Montessori High School at University Circle
Not the typical
high school
Montessori High School at University Circle offers adolescents something more: a more engaging experience, an opportunity to uncover potential, a bridge from the childhood they are leaving behind to the adulthood they are anticipating.
“The aim should be to widen education instead of restricting it.� Maria Montessori
What makes
MHS
different?
Everything.
Of course we offer rigorous academics, including external assessment by International Baccalaureate. We have arts and sports. We have exemplary faculty. But many schools are fortunate to have the same.
What we have that makes us different is the view that education is preparation for life. We prepare students for college, naturally, but for so much more as well.
Our goal is to equip students to become engaged members of society with a desire to build a better world in their own backyards and beyond.
“The adolescent must never be treated as a child, for that is a stage of life that he has surpassed.�
Maria Montessori
MHS students make informed choices about their education, choices that lead to a deeper level of engagement and responsibility.
Students make choices about what they want to explore within a certain subject area, and choose how to use and manage their time.
This independence is in place so students develop the skills and responsibility they will need to be responsible for themselves and their community.
Freedom and Responsibility
The Role of the
Guide As adolescents take their first steps into adulthood, they look to those already there to model for them and guide them in this new environment. Our faculty is committed to more than unlocking their chosen disciplines for our students. They approach their work with an eye toward helping students uncover their own passion and construct a life of engagement.
“Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.”
W.E.B. DuBois
Dynamic
Learning Environments
Our classrooms and class times are designed to provide one-on-one support to students, balanced with an expectation that students will follow lectures, engage in seminars, work independently and produce full-length research projects. We use the International Baccalaureate as one part of the framework in designing our outcomes-based curriculum. Students can sit for exams in specific disciplines and earn certificates by subject, or sit for the full slate of exams to earn an International Baccalaureate diploma.
Service is at the heart of building a better world. Sustainability starts with caring for the earth and moves toward caring for one another. Understanding our connection to our world and one another is an essential component of constructive peace. Composting and growing our own food plants the seeds for a life-long relationship with the land we live on and the food we eat. The service and support we offer as a whole school community to area non-profits lay the groundwork for a deeper sense of citizenship and the responsibility that carries.
Service,
Sustaian
inability, nd
“Establishing lasting peace is the work of education.�
Maria Montessori
“Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.� John Dewey
Experiential Learning Montessori High School’s location in the heart of University Circle makes exploration and application just footsteps away in some of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the country. Students work with leaders in archeology, ethics, medicine, astronomy, and the arts. Each school year ends with an intensive two-week experinetial term designed to offer students a new level of independence. Students propose, plan, and lead these intensives. Experiential terms have ranged from designing and building a 3-D printer, to biking from Ohio to Canada, to traveling to San Francisco and New York to meet with business start-ups, to hiking the Appalachian Trail, to a trip to New York to explore the fashion industry. These experiences give students the chance to see that they can make an impact in the world. They see their own agency at work.
Living away from home gives students a new lens through which to see themselves. Our boarding environments are designed to foster and support community. In community, students have the opportunity to see their own worth in a new way, to see what they are able to contribute as full and equal members of a society.
Living in
Community
“There is‌ a transition from the child who has to live in a family, to the man who has to live in society.â€? Maria Montessori
Boardinat MHS
The boarding experience gives students a chance to be themselves and to see who they are in a larger society. The boarding house is home away from home, with house parents living in the home and in the nearby carriage house. Just as in every house with adolescents, some meals are on the run to accommodate after-school activities and different class schedules. However, the community makes a point to eat together weekly and hold regular community meetings. Two dogs round out this home.
ng t
“The chief symptom of adolescence is a state of expectation, a tendency towards creative work and a need for the strengthening of self-confidence.� Maria Montessori
“But, above all it is the education of adolescents that is important, because adolescence is the time when the child enters on the state of [adult]hood and becomes a member of society.� Maria Montessori
Discover MHS: www.montessorihighschool.org 216.421.3033
11025 Magnolia Drive Cleveland, OH 44106