BY DUNA STRACHAN, M.Ed.
Our Pandemic Story The sunshine filters across the glistening beads as a
way to proceed. Not only were there new protocols to adopt,
student carefully counts them. Another student is on the patio
but also new employment considerations, government hoops
applying strokes of paint to a new design. Two more children
to jump through, and all the discussions on how to maintain
work in the garden, and several sit at separate tables, intent on
Montessori philosophy and pedagogy under such dire
their work. It is a typical day in an Early Childhood class, except
circumstances. Our local and global Montessori communities
that these children are wearing face masks. It is July 2020, and we
provided a daily influx of support and ideas. Our task was to sort
are in the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic.
out the useful items between our small faculty and administra-
tion team and determine how best to apply them.
Our school in Park City, Utah, was shut down for ten weeks
through the spring. Teachers worked industriously to provide
work for students at home during the shutdown, but we weren’t
with the local health department on a task force focused on
Our School Director, Leah Linebarger, got right to work
sure that our students, who are mostly under the age of 6, got as
establishing new protocols during the pandemic. This provided
much out of the packets, emails, slide shows, video links, Zoom
the groundwork for how we would proceed. Our Administrator,
meetings, and Google Classrooms as we had hoped. So, we
Bruce King, found sorting the details of employment law a
were determined to offer what they needed most – time in our
full-time job as he diligently searched for the best ways to sup-
prepared environment.
port our faculty. Our Utah Montessori Council (UMC) shared
Our school in Park City, Utah, was shut down for ten weeks through the spring. Our whole faculty spent the ten weeks of shutdown carefully
precious documents, websites, and platforms as each school
planning. Through a series of emails, Zoom meetings, phone
crafted our path forward. UMC Administrator Teas moved
calls, Google docs, and texts, we began to sort out the best
from once-a-month elegant tea parties to twice-per-month
VOLUME 22 ISSUE 4 • 2020 | WWW.MONTESSORI.ORG/IMC | ©MONTESSORI LEADERSHIP
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