards, every year, because we've been doing it since 2009, yeah. Uh many of them came back over and over to strengthen what they had learned. And now I'm in touch with them as adults. In fact, I had a conversation with one who's an engineer at Northrop Grunman, and he uh told me how much he uses what he learned in the program in his work.

Cassandra 9:06

So wow, that's that's amazing. So, of course, there are individuals that you have taught or educated that because we're all very different. So that gentleman's path was engineering, but yet you had students that had, of course, had different paths. Um, and through your program, do you believe they were clear on the direction they wanted to go in, or they were still exploring?

Marsha 9:38

Most of them were still exploring. I mean, even even this fellow, uh, he's very artistic. He he likes to do acting and singing. Uh, and so you know, he was struggling with okay, what direction should I go in? And um decide, but he's also capable of doing engineering. So he went into that and he does acting and singing, and and he's an amazing chef, actually, too. Um he does that in it for you know his hobbies, so yeah, yeah, and but there many uh we we've had web designers, we've had um operations managers, um teachers, um lawyer, people who became lawyers, um people who went on to work for nonprofits, all kinds of different yeah, yeah, people yeah.

Cassandra 10:32

So what role um does independent thinking what role does it have in

Training Independent Judgment In Young Adults

Cassandra 10:40

you what you believe in building confidence? Oh, I think it's critical. Yeah, yeah. Okay. The reason I'm asking that because a lot of uh many of my clients and what my book and even this podcast is about is people are lacking confidence, self-worth, uh, fear about I know that I want to do this, but I it's just something in me that I can't figure it out. And based on what you do, um you are able to dismantle self-imposed barriers, so to speak. And I would like to know how how do you identify with your students or your child or anybody about dismantling self-imposed barriers to personal growth?

Marsha 11:36

Well, there's a couple different things that happen at the seminar that really um that really develop this. One is we use a specialized form of discussion, a specialized form of what's called a Socratic seminar. And that's a that's a discussion in which the teacher is not the authority. She he or she is not telling you what's in the reading that you're doing or what you're studying. He or she is there to guide you in asking your own questions about whatever you're studying and figuring out how to come up with the answer. So uh what happens is that you you have you have to um think of what it is that you don't understand about, say, a reading. Say if you're reading you're reading something like James Madison, say a federalist paper or something.

Cassandra 12:28

Yeah.

Marsha 12:28

And uh and and then you have to ask questions about it. And the other people in the group are not there to debate you, but to help you unfigure out the answer to your question. So they have to look in the text and use reason and evidence in order to answer your questions. And they have to really listen to you and respond to what you have to say. In other words, in a lot of discussions, people will sit there and they'll be busy thinking about what they want to say next, right?

Cassandra 12:56

Right.

Marsha 12:57

That's true. Instead of listening to what the other person said. But in this discussion, we really work on developing the skill of what's called active listening, where you're really paying attention to what the other person said and you're connecting whatever you're saying to what they're saying. So you're indicating how you're you're like rewording what they're saying. So you're showing that you do understand it, and then you're connecting it. And what happens is very interesting is that um it it really shores up the participants' self-confidence because they're they're having people listen to them as if they have something worthwhile to say, and we're teaching them how to have something worthwhile to say.

Cassandra 13:39

Right. Yeah.

Marsha 13:40

And they're we're teaching them how to really pay attention to other people and get to know them. And what's interesting, and also you get to hear how other people, say you're reading Federalist 51, you're getting to read you understand how other people are approaching the same reading, and other people can have different strategies to understand what they're reading. So you're learning new strategies while you're doing that. And I kind of I parallel it to um a Swiss Army knife, that you are developing your mind into a Swiss Army knife because you're learning all these different ways to approach the same material. And at the same time, you're developing this very trusted relationship with the other people in the discussion because you know they're not there to criticize you or attack you, but to actually understand you and help you more deeply understand the very thing that you're trying to work on. And so what happens is it really shores up um the participants' self-confidence and their relationships with each other, and they develop very deep relationships. In fact, one of the participants who came a long time ago and had been a couple of times said to me that you learn how the other person uses their mind in the discussion, and then afterwards you get to know them personally. So, in the end, you end them, you end up knowing them almost better than anybody else in your life.

Cassandra 15:05

Interesting. So these are some of the elements, yeah. Okay, let's talk about my listeners. Um, let's say there is a listener that is that really wants to write a book, okay, and this has been on their heart for quite some time, but they can't start. Why is that? How would you support them and getting through that process?

Marsha 15:42

That that is such a common problem. I mean, you have both uh it's what you want to say is is big if you're writing a book, you have a lot of things to say, yeah, organizing it into the way that somebody else can understand your train of thought, that's one of the hardest things to do. I mean, it's so interesting to me when I whenever I write, because you hold what you know in your mind like in a matrix, it's all together, all over the place, but you have to explain it to other people in linearly, like one sentence at a time. So figuring out what to say first and what to say second and what to say third to get the other person to understand is hard. Okay. And then the other thing is people have a lot of fear of failure, and so that's a big block. Yeah. Um, I so one of the people that has worked with me, he's uh was a senior creative director at Jay Walter Thompson for 25 years. And in case anybody doesn't know, Jay Walter Thompson was one of the oldest advertising agencies in the United States and one of the biggest ones in the whole world. So he was in charge of a big portfolio of advertising. And he was very successful, partly because he was well schooled in what's called the great books of the classics. Um, and that that's because those are the greatest writers that have ever lived that have been so

Discussion Skills That Build Confidence

Marsha 17:10

influential on our world, you know. So he ended up um writing a book, actually, uh teaching people how to write so that you can overcome those kinds of blocks. Because he said the biggest problem is not the actual writing and worrying about the grammar and all that kind of stuff. The biggest problem is getting your ideas together. And he has a whole he has a book called Socratic Scribbling, which in which he explains what kind of steps to go through, what what um what uh process to use, and how to draw from what's called classical rhetoric to use elements of classical rhetoric that are really useful in writing, that help you along with writing. So I highly I highly recommend that book. It's called Socratic Scribbling, and it's by Malachi Walsh. And it really helps you overcome your blocks to writing.

Cassandra 18:07

Okay. Okay. What about individuals that are in a job? They know that there's something else that they should be doing, but they're not, they can't figure out what it is, but they know it's not bad. What's going on with that individual?

Marsha 18:28

They need to know themselves better.

Cassandra 18:31

Uh-huh.

Marsha 18:32

Um, and and so in that respect, there are various tools you can use to try to help you learn more about yourself. Um one of them is there's um uh a researcher named uh Martin Seligman, University of Pennsylvania, who did a lot of research on something he called learned optimism. And I think this is something really useful for people who are trying to achieve things and have have blocks about it. Um he discovered that there's different attitudes people tend to have about processing things in the world. And the people who are what what he considers optimistic, in other words, they they're can't they already have the kind of a can-do attitude, um, are the most successful. For example, they did a study with the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, which selling life insurance is one of the hardest things to do. And uh they took the and they they make everybody who applies to that take a test. So what they did was they picked the people who had just barely failed the test, like only by a few points, but rated very highly in optimism. Okay. And they did a study with them. Those people outsold everybody else by 88%. Okay. So so what Seeligman has done is he's ended up writing about how can you learn to be, how can you identify your own style of thinking about things, and how can you change yourself so that you're more effective. Right. So he's he's a great person to look at. There's also somebody, uh, I can't remember the name of the author, who wrote a book called The Flip Side that um helps you go through a series of questions to ask yourself. But there's a there's a lot of things out there. There's also um Nathaniel Benden, he was a psychologist, and he created a methodology called sentence completion, where you it's like a when I think of my mother, I, and then you fill in the blanks and you just let yourself flow. And his methodology, he's got questions you can ask yourself and kind of a methodology that you can go through to to um plumb your own self and your thinking and your feeling about things. You find out what really bothers you and maybe what your strengths are. And uh his is very useful. I know that some of his work is online that you can tap. So I think these are some of the ways that people can can help themselves to try to figure out what is it they're really interested in.

Cassandra 21:10

Okay. Well, get that what you're looking for? Yeah, yeah. You talked about a lot of books. And there are people that, you know, they'll read them, but don't you think they need more than reading books? What else, what other tools or resources should individuals seek to get that support?

Marsha 21:34

Well, that's with Seligman and with Brandon, they both have online um exercises you can do. Okay.

Cassandra 21:42

Okay.

Marsha 21:43

Which I think are very useful. I think the the the book, Seligman's books and his writings are are good for giving you the framework of what he's talking about, so you at least understand the context of what he's talking about. And then the exercises are very, very useful. He was one of the founders of what's called positive psychology, which is the study of successful and high-achieving people and what their characteristics are. And how can you how can you transform yourself into that if you're having any barriers? So his work, if you look up, I don't know what his website is right offhand, but I it's very easy to find.

Cassandra 22:23

Okay.

Marsha 22:25

That there's lots of exercises that you can do to help you with that. And I'm sure that that that that development has different uh coaches that might help be able to help you work through things. Okay.

Cassandra 22:38

Yeah. Okay. When when you talked about um how research or individuals have identified who were the most successful so that other people can learn from them, how did they deem success? What was success for them like? What was that?

Marsha 22:57

Uh they were looking at how they lived personally and professionally. Were they able to um achieve what they wanted in their in their professions? Uh did they end up having a good home life, friendships? They rated them on lots of different characteristics. And that's how they came up with the okay. It's actually an extension of the work that was done in the 60s by Abraham Maslov. A lot of people know that on um on uh oh gosh, what's the actu uh actualization, the actualization of your potential? And I I a lot of people are familiar, he had like a pyramid of needs that everybody has, starting with basic food and security, and then family, and then and then the the people that were the highest achievers uh were able to not only achieve all those things, but also achieve highly in some um work area or area of interest. And so then he analyzed what their characteristics were as people. How did they how did they navigate life? What were their um basic beliefs and how did that influence what they what they were able to achieve? So that's where the research is from.

Cassandra 24:15

Right. When you were talking about that conversational, I don't know if it was called conversational learning, but how you had your students to start conversations. I I started thinking about um a master's program that I was in, and I, you know, organizational development, and that's how I know Maslow and a lot of the people that you're speaking of. And one of the things my instructor shared, which I will always remember, was don't look at them as the experts. And I was like, really? Well, why am I, you know, like in other words, they're

Getting Unstuck With Writing And Work

Cassandra 24:50

trying to get you to think for yourself, as you indicated, to challenge them, you know. Um, they don't know it all, you know, and that's okay because it's about using your voice. And there are people that don't use their voice because either it's fear or or they don't know how to say what they kind of want to say, they can't conceptualize it. Um, and it just sounded like the methodology that you have used about people tell a story, talk about something, and have that individual focus on what they're saying. And that to me would enable them to be able to be more confident. It's kind of like you said that guy told you that did he say you changed his life? Or yeah, um, yeah, and and I'm certain that's not the only one you've heard. They may didn't say it like that, but it was something you did that created them to feel like they did, and because of that, their behavior had to have changed because they felt good, you know, about what they've accomplished, right? Yeah, okay, yes, okay, okay.

Marsha 26:06

They uh wait, I had a thought from what you were saying. Um oh well, maybe it'll come back.

Cassandra 26:13

Okay, okay. Um so what role does intellectual independence play in a purpose-driven life?

Marsha 26:27

Well, if you're going to achieve your purposes and if you're going to live a flourishing life, you can't depend on on what other people think you should do because they don't really know you like you know you. And they don't know what you need. And uh, I mean, sometimes people from the outside can see better than yourself if you're confused.

Cassandra 26:50

Yeah.

Marsha 26:50

But it's up to you to be able to figure out who to listen to, who to who's uh thought thinking to take into yourself, and then how how to process that and how to use it. So you can't really navigate a well-lived life if you're not able to judge for yourself what's good for you and what's not good for you. And that's something that really needs to be developed in each person. Um, and they only can do that by thinking well, by studying the world around them, by hearing what other people have to say, but also questioning it. Oh, I know what I was gonna say. Yeah, in our in our dialogue discussions, our our Socratic seminars, the teacher is not the authority, the teacher is the um expert learner. So that's their role is to be a model of how to go about learning about whatever it is we're studying, whether it's a a book or whether it's an essay, whether it's an artwork, whether it's a building we're looking at. Um the teacher is the is the models learning and what kind of questions to ask. Yeah, yeah. And not not doesn't have the answer. She's she he or she is has the really great questions.

Cassandra 28:12

Uh-huh.

Marsha 28:13

But anyway, getting back to um to independent thinking, I mean, it's critical for figuring out what to do with your life. I mean, how if you just do what other people say you do, how how do they know what you really need?

Cassandra 28:30

Why do you think uh individuals are fixated on my purpose? Like, what's my purpose? Like, like I I hear that a lot, I see it a lot. Uh, individuals is frustrated with it. And I I wrote a chapter in my book in regards to what your purpose is. And I also said that it's no little purpose, it's no big purpose, it's based on what you have going on now. I give an example, like my parents weren't doing well, and it was my purpose at that time to care for them. You know, I had to kind of put because I couldn't do everything. So you had to prioritize what was more important, but it appears to me that individuals really um get fixated on that in regards to if I could only figure out my purpose, I would feel better. What is that about?

Marsha 29:30

Well, well, on the one hand, human beings do need purpose.

Cassandra 29:34

Uh-huh.

Marsha 29:34

And and they need purpose that fulfill that in which they can exercise their abilities and their powers so that they can feel um good about themselves. Right? They need purpose. There's kind of a a trend these days to be asking this about purpose. I mean, this this wasn't 30 years ago, people weren't asking what is my purpose. This is uh it's a it's a fashion in a way. And one of the mistakes people make is they try to answer it as a big question, like what is my purpose in life? Yes. Okay. Now, according to Aristotle and and and his uh thoughts about how to live life, which Martin Seligman, the psychologist, discovered was the way the best living people lived. He said, Your purpose is to use your abilities to your highest function. Okay. But that means that doesn't mean that you have one single purpose that you're going after. It means you have various different parts of your life that you you have to act in, and you've you have to figure out what are your purposes like uh in terms of your parents. Okay, my purpose now is to help my parents, but you know, there's different aspects of life. There's family, there's work, there's um recreation, and so there's different purposes in all of those. And it's good to have to be kind of clear about them, to, to, to, but not all the time. Sometimes it takes you a little while to kind of get a feel or an intuit. What is it really satisfying to me? And and then identify, okay, that's the purpose I should go after. So I think I think that's the problem some people have is they think they have to answer the big question, what is my purpose in life? And it's the big question is to live a good life, you know, using your powers. But but it's not necessarily a specific thing, like, oh, I have to build a building, or I have to uh I only my my also my sole purpose is to write a book. You know what I mean? It's there's lots of different ways that you can fill that. Yeah, exactly.

Cassandra 31:45

Yeah, it can definitely change. Yeah. Why do you think it's trendy now and not back then? Is something going on in our universe or our complex world?

Marsha 31:57

You know, I I think I think what's likely is that it became uh came out of the you know, psychological world or the philosophical world that people were thinking about this and then they started writing about it, and then it got picked up because it obviously it obviously is important to people to have purpose, right? And one of the, I mean, if if you followed at all, what's going on with a lot of young men is they don't have purpose, and then then they're really unhappy with themselves and they're living in their parents' basement playing video games, right? And that and and there's this whole problem with you know um uh uh men and women getting along and forming relationships, and it's just it's just a mess these days with some of the young people. And men without purpose really are really unhappy. I mean, that's that's one of the things that having a family does for a lot of men is say they're not say they're not a person who said, I always want to be an architect or something, but they don't really exactly know what they want to do. But once they have a family, they get a really big purpose, right?

Cassandra 33:07

Yes, right, to take care of their family.

Marsha 33:09

Exactly.

Cassandra 33:10

Yeah, exactly. Wow, that's interesting. You know, there's something that said, how often are we blocked, not by our circumstances, but how we've been taught to think.

Marsha 33:26

Oh, I think that happens very frequently. I mean, consider just the way people are raised in traditional school. It's somebody's telling you what to study, and then they're telling you what tests to take, and then they're telling you whether you have the right answers. And you're not getting an opportunity to uh do discovery yourself, right? Of what's interesting to you or what do you want to learn next. Because you know, um you you learn faster if you're interested in a subject. That's true. Everybody everybody feels like that. I mean, that's one of the beauties of the Montessori method, is that it's very individually oriented. The child is working on their own work out of a array of work that they can work on, and they can work on it as long as they want, and then until they they they demonstrate to themselves that they've mastered it and they they can show the teacher that they mastered it, and then they go on to something else. Um, and it has tremendous outcomes because of it. There's a book that was published a couple of years ago called The Geek Way, and it's about research that was done on the top CEOs and in these tech companies and what their background was. And it turns out that a disproportionate number were Montessori students, and the author, yes, yes, disproportionate number. Well, there's a lot of famous uh people who were Montessori students, really famous people like the Google Founders and Amazon founder, the um Julia Child and Frank. A lot of these people are Montessori. Yes, and there's a could a bigger and bigger list. So the author of the Geek Way connects the dots because he had gone to Montessori school and he explains why the Montessori system encourages you and to be curious, questioning, um, and creative. And this is what went into what these people they and pee and when you come out of a system like that, you're much more self-confident in your own thinking because you've you've been doing a lot of self-directing, a lot of engaging yourself, you know. But whereas if you go to school or you're in an environment where people always are telling you what to do, yes, and you're not discovering yourself what what should be done, um, you're not gonna develop that muscle of of of uh self-reliance, of engagement, of self-direction, you know.

Cassandra 35:51

Yeah, that's interesting. So in a modest, sorry, school, it's not a traditional, like you take the math, the English, the reading, home economics. Is that not true? Like it sounds like it's a system, so so they do take math, but is the setting different? Is systemically different how they utterly different.

Marsha 36:16

They cover all the subjects, all the traditional subjects, but it's uh is organized in an utterly different way. Number one, uh, we have literally hundreds of materials, they're like games that help you learn the concept you're you're gonna learn. So there's literally hundreds of math materials in this. Um, and anybody who wants to know, just Google Montessori materials. There's a jillion videos out there about how to do it. The little children that are three and four years old can do arithmetic into the thousands with our math materials. And the materials help you understand the meaning of math in the world because that's it. A lot of teachers who go for the Montessori training, they come out and say, Wow, now I finally understand geometry. Now I finally understand algebra, because it was demonstrated through all these materials.

Purpose, Self-Reliance, And Modern Life

Cassandra 37:10

Yeah.

Marsha 37:11

Uh, for example, there's a material called a trinomial cube, and it's a a puzzle with different pieces, each of which represents a term in an algebraic equation of trinomial equation, like a squared plus b squared times c, you know, and I forget which which um formula it is. And the children learn to put it together as a puzzle when they're three and four years old. And then when they get a little older, they they do it, and but they learn the names of each of the pieces, like a squared b is a so it would be a rectangle rectangular solid, a squared b. And if you look on the internet, you'll find you'll find it. And then they learn to write the name down, and then when they learn we'll go to learn algebra, they have a real thing in their mind that represents what they're learning with the symbols. So that's just one example. Okay. There's all kinds of materials to help you learn. Uh, she discovered that to learn how to write, you needed to know the shape of the letters and control your arm. So she's got Maria Montessori was the founder of it. And um, so she's got they use sandpaper letters to get you the feel of the of the letters in your fingers. And then there's another another um thing called a metal insets where you trace in it and you get control of your arm. And one day the children just can write because they have both of these things that integrates. Um, and then from writing, they learn how to read, actually, because they're more interested in what they are doing than what somebody else did. So they first learn how to write, and then all of a sudden they're like, oh, well, now I I can read this and I can read that because they put it together. So it's quite it's quite different. And the children come in and they each one's working on their own work. All the materials are on shelves, low shelves around the classroom, organized in order of difficulty and by subject matter. And the children know where they are in the curriculum. Uh the classes are together in three ages, like six to nine-year-olds, because it gives you a really wide array of materials. So if you're way ahead in math and maybe you're a little struggling in reading, you got everything in the classroom. And it's a more natural environment because when you grow up, how many places are you where you're just with persons of your own age? Right. You have to interact with people of all different ages. So it's really, really different. It's really different. Yeah.

Cassandra 39:39

Yeah. Because when I say math is all about reasoning. Yeah. Yeah. If we just can reason, I'm like, I'm trying, I'm trying.

Marsha 39:48

Wow. It's not just about reasoning. No, it's not. No, it's not. No, it's about understanding what those symbols mean in the world. What are what do they represent in the world? And that's something that can be really hard to get. But when you have materials that embody what you're trying to teach, you understand it a lot better. Girls do very well in math in Montessori.

Cassandra 40:11

Okay.

Marsha 40:12

Whereas they'll still they tend to struggle more in uh traditional school of math.

Cassandra 40:17

Yeah. Wow, that's wow, what a great learning. Marcia, I want you, and I know you have the program, right? You have a program, we have several programs. We want to hear a little bit about that, but I also for my listeners, because of the the blocks, you know, you we talked about a number of things, um, the conversational learning, and we how they could do things, they could read things here. Could you and practicality kind of share the methodology that they could use to support them in mitigating these blocks that's preventing them from moving forward?

Marsha 41:07

Well, you know, one of the best ways would find would be to find a group in which you could have this deep discussions like this. I mean, maybe not about the kind of readings that we do, but maybe about something that you're interested in. And the they would have to learn how to use the particular methodology because otherwise you fall back on the typical way that people discuss things, you know, which is more like debate and you get off topic and all that kind of thing. So um, I'm trying to think if there's uh any particular I've written about it, other people have written about how to do it. Um, and there's some videos out there. I mean, we have a video on our YouTube which shows the kind of discussion that we do.

Cassandra 41:56

Okay.

Marsha 41:56

A couple, a couple of different ones, the way that we go about doing the discussion. And I'm happy to share our principles of discussion with anybody, like how we we lay out these principles of discussion, and then we always at the end of every discussion, we go back and we say, how well did we fulfill those principles of discussion? You know, and one of the principles is that you talk about what's in front of you. You you you don't, nobody lectures to you, you know. Um, if you're talking about a piece by Martin Seeligman, nobody's giving us a big lecture about who he is, blah, blah, blah, all that. We're talking about what he's saying. So everybody's on the same page and everybody knows what you're talking about.

Cassandra 42:36

Okay. Okay. So the so the the discussion would kind of be around a discussion about why am I stuck about moving forward in this thing, or um, you know, why is it hard to get out of this relationship or um that's not working for me, or what's even though you shared what's keeping people stuck from writing a book, you know. Um, so based on what it is that they're stuck with, what you're saying is to get a group.

Marsha 43:12

I think, or at least another person that is that will really that will actively listen to you and give you feedback. Because you know, you have everything up in your mind, it's like going around there in your mind, but getting it out into the world, having to say it. Actually, you know, journaling is really, really good for uh every day you get up in the morning and you just write your thoughts about what's going on. What's well, how do you feel? What are you thinking about? What are your problems? And that can be very instructive because having to put it into words is uh really important in getting your mind clear.

Cassandra 43:51

Right, right.

Marsha 43:51

Yeah.

Cassandra 43:52

Now tell us about you have a few programs that you want to share. Share those with us, and then from that

Marsha 44:00

to yeah talk about um how we can how my listeners could get in touch with you sure thing so uh uh so uh we're we've running the summer program that we have for many many years it's a week long program at the end of July is for 16 to 24 year olds sometimes i i bend it a little bit and take a few you know a few year older people um that's a week long program uh we do Socratic seminars on readings across like many different topics whether it's literature poetry physics uh economics and the reason why we do that is we're trying to strengthen the person's mind to be able to read anything and figure out for themselves what they understand about it and then we also do fun things like um improv improv exercises I don't know how much your audience knows about improv comedy but yeah it was founded here in Chicago and it's a kind of style of comedy where you don't have a script or anything you have a a setting and then you just have to go with it. That's right and so we we have fun with that um we do we talk about we bring in accomplished professionals a couple of professionals to talk to the students to widen their understanding of the kinds of things that are available in the world because you know most people they they know the famous professions and then what they grew up with but they don't know there's still an amazing array of jobs out there and you might not know what's actually your bliss to work in right

Montessori Mindset, Practical Tools, And Next Steps

Marsha 45:40

so we try to bring in ballerinas and finance people and somebody owns a factory and a guy who owns a boat yard and um an author all kinds of people and then we also go out into the city I give them a little talk about the history of the city because most people take for granted what's around them and they don't ask themselves how the heck did this get here?

Speaker 2 46:01

Right.

Marsha 46:02

And so I give them a little talk about the history of Chicago and why we're an architecture center and then we and a little bit about architecture we go out and walk and they get to know about the city and they go on a I send them on a scavenger hunt for architectural landmarks and teams and they compete with each other. So those are some of the things that we do in the summer and then we're doing a weekend program that's along the same lines in Houston January 9th to 11th and that's for 16 to 24 year olds. And then in March we're starting a new program called AI Proof You okay and this is uh a program to help young professional students um to develop the skills that are going to enable them to get a job regardless of what happens in the future with AI because if you know the research and you talk to CEOs what they're looking for are people who can think really well have independent judgment and are creative and uh are self-reflective and so we're we've got a a program set up it's going to be hybrid where there's a first weekend together and then we do every week we have a meeting online for like eight or nine weeks and then there's the ending weekend.

Cassandra 47:26

Now would you call that critical thinking that they're looking for yeah and a lot of us yeah it's it's something to say about critical thinking and they're always I always hear individuals and I don't know how accurate it is but the younger whatever younger people are the age group they need critical thinking you know they don't have critical thinking like oh okay okay so so what you have shared with my listeners who have individuals in their lives from 16 to 24 these are some programs that could enhance or broaden their intellectual capacity. Yes and the AI proofview is for older people too okay so give me give me what you have for individuals like my listeners that are from I don't I don't know like the the 30s to 50 plus I mean they certainly could participate in AI proofview. Okay yeah okay okay we're just getting the um advertising and the description of it ready so and but this is all part of our effort actually to open a new college called Reliance College and so our website is reliancecollege.org okay and you can you can uh get in contact with me there okay and I'm on Facebook I'm on LinkedIn I'm on Twitter lots of different places okay so are you on there by your name do they find you on the Marsha in right or how can they locate you okay on all those platforms okay and your website reliancecollege.org okay all right okay well on the on the website will be they'll be under programs there'll be all the different programs that we are doing okay that's good that's good that's good um is there anything that you would like to leave with my listeners who are blocked not by their circumstances but how they've been thinking and how they've been taught any words of you provided a lot of insight and wisdom but any parting words that you'd like to share with them um that I want to really encourage them to go after what they want to do and don't let fear stop them because what's the worst thing that can happen right is it is failing really the worst thing that can happen no because you can always get up and try again and and learn from your failures that's a really important lesson everybody needs to know is how to learn from their failures.

Marsha 50:07

So I mean I've had plenty of failures and every time I do I sit there and I say okay so what happened in the situation and what went well and what could have been different and how could I do it different and then I use that to achieve my next purpose.

Cassandra 50:22

So yeah okay that's good yeah that's good um because my thing is having individuals not to have regrets when right yeah that's my thing you know it's like well I give a perfect example when I got promoted I was asked to move to Chicago now I'm like okay I don't know anybody in Chicago it's cold in Chicago but what I did not want is for me not to go and always wonder what could I have accomplished exactly yeah exactly so I'm glad that I did that so I don't I don't have any regrets as it relates to that. So well and we miss you yes exactly exactly so Marcia thank you so much um I've learned a lot and and I'm certain my listeners have and I encourage them to replay this over and over just so you can capture some of the books you even talked about uh go on your website and and see um you know because a lot of us are like that's a great idea but we don't act so now it's time for us to take a step and move forward at least great and I'm happy to put the references if you want to put them in the show notes I'm happy to do that.

Marsha 51:41

I wanted to mention that the uh the essence of our new college is be the entrepreneur of your own life we're trying to help students become the entrepreneur of their own lives personal and professional.

Cassandra 51:54

Okay that's great yeah and I'll have to get the those uh the information probably from Clint to put in the show notes. Oh I yeah I'm happy to give it to okay okay all right okay so again thank you to all my listeners like I always say bye for now and always share this information with someone that you know will benefit from it. This is just not for for not I mean it's some great information in there particularly for those who want to move forward in their lives and start living their best life on their terms. Again thank you so much thank you so much for having me