The Teacher as Host

Generous Authority in the Classroom

Another holiday season has passed and I’m missing the festivities already. The children are back in school. The decorations are back in the attic. The house is quiet again.

Our house was full this holiday—of family, friends, and children. This was our first Christmas in a new house, so we chose to settle in. We hosted people for both Christmas and New Year’s and attended many festive gatherings in other people’s homes.

And yes, now I’m ready for some routine and order. And the dog, a creature of habit, curled at my feet, certainly seems happier. There is room to breathe. Room to write.

But I do love hosting. I’m a born Fezziwig (or Fozziwig).

The Art of Gathering

In the past, guests have sometimes described my hosting style as “a lot” and “an acquired taste.” I like planning and executing wildly elaborate gatherings that often ask a lot of my guests. Examples include my daughter’s recent murder mystery party, which involved months of character, costume, and script preparation for the group of eleven-year-old girls attending; our annual Burn’s Night celebrations in the US, which called upon our guests to write speeches, perform songs, learn dances, and memorize poetry; and this recent public event. I am not a chill host.

So I was delighted to discover when recently reading Priya Parker’s book The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters (2018), that one of her central principles for a good gathering is DONT BE A CHILL HOST! Chillness is “the idea that it’s better to be relaxed and low-key, better not to care, better not to make a big deal.” But, as Parker explains, chillness is often selfishness disguised as kindness:

“Hosting is inevitably an exercise of power…but the hosts I guide often feel tempted to abdicate that power, and feel that in doing so they are letting their guests be free. But this abdication often fails their guests rather than serves them…

In gatherings, once your guests have chosen to come into your kingdom, they want to be governed—gently, respectfully, and well. When you fail to govern, you may be elevating how you want them to perceive you over how you want the gathering to go for them.”

According to Parker, great hosting is instead about generous authority—running a gathering with intention and care. This isn’t about controlling others for your benefit; it’s about organizing an experience where everyone feels seen, valued, and connected.

“Generous authority is not a pose. It’s not the appearance of power. It is using power to achieve outcomes that are generous, that are for others. The authority is justified by the generosity. When I tell you to host with generous authority, I’m not telling you to domineer. I’m saying to find the courage to be authoritative.”

Parker’s idea of generous authority helps to clarify something I have been working through in previous articles: the authoritative presence I believe a teacher should bring to their classroom environment. I propose that to be a great teacher, you must be a great host.

Teaching as Hosting: Protecting, Equalizing, and Connecting

During my Montessori elementary training, my trainer, J McKeever, would regularly turn up in clothes that matched the lessons she planned to present - such as a fossil-themed dress and trilobite earrings to tell the story of the Earth. She brought real Ms. Frizzle energy. Our mission, she said, was to make every day in the classroom feel like an invitation to a new adventure, an exciting initiation into the world of knowledge and learning. This is also what great hosts do: transport us to a temporary, alternative world. "Seatbelts, everyone!"

There are many ways in which Montessori education is reminiscent of hosting. Everything is an invitation. Everything is about intentional design. In Montessori, teachers are called guides: our role is to facilitate and support children’s self-directed development within a prepared environment. This is teaching as an act of generosity, as opposed to control. Teaching as hosting. What would it mean to reconsider children as your “guests”? What would it mean for learning to be an “invitation” rather than a mandate?

As teachers, we too have to establish a generous authority: running our classrooms with a strong, confident hand, but always in service of the children’s growth and development. We are not ‘chill’ or permissive, nor are we domineering. We should aim to be authoritative.

Priya Parker says that generous authority should be used in the service of three goals: protecting, equalizing, and connecting.

Protecting Your Guests

“The first and perhaps most important use of your authority is the protection of your guests. You may need to protect them from one another, or from boredom, or from the addictive technologies that lurk in our pockets.

Protecting your guests is, in short, about elevating the right to a great collective experience above anyone’s right to ruin that experience. It’s about willing to be bad cop, even if it means sticking your neck out.”

Protecting your guests means prioritizing the collective experience. We should of course be inclusive and understanding, but we also can’t allow the behaviour of one child to undermine the learning of all the others. This serves no one.

Dr. Montessori was really clear on this:

“Do not apply the rule of non-interference when the children are still the prey of all their different naughtiness… You must interfere at this stage. At this stage, the guide must be a policeman. The policeman has to defend the honest citizens from the disturbers…”

— Maria Montessori, The Child, Society, and the World

I don’t love this analogy, but the principle remains: protecting children means setting clear boundaries that support the entire community. We also have to confidently ward off any adults who seek to interfere in the children’s collective work. In Parker’s words:

“That is protecting your guests: anticipating and intercepting people’s tendencies when they are not considering the betterment of the whole group or the experience…People aren’t setting out to be bad people at your gatherings; bad behavior happens. But it’s your job as host—kindly, graciously, but firmly—to ward it off.”

This doesn’t mean we respond to “bad behaviour” with “loud interruptions or fierce rules.” As Parker says, “It can be done through small, almost unnoticeable interventions that happen throughout a gathering.” In our classrooms, the redirection we provide to our students should be subtle and compassionate. In our communications with adults, we are kind and gracious, but firm.

Equalizing Your Guests

“Another vital use of your authority is to temporarily equalize your guests. In almost any human gathering there will be some hierarchy, some difference in status, imagined or real.

You just have to be aware of the power dynamics at your gathering and be willing to do something about them.”

In The Art of Gathering, Parker tells the story of President Barack Obama:

“Obama noticed that men were far more likely to both raise their hands and be called upon in public question-and-answer settings. So he started an experiment. Whether addressing students at Benedict College, workers in Illinois, or even his own press corps, he would insist on taking questions in “boy, girl, boy, girl” fashion. If no woman stood up with a question when the women’s turn came, Obama would wait until one did.”

Like Obama, we have to both be aware of the power dynamics at play in our environments and then actively democratize and assertively equalize our spaces. We have to engage in ABAR work. We cannot just let boys work with boys and girls work with girls in the name of “following the child.” We cannot just be “chill” about the awkward realities of racism, ableism, and sexism in our environments. If we are trying to build a better future, we cannot leave the responsibility to children who haven’t yet had that future modelled for them. We have to be distinctly ‘unchill’ about these issues, and we have to explain to the children why it matters. I write more about this here and in my online training here.

Connecting Your Guests

“A third use of generous authority is in connecting your guests to one another.

The question is whether you are willing to use your authority and stick your neck out in order to make those connections happen.”

In my daughter’s traditional secondary program, I don’t see that there have been any efforts to connect students. My daughter every day still sits at lunch with the same friends she had in primary school—no one has left or joined this group. In her class, she talked to me about how a few students pick at other students, and how it’s left her feeling uncomfortable taking risks or speaking up in class. So, what is the school doing about this? A teacher came in, addressed the class, and threatened sanctions if bullying continued. Where is the connection here? Where is the relationship-building? Where is the equalizing? This is bad hosting, if you ask me.

As Priya Parker says, “Connection doesn’t happen on its own. You have to design your gatherings for the kinds of connections you want to create.” In my adolescent community, we intentionally grouped children for projects, partnered them up, created mentoring opportunities, played with them at recess in structured groups, and mixed them up at lunch. We were not chill, but it was in service of creating a truly interconnected community where everyone knew everyone, where children had to learn how to connect with different people and came to value that diversity and difference.

Conclusion: Generous Intention

In the book, Parker shares an email from one of her favourite hosts, Nora Abousteit, with her tips for throwing a great dinner party. For a little bit of fun, I want to finish with this artefact because I think it captures the essence of generous authority and the sort of generous intention we should also be bringing to our educational environments. Enjoy!

1. YOU ARE THE BOSS. Hosting is not democratic, just like design isn’t. Structure helps good parties, like restrictions help good design.

2. Introduce people to each other A LOT. But take your time with it.

3. Be generous. Very generous with food, wine, and with compliments/introductions. If you have a reception before people sit, make sure there are some snacks so blood sugar is kept high and people are happy.

4. ALWAYS do placement. Always. Placement MUST be boy/girl/boy/girl, etc. And no, it does not matter if someone is gay. Seat people next to people who do different things but that those things might be complementary. Or make sure they have something else in common; a passion or something rare is best. And tell people what they have in common.

5. Within each table, people should introduce themselves, but it must be short. Name, plus something they like or what they did on the weekend or maybe something that can relate to the gathering.

6. For dessert, people can switch, but best to have it organized: tell every other person at the table to move to another seat.