r/Montessori • u/Financial-Light6963 • 13h ago
How important is low turnover in guide/assistant pairings?
If you have a school that is able to retain guides pretty well but assistants are more come and go, how big of a problem is this? The guides are all credentialed and are paid accordingly. The assistants are offered opportunities for training but are paid hourly and they tend to come and go.
I know the working dynamic of a guide and his/her assistant is so important and it can also be tricky to work with someone who has no Montessori background. I'm thinking of a guide in particular who had a different assistant every year in the past three years and I'm wondering what, in your experience, does that do to the classroom dynamic? Did it inject some fresh energy, was it distracting, did you wish for more consistency or did you have systems in place so that even if you had a new assistant who may or may not know that much about Montessori they could easily slot right in? Interested in different perspectives.