Help Me Do It Myself: The Third Agency—How Ten Educators and One Korean Kindergarten Wove Montessori, Dewey and the IB into a New Philosophy of Children's Agency - Softcover

Han, Min K.; Lee, Soon J.; Lee, Kyoung E. Monica; Kim, Guk K.; Lee, Hwi R.; Jung, Jung M.; Jeong, Eun M.; Yun, Gayoung Lucy; Yun, Gahee Isabella; Yoon, Okhwa

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798161921128

Publisher: Independently published, 2026

Synopsis

Picture the best-behaved kindergarten classroom you have ever seen. Twenty children in rows, hands folded, eyes forward. For a century it has passed for proof a room is working. Ten Korean educators think it is failing, quietly, because from the doorway compliance and learning look exactly the same.

The alternative has been running in Daegu, South Korea, since 1985. HanByul Kindergarten was built on Montessori's "help me to do it myself," and in 2025 it began IB candidacy to find out whether four decades of practice could survive an outside authority's standards. The graft was tested first in the adults.

What grew from it is what the authors call the Third Agency: a child's inquiry, a teacher's witness and a parent's resolve, each changing the others. Montessori gave children their hands. Dewey gave their questions a community. The IB gave them voice, choice and ownership.

• How a founder who had been right for forty years answered "Why IB instead of Montessori?"
• Eleven evenings in which teachers with decades of experience said "I don't know" in front of each other
• A test for telling help from harm: would this still happen if I quietly left the room?

Lead author Min K. Han holds a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Oklahoma and has written more than twenty books on early-childhood and special education. Her co-authors include HanByul's founder, its Head of School and its IB coordinator.

Whose hand, reaching toward whose falling tower, are you finally willing to hold still?

Edition details

• Publisher: Independently published
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798161921128
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 354