Montessori teachers are less instructors than they are directors. It is their job to control the classroom environment, provide the necessary resources for the students to use, help guide them into different activities, and step back and let nature take its course. Children are remarkable little learning machines, capable of gathering massive amounts of information through their variety of senses. Learning comes naturally to a child. Montessori shcools provide classroom environments that simply let a child's curiosity and abilities propel them onward.
Children are largely independent and free to make choices in terms of their activities.
Much of the training that Montessori teachers must go through invloves learning how to identify certain actions and behaviors of children in order to establish what type of activity or what kind of complexity a child is ready for. Choice and self-motivaton are essential elements in a Montessori education, though each is bound by certain limits. Much of Dr. Montessori's work involved developing a very firm set of rules and methods that must be implemented in a classroom in order for this process to work to its fullest. There is an extesive training process that Montessori teachers go through, often lasting several years, in order to become certified instructors in the method. The time and cost of this training is part of why Montessori classrooms are in short supply.