Montessori Leadership Volum 25, Issue 1, 2023

MONTESSORI LEADERSHIP

Making Rituals Meaningful

By Patty Sobelman

Cosmic Education And The Seven Great Lessons For 2023?

By Dane Peters

The 2023 Montessori Conference: Montessori Flourishing

Nurturing Wellbeing in Children, Schools, and the World

Oh, what a whirlwind of ideas, learning opportunities, reminiscences, re/connections, and just plain old fun we all had this past November! After a 2021 conference with quite a few health restrictions, 2022 was the first time we got to hug our old friends and welcome new ones in the beautiful setting of the Vinoy Hotel in St Petersburg, Florida.

With the “new normal” fully established, we were happy to have our virtual and live attendees gathered around our theme of Montessori Mindfully. I want to congratulate both our audiences for making an effort to include, discuss and support our speakers to bring a fabulous experience to everyone attending. The performance of the Play: Words that Made the Difference Brown vs. Board of Education brought in a bit of history and attention to the Social Justice issues we still find all across the US and the world and that our organizations are committed to fighting.

If we may say so, our conference was an absolute success; after more than 18 years, we moved out of our beloved Sarasota, Florida, to experience a new location in St Pete. We were encouraged to see

our attendees enjoy a unique, beautiful, walk-friendly location. It was so fun to walk around the hotel at night and see so many familiar faces taking advantage of all the city had to offer.

Now for the future, it is our great pleasure to announce our next conference location: Our 2023 Montessori Foundation/International Montessori Conference will take place on November 3-5 at the Hilton Tapatio in Phoenix, Arizona. We are so excited to be closer to our West Coast friends as well as conveniently located to our East Coast colleagues. We hope to see you there!

Montessori Leadership is the official magazine of the International Montessori Council, a non-profit organization. The opinions expressed in Montessori Leadership editorials, columns, and features are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the position of the magazine or the IMC. Acceptance of advertising does not represent endorsement of any product or service.

The International Montessori Council does NOT grant permission to reprint material from Montessori Leadership in any other form (e.g., book, newsletter, journal). Copies of this issue or back issues are available for purchase by emailing imc@montessori.org for $8 US per issue (includes postage inside US).

Copyright 2022 © by The International Montessori Council. All rights reserved.

IMC Chair

Tim Seldin, M.Ed. TimSeldin@montessori.org

IMC Executive Director

Kathy Leitch

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Kristi Antczak imc@montessori.org

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Sheila Linville

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MONTESSORI LEADERSHIP

Members... IMC Dear

Iwant to acknowledge you for stopping long enough to connect with this issue’s authors and content. Taking the time to read a magazine (a work-related magazine at that) is a decision to “not” do something else, maybe something seemingly more important. I hope you pour a cup of coffee or tea, put your feet up, and use this time to read, reflect, and enjoy.

This issue brings many valuable insights. We can all recognize our schools’ trials and tribulations in Patty Sobelman’s article, Making Rituals Meaningful . I smiled as I recalled my missteps trying to accomplish the impossible by overcomplicating, overpromising, and generally overwhelming everyone just to create a “communitybuilding” event.

I consistently remind myself to “see

through the children’s eyes.” And as you read Reflections of a Montessori Graduate , you will get a glimpse into one graduate's perspective of his Montessori education. Let’s find out if other Montessori graduates have similar experiences to share. We may have to remind ourselves, our staff, and our parents about The Importance of the Kindergarten

Year by Tim Seldin ~ how else will more students graduate from Montessori Secondary programs?

Consider Dane Peter's proposal for adding a Sixth and Seventh Great Lesson in Cosmic Education and the Seven Great Lessons for 2023? Join our webinar on May 17, 2023, at 1 pm ET for a lively discussion with Dane. We’d love to hear your feedback!

I recently visited an elementary Montessori classroom organized according to the Five Great Lessons.

I saw the spiraling curriculum even more clearly. I would love to be a student in that environment!

While there is quite a bit of information in this issue, I want to bring your attention to Montessori Mentors: Strengthening the Montessori Community . This idea was born with a cross-section of passionate Montessorians who endeavor to provide a new, positive answer to two questions, 1. What happens when Montessori guides and school leaders stop working fulltime? 2. How do we support school leaders, teachers, and adult learners during a time of great need? Read the article and let us know how you want to get involved.

We are a community; Montessori education brings us together; we share our belief that “within the child lies the fate of the future.” We appreciate each of you and look forward to connecting with you at our next Montessori Leadership Forum (Wednesdays at 1 pm ET) and our 27th Annual Montessori Foundation - -IMC Conference in Phoenix, Arizona (November 2-5, 2023). Please feel free to contact us at info@montessori.org; we love to hear from you!

In service of children and families,

Kathy Leitch

IMC Executive Director

Making Rituals Meaningful

By Patty Sobelman

Wmarker, I wrote FREE on a scrap piece of cardboard, and with that word came the end of our very last Spring Carnival. Sitting on the curb in front of our school was the last remnants of an event that had become unwieldy over the years; a wooden puppet stage and boxes of carnival trinkets, prizes, and such. None of us really knew when Spring Carnival came into being. Most folks would say that we have always had it. The funny thing about rituals is that most people do not know their origins; they just simply exist.

Were we the first Spring Carnival in our town, or did we just make a copy of someone else’s? What I did know is that to arrive at our Spring Carnival, a family would need to drive by two others in our town, a church and a public elementary, on that very same day and at the very same time! In addition to none of us knowing how our Spring Carnival had started, none of us knew how it had gotten so out of control. All we knew was that we were tired and a bit resentful on this particular spring Saturday. Our pile of FREE carnival leftovers was gone before we finished lugging the last bag of sticky trash to the dumpster. That was 2012.

So what pushed us over the edge, and what got us to where we are now? Well… a lot of things, really.

Over the years, we have discovered a few truths about rituals and about our core values and beliefs.

We were well on our way to these discoveries when

question why we do anything and what is truly important and worth fighting for. Pulling off an event in the midst of a pandemic was, a life-or-death decision.

We did know that rituals in and of themselves were worth fighting for, in a peaceful Montessori way, of course. In his book Rituals- How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living, anthropologist and cognitive scientist Dimitris Xygalatas makes a case for what rituals do for people and why we need them to live in community. Humans need them.

As COVID took away many of the activities on our school calendars and in all our lives, we humans persevered and simply created new rituals. Think back to those car parades, family porch photos, and folks banging pots and pans on their balconies at the end of the day to celebrate front-line workers—all this to create unity and community through a ritual.

So what we did is we took a super hard look at all that we were offering in the way of events, aka rituals. The seemingly countless, exhausting, time-sucking activities cluttered our school calendar, and we asked ourselves:

• What is the direct aim of this undertaking?

• What was the underlying, fundamental need that this event was satisfying?

• In Pines parlance- Was the juice worth the squeeze?

Back to the Spring Carnival.

We had to obtain a City of Houston food permit to sell bagged candy and canned soda. We had to set up a threepart sink and an outdoor handwashing station. All of this cost us money. Did I mention that this was a fundraiser?

The amount of trash this “carnival” generated was obscene, and the contradictory message of selling candy and soda to children, not to mention the behavior of the children, and the adults, once fueled up on sugar, was a sight to be seen.

The hundreds of dollars spent on toy prizes, the commercialization and consumerism, the winners and the losers, was nothing we taught or believed in Monday- Friday as a Montessori school. Still, apparently on a random spring Saturday, all bets were off.

If someone in your community is doing the same event as yours, what makes yours unexpected? How is this event helpful to your families if you send their children home hopped up on sugar, smeared face paint, and cheap toys they will just lose or toss away?

“Families want to spend quality time participating in unique and meaningful interactions with their children and our school community.

So back to the Direct Aim.

Once we stripped everything from every event on our school calendar, we discovered the simple truth. Families want to spend quality time participating in unique and meaningful interactions with their children and our school community.

So why were we trying to duplicate, or at worst, trying to chase after what other people are doing?

Let them have their rituals, and let us create our own.

Why? Because we are a school and parents and families, expect a Spring Carnival, or was it a Fall Festival, or both?

How many Truck or Treats, or Easter Egg Hunts are there in your area?

To paraphrase Sir Richard Branson, if you are going to do something, make it the best. Don’t just meet expectations but exceed them- preferably in unexpected and helpful ways.

We began with our mission statement. In a nutshell, ours is to contribute significantly to a better world . Pretty audacious goal, but we like to think big, us Montessorians. There are millions of school events possible, but are the ones on your school calendar a true reflection of who you are? Do they match your mission? The activities in and of themselves might be great. They might even raise some money, and families might even have fun, but are they who you are? Does it magnify and amplify your mission?

”

I will not tell you that you should not have a Spring Carnival or Fall Festival. If the way you do yours makes sense for your school, then by all means, enjoy it! The questions for us were about how can our events match our mission and exceed our parents’ expectations.

This year we are retiring Science Fair.

People bring their personal expectations with them to your school and your events. The mere fact that all adults were once children themselves means that expectations from their own childhood will come with them. If they remember Science Fair fondly, then they will happily join you. If their own parents made their Science Fair projects, then chances are they will jump in and work on their child’s project well after their child has gone to bed!

Science Fairs can bring up images of tri-boards of typed research, downloaded pictures from the internet, and ribbons for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. Parents might be disappointed if your Science Fair looks different from the one they remembered and/or imagined.

Back to the Direct Aim. We thought about how we try so very hard to explain to parents how we do not silo the curriculum - that the Uninterrupted Workcycle enables students to see that science and math and art and language and nature and, well, everything is interconnected and that Peace Education was as important if not more important than academic. And yet here we were, making science its own siloed day. Then inevitably had parents asking, “What about Technology, Engineering, (sometimes Art), and Math?”- you know STE(A)M.

No Science Fair this year at our school. We decided to draw attention to science in all the other events we do, just as we will highlight all areas of the curriculum in all of our events. Our events will match our Montessori mission.

Rituals need to speak and support the community that participates in them. In Xygalatas’ research, he attached

heart monitors to both the participants of rituals and the spectators of the rituals. He found that there was a synchronicity, a togetherness in their heartbeats. Sociologist Émile Durkheim coined the term ‘collective effervescence’. A sense of emotional alignment; when a community comes together and simultaneously communicates the same thought and participates in the same action. Is this a form of normalization?

Rituals also serve as a way to reduce anxiety. Even seemingly useless rituals give us a sense of routine and togetherness. Is this why we all are so desperate to get back to “normal”? What we want is to go back to a new and improved normal, this time without all the clutter.

We host a Thanksgiving Feast each year. 350+ adults and children were eating on every available flat surface in and around our 5-acre campus. Well, we are attempting to bring it back this year after a two-year hiatus. Apparently, the supply chain difficulty is real in that there is a turkey shortage. But was this event even about the turkey?

We adapted a poem from Mother Teresa.

It may be tough to find a parking spot. Park safely anyway.

It may be difficult to find a place to sit. Smile anyway.

We may run out of food. Be happy anyway.

If you forgot to reserve your place at the table, come anyway.

The morning may be long. Have fun anyway.

This event is about sharing and about community and is not about food. Today is about family.

Rituals create a sense of identity that is fundamental to our personal identities. For us, this is mission-critical. What we are doing, the moments and touchpoints we are creating, is our school’s identity and, in some way, fundamentally a part of each parent, child, teacher, and grandparent who participates. We want our events to be worth the time people invest in them. Time is priceless. We want our events to add value and be helpful.

Xygalatas’ research also found that both participants and spectators were more generous with their money after a shared event. It is important to note that the participants were much more generous than the passive observers. This clearly demonstrates why hands-on participation from both parents and children is critical. Every event we have is participatory. But please do not confuse participatory with parentvolunteer-led. Setting up an event and/or writing a check to underwrite an event is not hands-on participation. We are talking about the get-down-on-your-child’s-leveland- wonder kind of participation - the play-and-enjoy and partner-with-others kind of participation. Science Fair was a gallery walkabout.

We are a bit of control freaks at our school. Did I just say that? What I meant to say is Freedom with Limits. Our mission statement is so important to us that we do not leave it up to chance or up to parent interpretation. When you are giving a sound box lesson with an object, you, as the teacher, declare the object’s name. You do not leave the name of the object up to the child. A small plastic bird must be introduced as a hen if you want to isolate the initial sound of /h/. If you don’t, the child could call the object a chicken, a rooster, or even a dog!

Don’t get me wrong, we want and encourage parent assistance, but the faculty and staff set the direct aim and keep steady the course of the event. We are the tone keepers. If not, you leave yourself vulnerable to Mission Creep. Contributing Significantly to a Better World can quickly become diaper gel down a storm drain. Yep! I can’t make this stuff up.

It was 2013. A parent suggested that we host a 1K and 5K Fun Run. It checked all the boxes of family participation and health and wellness. It was also to be a fundraiser. Where the Mission Creep set in, and you would know this if you have hosted a Fun Run or a Golf Tournament before, is that there is very little money to be made until you can increase the volume of runners or golfers. (We got out of the Golf Tournament business as

well- also suggested by a well-intentioned parent). So our little Fun Run was now open to the larger running community. In the wisdom that can only be found in that great book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, if you invite serious runners to your event, chances are that it needs to be chipped and have a professional timing company. If you hire a professional timing company, chances are you need to have your fun run sanctioned as a race. If you are sanctioned as a race, you will need to have a medic, and chances are, you also need to offer bagels, bananas, and for reasons I will never understand… a face painter.

So back to the diaper gel. I haven’t forgotten. We can’t forget because it cost us the entire profit of the Fun Run. What I did not tell you was the name of this run was Snowball Run. The novelty was that we had edible-grade frozen snowballs for the children after the run to throw, not at each other, because that is not very Montessori! (We are located in southeast Texas- snow is a rare and fun happening.) Because we were passengers on this bus driven by parents, they decided not to use frozen water but rather faux snow, which, as it turns out, is made of the same non-biodegradable product that lines diapers. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they chose to dispose of this gel, which is chemically designed to inflate when it gets wet, by pouring it down the storm drain in our backyard. The cost was nearly $5,000 to dig up, remove and replace some 10 feet of the storm drain. Where did our better world go?

Uncomplicated.

This is one of our most favorite words. Again, thanks to our COVID reset, we had about eighteen months to strip everything back to its bare bones and rebuild it from the ground up.

Most of our events are held on a Friday at dismissal. This enables parents to calendar better and increases the likelihood that they can sneak out of work early. The bonus feature is that children in Extended Care usually get picked up early on those days. Win-win.

Our events are simply an extension of the work in the classrooms. Set up and clean-up is a breeze because all we do is gently pull the work out and then back into the classrooms. On the following day, children can restore it. The bonus here is that if the children are participating in creating the event, then they talk it up at home, and as a result, parents are more likely to come. Again, win-win.

No elaborate setup is needed. No extra parental help is required. This means we keep the Direct Aim intact, and parents can enjoy the event and not be pulled for their “volun-told” shift.

Children and teachers shine because the children can confidently explain the work to their parents and grandparents. Our school serves Infants through Middle School, so the work laid out for families to see demonstrates how the scope and sequence progresses from 6 weeks to 15 years. What does Peace Education look like over the course of nearly 15 years? Parents can walk this timeline and participate.

Another Montessori hack is to pick a three-year cycle of activities for your event and simply rotate the work or theme. So, for example, we celebrate the United Nations International Day of Peace. We transfer the date from September 21 st to the next available Friday to keep our Friday-at-dismissal trend going.

We choose this event to highlight because

• it matches our Mission Statement

• the work is already on our shelves

Peace Day activities for the home have been:

• Creating a poster on the origin of your family name or the name of your child

• Framed photographs of what peace means to you

• Painting a small peace pole that we made of wood and sent home

• Decorating a white handkerchief to make Peace Flags to string around the school

Every event we have is participatory. But please do not confuse participatory with parentvolunteer-led. Setting up an event and/or writing a check to underwrite an event is not hands-on participation. We are talking about the get-downon-your-child’s-level-and- wonder kind of participation - the play-andenjoy and partner-with-others kind of participation.”

• no one else in our town is celebrating this

• we can make it our own

We have variations on three activities, and we rotate each year. This keeps us from having to overthink. That in itself is a gift to ourselves. As families revisit these themes, since they can be with us for over a decade, they get to see how their family has grown and changed. Their children are getting older, more children are added, etc. Families and students also have that warm feeling of familiarity that is a basic tenant of a ritual.

Each Peace Day brings a family project. Something sent from our school for our families to complete together and send back for a display. Families look forward to this work, and it promotes wonderful conversations.

She

Patty

Lastly, we found that we spent too much time trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. We have found that creating our own events and declaring what they are about and what they are celebrating is so much easier than trying to fit someone else’s into what we do and what we believe. Get creative. Make-up stuff. That is how all rituals get started in the first place!

We discovered that no one was coming to Back to School night because it sounded like, well… Back to School night. We renamed it Orientation, and even fewer folks came because how many times do you need an orientation? We knew that this night was important. We knew that if we could just get folks here, they would see the value of this annual ritual. This time we rebranded it as Compass Night! No one knew what Compass Night was, and we had over 300 parents attend this year! They loved the evening. They learned the “direction” of the cultural studies in their child’s classrooms and the rules of the road for the school year- hence the compass. No one brought their past preconceived notions from their childhoods because we made the whole thing up! Have fun!

What is the “right” event for your school is whatever is “right” for your school. We have discovered that our events must speak for our values because they will leave a footprint on the collective community. We must love our rituals. Our rituals must have real value. We must be able to defend them and fight for them in warm and wonderful times, as well as in the midst of a global pandemic. These will be the rituals that remain.

“

Patty Sobelman is the Head of School of Pines Montessori School in Kingwood, Texas. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education and a master’s degree in Early Childhood Education.

is a trained Early Childhood Montessori teacher, a graduate of the Goldman Sachs 10K Small Business and a facilitator of the CEO Roundtable. She leads a team of 42 employees with an enrollment of 180 children from 6 weeks through 15 years. She is the founding Head of both the Infant and Middle School communities.

is an internationally published author and speaker. Her consulting work has been with private school startups and continuing business development such as finding markets, driving business, culture development, setting tuition and compensation. Basically… a Montessori business nerd. She does not like writing in the third person but she does love her work!

The Power of Time and Space to Talk

By Rebecca Rolland

Iwas working at a high school for children with language and literacy disorders when I met Jenny, a ninth-grader with severe anxiety. Often, she felt so nervous in class that she ran out. Her teachers panicked. Someone had to search the school. Kids and teachers naturally got upset, and Jenny missed out on the chance to learn. The fears for her safety were even worse since no one knew where she’d gone. But with one teacher, Pamela—a softspoken woman who moonlighted as a yoga teacher—she stayed in class and even lingered afterward. When I asked Pamela why she simply smiled.

“I give her the time and space,” she said, “to talk or to be quiet. Either way.”

Most other teachers, it turned out, had grown frustrated and lectured Jenny, making her more flustered. But Pamela started out differently. Every day, she checked in and

waited for Jenny to talk. Once Jenny described—often haltingly—how she was feeling, Pamela helped her explore how and why she was feeling that way. Whether Jenny felt excited

result, Jenny began taking hold of her anxiety. She also started taking ownership of how she felt. Through their talks, she grew to understand herself better, recognizing which strategies calmed her and evaluating her in-the-moment needs.

Back then, I simply thought Pamela was quiet, gentle, and understanding. And she was. But she wasn’t always that way. One day, I heard her regaling a few students with jokes. With another student—a boy who complained daily about homework—she sounded surprisingly strict.

or sad, Pamela listened equally. In the anxious times, Pamela counseled Jenny to take deep breaths, then use strategies to panic less. As a

Looking back, I came to realize her true gift. She was a shape-shifter, able to change her talk based on what she heard each student needed. Instead of being only gentle or strict, she was responsive. Her power was the ability to tailor her tone and talk depending on what she noticed about each child. She’d learned the art of deep

conversations, which started with making space and time and being sensitive to a child’s subtle cues. She noticed what Jenny was saying and how she was saying it. And she did the same for the other kids.

Equally important, she noticed how she felt about each interaction. As a natural introvert, she found it easier to talk

with Jenny than to manage kids who acted out. But her personality had many aspects that she allowed herself to express. At times, she drew on her “louder” or funnier side. She reflected on which conversations left her energized versus frustrated, then sought out more of the energizing ones. While showing empathy to her students, she directed compassion at herself. Inevitably, she’d make a mistake or say something she shouldn’t. Her students would, too. But her goal was connection, not perfection— and that’s what her talk allowed.

Great Conversationalists Are Made, Not Born

As I later realized, Pamela wasn’t unique. Over the years, as I met with parents, teachers, and caregivers from vastly different backgrounds, I was encouraged to see many others with similar skills. “Whenever kids talk

I heard of one mother who held weekly playdates at her house. Or, of a principal: “All the kids go to him to talk—especially when they’re upset.”

To an outsider, these great conversationalists might seem born, not made. But in fact, having these conversations takes a specific set of skills, which can be practiced, learned, and tailored to each child in your family. The true measure of these conversations isn’t how long they take or how impressive they sound. Instead, it has to do with what happens afterward. How close or distant do you and your kids feel? Did you and your child express what you needed or wanted to? Did they—or you—come away with more empathy, a satisfying resolution, or a new insight?

We have many kinds of conversations in daily life,

which are all valuable. We do need to talk about who’s doing the laundry or where the library book went. Even small talk—the “How are you?” and “How was your day?” questions—can be comforting, helping us relate to others and even enhancing our cognitive skills, well-being, and mental health. Those social niceties can build empathy and perspective-taking skills as we imagine how our conversational partners think and feel. But if we stop there, we’re missing out on how much more conversations can do. In our own lives, by taking a mindful approach to conversation, we can nourish these deeper talks and give them room.

Rebecca Rolland is a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and serves on the faculty at Harvard Medical School. She is also an oral and written language specialist in the Neurology Department of Boston Children’s Hospital. As a nationally certified speech-language pathologist, she has worked clinically with populations ranging from early childhood through high school and has provided teacher professional development. She has an Ed.D. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, an M.S. in Speech-Language Pathology from the MGH Institute of Health Professions, an M.A. in English from Boston University, and a B.A. in English from Yale. rng703@mail.harvard.edu

Inclusive Education: The What, the Why, and the How for Our Montessori Community

By Christine Lowry

Montessori school leaders and classroom teachers are expressing their concerns about the wide range in learning and behavior they are seeing in their students. Many feel at a loss in how best to support and “manage” these differences. And too many think the solution is to ask students to leave their schools with the belief that “Montessori isn’t for these children.”

What is going on?

There has been a steady increase in the percentage of students with “special needs” over the past 4 decades in the US. Statistics from the fall of 2020 indicate that 95% (7.2 million) of students with an IEP are served in public schools and 66% of those students spend 80%+ of their day in a general education classroom. Approximately 2% of those 7.2 million attend private schools. There are currently no statistics on how many children with non-documented differences in learning and behavior are being educated in public or private schools.

From federal law to an ever-growing body of research in neuroscience and cognitive science, including the science of reading, as well as an evolving understanding of special education needs, we are learning increasingly

how inclusive education can be successful and what educators need to teach a range of learners.

Inclusive education- The What

An inclusive classroom provides equitable opportunities for ALL students to thrive . It is a philosophy, a framework, and a practice for educating all students, not just those with IEPs. As a philosophy, it is a belief that all students deserve full access, full participation, and the needed supports to feel a sense of belonging in community . Inclusion acknowledges and embraces diversity as just another difference in our world.

The current trend in special education is toward the “social model of disability.” This model moves past the outdated, old-fashioned “medical deficit model” that sees disability as a problem within the individual who is “broken and in need of fixing” to be normal, more typical. This ableist view is a deeply held belief that marginalizes differently bodied, differently learning, and differently behaving individuals. Unfortunately, this view is still all too common in our Montessori community and is even still being taught too our schools and educators.

The “social model of disability” sees differences and looks for the barriers, or obstacles that are not within the student but, rather, in the attitudes of the adults, the physical design of the environment, and the “one-size-fits-all” presentations and instruction used. This model moves us beyond our expectations of “normal” to be able to respect and accept all students’ strengths and areas for growth with the belief that every student is unique, and diversity brings value and benefit to our schools and classrooms.

Inclusive EducationThe Why

Thirty years of research clearly demonstrates the benefits for classrooms that include all learners. Teachers in inclusive classrooms learn how to guide each child’s learning and positive wellbeing. Students come to appreciate everyone has strengths and all have areas for growth. A sense of belonging for all results in improved emotional and social skills. And as a matter of social justice, students who have had an inclusive education are more accepting and respectful of the wide diversity that is the human species.

Inclusive Montessori Education- The How

Montessori schools, private and public, are likely serving a large number of students with a variety of differences in learning and behaviors. Our schools are becoming “inclusive,” usually by default but what if we could provide an excellent Montessori education to ALL students in intentionally inclusive classrooms? What would it look like, what would take to get there, what are our strengths as an educational community that could be expanded and built upon?

Consistent with the teaching of Dr. Montessori, the “social model of disability “asks us to observe, reflect, and with humility, openly acknowledge the “obstacles” or barriers in our knowledge that are limiting the optimal development that each of our students deserve. We are asked to be the “life-long learner” we hope to encourage in our students. Can we cultivate a growth mindset that enables us to incorporate our foundational Montessori practices with an understanding of “next practices?”

A Montessori Whole School Systems for Inclusion approach begins with leadership committed to inclusion.

The strong leader builds community support among educators and staff with the development of a vision and mission. Working together, the policies and procedures, school rituals and routines, and needed professional development and ongoing mentoring and coaching can expand to “next practices” using a lens of inclusion. Providing teachers and staff with the knowledge, understanding, strategies, and tools they need to learn and practice is the foundation of a Montessori Inclusive School. With growing knowledge comes the growing confidence that can fully embrace the benefits and joys of inclusive classrooms.

Using the Montessori-based Multitiered Model of Support (MTSS) as a framework, Montessori school leaders and teachers can learn to prepare physical environments that support all learners. Schools can develop a whole school behavior support plan that is a continuum of growth in positive emotional and social skills, a “integrated spiral curriculum,” of wellbeing that goes well beyond grace and courtesy to include all five components of social-emotional learning. And when teachers understand universal design for learning, they have a clear structure for providing truly differentiated instruction using Montessori curriculum and materials to support cognitive and academic success in all learners. The most important work, though, as our schools work to become intentionally inclusive is a reflection on our beliefs, our behaviors, and our ways of being as we grow to serve and support all students with equitable opportunity in our classrooms and schools.

Inclusive education is an opportunity, then, for reflection, to learning, and expanding in ways that strengthens our practice as Montessorians while incorporating and integrating next practices of current knowledge. This is our opportunity to follow in Dr. Montessori’s footsteps. Scientific pedagogy has no end point. And as she taught us by her example, learning is ever a process of expansion and evolution of thought and yes, practice. May we honor our mentor by embracing “today’s children” with inclusive Montessori education.

Christine brings a knowledge and experience of special education and Montessori education in her work as an educator of adults in online courses, and as a consultant and coach to Montessori schools. She can be reached at christine@montessori-now.com

Students Thrive Amidst Comfort Dogs at Five Oaks Academy

By Susan Nichols (Freelance Writer)

In the words of beloved “Peanuts” author Charles Schulz, “Happiness is a warm puppy.”

That sentiment succinctly sums up all the joyous feelings and positive benefits derived from the therapy and comfort dog program at Five Oaks Academy (FOA) in Simpsonville, South Carolina.

It began with one dog, er, “helping out” in the admissions department and now has evolved to five dogs serving as fixtures in the classroom, bringing to life the Montessori vision of creating a welcoming environment and giving students first-hand knowledge of animal sciences. (All of the dogs make their homes with FOA faculty members, who go through an application process to participate and whose dogs have had varying

degrees of training and certification as well as medical and temperament clearance.)

students to develop responsibility, compassion, and respect for all living things.”

While having the dogs on campus has certainly helped meet that goal, Trewhella-Grant adds that the program was “amped up this year as we noticed that students needed more help in the classroom to feel calm and confident, particularly with some of the stresses from Covid, and so it’s become even more important to focus on the learning atmosphere.”

Why so much focus on the atmosphere?

FOA Executive Director Kathleen Trewhella-Grant says, “One of our important goals is to create a warm and caring environment for our

“If you feel comfortable in your learning environment — a hallmark of Montessori learning — you retain more information. Learning simply works better if you feel protected,

loved, and comfortable,” says Trewhella-Grant.

There’s no doubt that FOA’s students are feeling the love and thriving because of it. Just ask Eleanor Rogers, Lower Elementary Directress and “Mom” to dogs Sunny, a Black Labrador, and Tate, a Golden Retriever. Sunny, who has completed Off-Leash Puppy Training and is working on her Canine Good CitizenTM certification, rotates coming to Rogers’ classroom every Wednesday with Tate. Tate completed the Palmetto Animal Assisted Life Services (PAALS) program as a puppy and is a trained service dog.

Explains Rogers: “I have seen more happiness coming from all students in the classroom when Sunny or Tate spend the day with us. One student lacks the motivation to complete his work, so on days when Sunny or Tate are with us, he gets to spend one-on-one time with the dog when he completes his work. He always works so hard on these days!”

Reading Interventionist Katie Heisey has also seen rewarding results in her classroom, where she works with students ages four to nine. She says that her dog Judge, an Australian Shepherd mix who has received her Canine Good CitizenTM certification, has been a sweet and comforting presence in her own life and that she was excited to share that spirit with her students.

“After being an early interventionist for several years, I have seen the benefit of having a dog around children. I have noticed that my students are more relaxed and less anxious when working,” says Heisey. “They are also less overwhelmed and

are more motivated to complete their reading and writing.”

Heisey’s students particularly have fun reading to Judge. “The students always tell me that it looks like Judge is smiling, which is my favorite thing ever because they do not realize that they make Judge smile just as much as she makes them smile,” says Heisey.

In addition to the level of comfort the dogs are fostering, the program is fulfilling an essential role in teaching responsibility to FOA’s students. For example, in Rogers’ classroom, two zoologists are appointed each week and have the privilege of walking the dogs and taking them on bathroom breaks. (Rogers accompanies the students on the walks, but they are allowed to hold the leash.)

“We have had many practical life lessons on dog etiquette,” says Rogers, “such as how to approach a dog, the importance of asking a dog’s owner if it’s okay to pet them, etc.”

Amanda Sisk, Co-Lead Upper Elementary Directress/ Administrative Coordinator, is a program veteran. She has had at least one dog serving as the classroom pet for three years. She echoes the success the other teachers have witnessed.

Her dogs include Tybee, a 3-yearold Labradoodle that has been in the classroom since he was 12 weeks old and received his Canine Good CitizenTM certification when he was six months old, and Moby, a 4-month-old Great Dane puppy. Moby will also undergo the Canine Good CitizenTM training once he has received all his vaccinations at six months old.

Either Tybee or Moby is in the classroom every day. Sisk uses a job responsibility board so the students can track who has which task in caring for the dogs on which day. And make no mistake: these are very popular jobs that give students confidence and accomplishment.

“If you feel comfortable in your learning environment — a hallmark of Montessori learning — you retain more information. Learning simply works better if you feel protected, loved, and comfortable,”

- says Trewhella-Grant -

“When the students found out I was getting a new puppy, they were so excited and begged me to bring him to school,” says Sisk. “It was love at first sight. So many students do not have pets at home, and the experiences they share with the pets in the classroom offer them practical life skills that they cannot practice elsewhere.”

level of comfort. “They can watch their peers’ interactions with the dog, see that the dog is following the students’ commands, and slowly build up the courage to interact more themselves.”

Similarly, when asked if anything about the dogs’ presence has surprised her, Trewhella-Grant says she wasn’t sure if all the students would enjoy the dogs but that “even the timidest learned from a distance to appreciate the animals and they got over any fears. I was just wowed by how joyful the whole process has been for our students. The privilege of having one of the dogs sit with you is such a motivator.”

Perhaps the best testimony comes directly from the students.

to look forward to when you go to school.”

notes that many students can connect with the dogs more easily than with their peers or teachers in the classroom.

“This is especially true when we have a new student starting in the classroom. The new student can lean on the dog for emotional support, and the opportunity to help care for the dog with other classmates allows them to connect with those other students more easily.”

Sisk adds that she also has observed children overcome their fears of dogs by being in a safe environment where they can gradually build their

Says Jameson: “I like that they are really fluffy, and I get to spend time with them. I like how when I snuggle with them, they give me licks. They make me feel really special!”

“I like that the dogs bring me comfort when I need it,” says Mary Brice of the Lower Elementary program.

“Knowing that Sunny or Tate will be in the classroom the next day gives you something

Addie comments: “I like getting to play with the dogs and petting them. They help me learn how to take care of my grandparents’ dogs.”

All of the teachers reiterate that their dogs benefit from being at FOA as much as the students.

Says Sisk: “This is a wonderful experience for the dogs. They receive so much attention and

love, become more socialized, and get regular exercise by the students taking them out for walks on the nature trail.”

“My dog has the absolute best time at school. Her favorite thing is to be around other people and show them love. Now, she gets to do that all day long!” says Heisey.

It seems Schulz got it right; it all comes down to the happiness dogs give us. Calvin, an elementary student, confirms: “I like petting the dogs, and they make me happy!”

For Tate, Sunny, Judge, Tybee, and Moby, it’s all in a good day’s work.

To learn more about FOA’s comfort and therapy dog program and the steps to get started, contact the school at 864-228-1881.

Reflections of a Montessori Graduate

By Jacob Antczak

Iwas just a youngster coming out of preschool, knowing only the basics. I first entered Montessori schooling at the mere age of four. I didn’t know then that it would change my life forever. Everything from the environment to the people was much different than I had experienced elsewhere. As a young learner, Montessori provided me with a hands-on education and practical life skills. From elementary through middle school, I learned many essentials like how to play the recorder and piano or tend to a garden, becoming a wellrounded student early in my years. Montessori primary school completely shaped my future as a person.

Throughout my Montessori learning experience, one thing has stuck with me through the years: involvement in a variety of places. I have gone on all sorts of different

trips and had so many experiences, from the many plays and performances I’ve seen, to surveying local waters to calculate seagrass percentage. I have found interest in all kinds of topics solely because I was exposed to them. Montessori helped me to pursue an internship outside of school. I earned more freedom and the opportunity to research marine life in the field without any academic repercussions.

Montessori also allowed me to interact with a more diverse cast of people and personalities. Throughout all of my years, I never had a class with students who were just my age. Starting in first grade, I attended classes with people in their third year of elementary school while going on trips and having some classes with students through high school. Even now, in my senior year, I’m grouped with juniors in many of my courses and planning events

“Montessori also allowed me to interact with a more diverse cast of people and personalities.”

through the student council, which even middle schoolers can attend. Community played an exceptionally important role in my Montessori experience.

Finally, I benefited the most from Montessori’s freedom. I have already touched a bit on the freedom I was granted through my extracurriculars, but there is more to it than just being able to find opportunities. Growing through this environment, I was trusted, and my voice was actually heard when I spoke up. If I ever thought something needed to be changed or wanted to try something new, I could voice my opinion. I put my own personal spin on projects I made or papers I wrote. I simply applied my own interests to whatever coursework I actively worked on.

I’ve grown up in Montessori almost my whole life and couldn’t imagine being somewhere else. I’m sure there are some quirks and perks of having a different education, but Montessori definitely fit me best. On top of the freedom,

community, and different experiences, I can’t ask for much more. Going off to college excites me, and I have already sustained advanced and professional class structures. Montessori has prepared me for the next stage of my life through all that I have done. All my years have molded me into the person I am today, and I’d like to believe they did a pretty good job.

“Ourcareofthechildshouldbegoverned,notbythedesiretomakehimlearnthings,butby theendeavoralwaystokeepburningwithhimthatlightwhichiscalledintelligence.”

Maria Montessori

“Growing through this environment, I was trusted, and my voice was actually heard when I spoke up.”

The Importance of the Kindergarten Year

by Tim Seldin

five completing the three-year cycle of the Montessori Early Childhood program. We do this because this is a decision that is truly important for any child who has grown up, thus far, in a Montessori program.

We understand how tempting it is for parents who have their children enrolled in a non-public Montessori school to make the switch at Kindergarten to avoid another year of tuition. However, having invested in Montessori thus far, the long-term benefits of staying, at least through the third year, if not beyond, cannot be stressed often enough.

The third year is critical in the Early Childhood Montessori program. This is the year when children’s earlier experiences are normally internalized and reinforced and when children begin to take the first steps of moving from very concrete learning to learning that is more abstract. When children leave Montessori for traditional Kindergarten, much of what they have been learning fades away because they have not yet made the passage

those for staying in Montessori often need to be clarified. When you can use the local schools for free.

Why would anyone want to invest thousands of dollars in another year’s tuition?

It’s a fair question, and it deserves a careful answer. Obviously, there is no one right answer for every child. Often the decision depends on where each family places its priorities and how strongly parents sense that one school or another more closely fits in with their hopes and dreams for their children.

Naturally, to some degree, the answer is also often connected to the question of family income as well. However, we are amazed at how often families with very modest means but who place a high enough priority on their children’s education will scrape together the tuition needed to keep them in Montessori.

So here are a few answers to some of the questions parents often ask about Montessori for the Kindergarten-age child.

sending my five-year-old to the local schools?

When a child transfers from Montessori to a new Kindergarten, she spends the first few months adjusting to a new class, teacher, and system with different expectations. This, along with the fact that most Kindergartens have a much lower set of expectations for five-year-olds than most Montessori programs, severely cuts into the learning that could occur during this crucial year of their lives.

As children begin their third year in Montessori, their understanding of the decimal system, place value, mathematical operations, and similar information is usually very sound. With reinforcement, as they grow older, these concepts become internalized and a permanent part of who they are.

When they leave Montessori before they have had the time to internalize these early concrete experiences, their early learning often evaporates because it is neither reinforced nor commonly understood.

What would be the most important advantages of keeping my five-year-old in Montessori?

Montessori is an approach to working with children that is intentionally based on what we’ve learned about children’s cognitive, neurological, and emotional development from more than one hundred years of research. Although sometimes misunderstood, the Montessori approach has been acclaimed as one of the most developmentally appropriate models by America’s top experts on early childhood and elementary education. One important difference between what Montessori offers the five-year-old and what many of today’s Kindergarten programs offer is how it helps the young child learn how to learn.

Educational research has increasingly shown that students in many schools don’t understand most of what they are being taught. As Howard Gardner, leading educational psychologist and advocate of school reform, wrote: “Many schools have fallen into a pattern of giving kids exercises and drills that result in getting answers on tests that look like they understand.

Most students, from as young as those in Kindergarten to students in some of the finest colleges in America, do not understand what they’ve studied in the most basic sense of the term. They lack the capacity to take the knowledge learned in one setting and apply it appropriately in a different setting.

Montessori is focused on teaching for understanding.

In an Early Childhood Montessori classroom, three- and four-year-olds receive the benefit of two years of sensorial preparation for academic skills by working with the concrete Montessori learning materials. This concrete sensorial experience gradually allows the child to form a mental picture of concepts, such as: How big is a thousand? How many hundreds make up a thousand? And What is really going on when we borrow or carry numbers in mathematical operations?

Parents and educators often underestimate the value of the sensorial experiences that the younger children have had in Montessori. Research is very clear that young children learn by observing and manipulating their environment, not through textbooks and workbook exercises. The Montessori materials give the child concrete sensorial impressions of abstract concepts, such as long division, that become the foundation for a lifetime of understanding. But won’t my five-year-old spend her Kindergarten year taking care of younger children instead of doing her own work?

No, not at all! When older children work with younger students,

they tend to learn more from the experience than their ‘students.’

Experiences that facilitate the development of a child’s independence are often very limited in traditional schools.

Five-year-olds are usually the leaders and role models in the Primary Montessori classroom. They help to set the tone and serve as an example of appropriate behavior for the class. They often help younger children with their work, actually teaching lessons or correcting errors.

Most five-year-olds have been waiting for the longest time to be one of the ‘big kids.’ The leadership role experience reinforces the fiveyear-olds’ sense of autonomy and self-confidence.

Five-year-olds are beginning to reflect upon the world. They pay closer attention, notice more details, ask more questions, and begin to explain the world in their own terms. The Kindergarten year is a time when the child begins to integrate everything she learned in the first few years.

Academic progress is not our ultimate goal. Our real goal is that they will feel good about themselves and enjoy learning. Mastering basic skills is a side goal.

The key concept is readiness. If a child is developmentally not ready to go on, they are neither left behind nor made to feel like a failure. Our goal is not to ensure that children develop at a predetermined rate but to ensure that whatever they do, they do well and feel good about themselves as learners.

Tim Seldin is the President of the Montessori Foundation and Chair of the International Montessori Council. His more than 50 years of experience in Montessori education, includes 22 years as Head of the Barrie School in Silver Spring, MD. Tim was the co-founder of the Institute for Advanced Montessori Studies and the Center for Guided Montessori Studies. He currently serves as the co-Head of the New Gate School in Sarasota, FL. He earned a B.A. in History and Philosophy from Georgetown University; an M.Ed. in Educational Administration and Supervision from The American University; and his Montessori certification from the American Montessori Society. Tim is the author of several books on Montessori Education, including How to Raise An Amazing Child, The Montessori Way with Dr. Paul Epstein; Building a World-Class Montessori School; Finding the Perfect Match – Recruit and Retain Your Ideal Enrollment; Master Teachers – Model Programs; Starting a New Montessori School; Celebrations of Life; The World in the Palm of Her Hand and most recently Montessori for Every Family with Lorna McGrath.

Cosmic Education and the Seven Great Lessons for 2023?

By Dane Peters

As a loyal follower of Dr. Montessori, I would love to speak to her. If I could speak to her today, I would ask her about the fantastic Cosmic Education and the Five Great Lessons she assembled back in 1940 and pose the question, how do we build upon those lessons going forward in 2023? Here is some background information on where she was when she developed the Five Great Lessons: “Her 70th birthday request to the Indian government — that Mario [Dr. Montessori’s son] should be released and restored to her — was granted, and together they trained over 1500 Indian teachers. Still under house arrest, the Montessori's spent two years in the rural hill station of Kodaikanal, and this experience guided Maria Montessori’s thinking toward the nature of the relationships among all living things, a theme she was to develop until the end of her life and which became known as Cosmic Education, an approach for children aged 6 to 12.” 1

What is so brilliant about her thinking and work is that these Five Great Lessons were impressively accurate and laid the foundation for how humanity got to where it is today. They were written such that children are stimulated to ask questions, gain perspective on how the earth happened, and become better acquainted with how humanity came about and evolved over time.

For a quick review, here are the Five Great Lessons:

1. “The First Great Lesson is usually referred to as ‘The Creation of the Universe and Coming into Being of Earth.’

2. The Second Great Lesson is ‘The Coming of Life.’ It tells the story of life on earth and introduces the children to the study of biology.

3. The Third Great Lesson ‘introduces human beings and their unique endowments: intellect and will.’

4. The Fourth Great Lesson is ‘The Story of Communication in Signs.’

5. The Fifth Great Lesson is ‘The Story of Numbers.’ Its introduction emphasizes how human beings needed a language for their inventions, so they could convey measurement and how things were made.” 2

Reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and 21 Lessons for the 21 st Century by Yuval Noah Harari heightened my curiosity about the Five Great Lessons. Much like Dr. Montessori, he begins at the very beginning with the evolution of humanity. His Timeline of History notes, “Years Before the Present: 4.5 billion – Formation of planet Earth; 3.8 billion - Emergence of organisms and the beginning of biology; 200,000 – Homo Sapiens evolves in East Africa. The Cognitive Revolution. Emergence of fictive language.”

What instigated my desire to talk with Dr. Montessori now is my concern regarding humanity’s future and the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) that is emerging — at now, breakneck speed. Here are some examples of AI:

• Manufacturing robots

• Self-driving cars

• Healthcare management

• Automated financial investment

It is essential to consider how AI affects each generation, especially the youngest generations — generation Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) and generation Alpha (those children born in 2016). Particularly with these two generations in mind — the children themselves and the parents raising them — here are some more AI experiences to think about:

• Texting

• Social media and entertainment— Facebook, Netflix, etc.

• Google navigation

• Ridesharing apps like Uber and Lyft

• Smart cars/self-driving cars

• Banking and financing

• Smart personal assistants, e.g., Siri and Alexa.

For a detailed presentation on these AI examples, go to the online article “13 Examples of Artificial Intelligence in Daily Life.” (See link below.) Also, it was helpful to gain more AI perspective by watching Nick Bostrum’s TED Talk, “What happens when our computers get smarter than us?” (Link on the next page)

For the older generations—Baby Boomers, Generation Xers, and Millennials—to gain some perspective, consider how life changed when the following items emerged in humanity: cameras (1816), telephones (1876), electricity (1880s), computers (1890), flying (1903), automobiles (1908), televisions (1927), Global Positioning System (GPS) replacing paper maps (1995), and computers on smartphones — BlackBerry (2002) and iPhone (2007). And, consider what they have done to alter humanity’s way of life and its future (dates were gathered via Wikipedia — not an encyclopedia). It is crucial to think about pending changes instigated by present and future generations. Based on a 2016 statistic presented by the National Association of Independent Schools — “Ten thousand Baby Boomers will retire every day through the year 2030 . . .” 3 — we see Baby Boomers turning their generation over to the GenXers, Millenials, and GenZers . . . during the next 10-30 years.

The use of the iPhone by adults and young people has become so prevalent in our lives, in particular, texting, social media, online shopping, Google searching, games, etc. Now that many schools permit iPhones in common areas like cafeterias, playgrounds, waiting for rides, etc., we see children and teachers with heads bent, staring at and using their phones. In his TED Talk, “What explains the rise of humans?” Harari touched upon what humans are faced with today regarding AI . . . “As computers become better and better in more and more fields, there is a distinct possibility that computers will out-perform us in most tasks and will make humans redundant. And then the big political and economic question of the 21st century will be, "What do we need humans for?" or at least, "What do we need so many humans for?" 4 The “interference” of iPhones and computers has been exacerbated over the past three years by the Covid pandemic and what they have done to school environments, teaching, and children’s learning.

In 1940, Dr. Montessori’s Great Lessons gave humanity, especially children, an idea of how humanity worked its way through communication, numbers and how human beings needed a language for their inventions so they could convey measurement and how things were made. Now, 82 years later, I would ask Dr. Montessori about AI. Given what we know about it and are experiencing — good, bad, and how it is taking over the evolution of humanity — how do we have to focus on its impact on the lives of children? Also, how can they be supported in a positive way in order to build their and future generations to use AI to support humanity? Can we add to your Five Great Lessons? What would you think of including these two new lessons for our children today?

6. The Sixth Great Lesson “The Advent of Artificial Intelligence” and how children can use it in the best ways possible.

Might this extend Great Lesson Three — “The Third Great Lesson introduces human beings and their unique endowments: intellect and will?” When we look at where humanity is today, we have to consider the use of AI for one another and how children can use it in the best ways possible.

7. The Seventh Great Lesson “Highlighting love within humanity to help quell dissension, greed, and class systems.”

An important aspect of distinguishing humans and how they behave under the Great Lessons is eloquently presented in the classic book Montessori Today when Paula Polk Lillard talks about teachers telling stories to children to help them think about early humanity and humanity in later years. “The teacher encourages the children to think about their own minds and about all the things that they can think of in their daily lives. They discuss the first human beings on earth and what they could feel and see and think about.” 5 The critical word she injects is “love.” “The children discuss how they can love their mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, families and friends. The teacher might continue, ‘This very

different ability to love involves caring about people that we cannot see and may never know. We want all people on earth never to be hungry or sick or in need.’ ” For me, love is what differentiates the difference between humanity and AI and is critical in how we help children with their understanding.

Finally, I would thank Dr. Montessori for her time and the brilliance she has shared with humanity, especially our children.

References

Harari, Yuval Noah, (2014), Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Harari, Yuval Noah Harari, (2015), TED Talk: “What Explains the Rise of Humans?,” https://www.ted.com/talks/yuval_noah_harari_what_explains_the_rise_of_ humans.

“13 Examples of Artificial Intelligence in Daily Life,” (2020), Digitology website, https://blog.digitalogy.co/best-examples-of-artificial-intelligence-in-everydaylife/.

Bostrum, Nick, (2015), TED Talk “What happens when our computers get smarter than we are?” https://www.ted.com/talks/nick_bostrom_what_happens_when_ our_computers_get_smarter_than_we_are.

Lillard, Paula Polk Lillard, (1996), Montessori Today.

Footnotes

1 American Montessori Website “Biography of Maria Montessori”. https:// montessori-ami.org/resource-library/facts/biography-maria-montessori

2 Montessori Today, pages 60 - 66

3 NAIS BULLETIN September 21, 2016

4 TED Talk: “What Explains the Rise of Humans?” (5:12), Harari

5 Montessori Today, pages 67 - 68

Dane Peters: Right after college, Dane served as a Captain in the U. S. Marine Corps, and 40 years later, he retired as head of Brooklyn Heights Montessori School (BHMS), a toddler through eighth-grade school in Brooklyn, New York. Prior to heading BHMS for eleven years, he served as head of Mooreland Hill School in Connecticut for eleven years. He recently completed his service as the administrator for the New York State Association of Independent School’s (NYSAIS) Experienced Leaders Advising Schools program. He is currently teaching and serves on the Advisory Committee for the American Montessori Society’s (AMS) Emerging Leaders Fellowship program.

Dane has written over 100 articles that have appeared in 30 different publications. His first book, Independent by Design , was published in 2014. His second book, Design for Independence, Inspiration, and Innovation: The New York State Association of Independent Schools at 70 , was published in 2017. You can read many of his articles on his blog ( www.danesedblog.blogspot.com ).

IMC Accredited school highlight: Innovation Montessori OCOEE

Innovation Montessori began in a strip mall in Winter Garden, Florida. Our school was started by a group of parents at a local Montessori primary school who wanted their children’s Montessori education to continue beyond the 3-6 classrooms. They decided to write a charter, which was approved by the Orange County Public School district in 2010. The school opened in 2011 with 108 children in kindergarten through second grade. Each year we rolled up a grade, and our waitlist grew until it became clear that we would need our own property. In 2017 we opened our beautiful 18acre campus in Ocoee, Florida, where we now serve 800 children from age three through 8th grade. At our community’s request, we also wrote a high school charter. Initially, our high school shared a campus with our K-8, but this year we opened our new high school campus three miles away from our K-8. Altogether, Innovation Montessori now provides tuition-free Montessori

to approximately 1000 children –a fact of which we are very proud.

We became connected to IMC, having attended a conference in Sarasota, Florida, many years back. We were immediately impressed by the group’s

we are very passionate about.

inclusivity and embrace of public Montessori. Our mission is to provide an authentic Montessori education in a public setting, which is something

Having attended an IMC accreditation workshop with Lorna McGrath (who was one of my Montessori trainers back in 1994), we decided that, in time, we would like to pursue accreditation. In 2020 our Executive Director, Patrice Cherico, spearheaded both our IMC and Cognia accreditation pursuits, and, despite the many challenges we faced due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were successful in earning both accreditations 2021, well ahead of schedule. Sheila Linville and Kathy Leitch were very supportive throughout the process, and it was a delight to have our school’s impressively credentialed accreditation team. Going through accreditation helped us to formalize the procedures and policies that make us who we are, to celebrate the things we do well, and to find ways to do some things better. All in all, we are better off having gone through the process.

We do a lot of work at our school to build community. One example is the development of our faculty’s Community Agreements. We began this process with the support of Jonathan Wolff, one of the wonderful consultants we met through IMC. When formulating our agreements, we broke our staff into diverse groups and asked them to write down what they felt needed to be included in our agreements. Over time these suggestions were distilled into the eight agreements we continue to hold today. They are:

1. Listen with compassion – seek to understand, not to respond.

2. Be clear, be kind – “This is what I need. What do you need?”

3. All are heard – everyone has a voice, and everyone matters.

4. Dare greatly – it takes courage to engage in hard conversations.

5. Give grace – assume good intentions.

6. Forge connections – build crosscampus relationships.

7. Celebrate others – appreciate their efforts, progress, and accomplishments.

8. Rest without guilt – take time for self-care.

Ironically, our community agreements meeting was our last whole staff meeting before schools were asked to go virtual due to COVID-19. The work we did on our agreements was useful as we worked through those many difficult months at the height of the pandemic, and it was a good foundation to stand on when we all returned in person. Being willing to lean into the hard conversations has been important to us and important to the health of our school’s culture. Being intentional about

how we interact as a faculty broadly impacts our work with our children and our families.

I’m sure anyone who has ever read a Brené Brown book can see her influence on our agreements. We are big Brené fans! Last year we hosted a Dare to Lead book club for faculty, which evolved into quite a sacred space for those staff who participated. I was so impressed that our team was willing to make themselves as vulnerable as they did, to talk through hard things and self-reflect. When the book club concluded, a teacher new to our school shared that she had participated in many book clubs at school in the past, but none had ever felt meaningful. It was a good lesson to us that when you do things, you need to do them wholeheartedly. I think that’s one of the things I love most about our community – staff, students, families, and board – they come with their whole hearts, and I see upholding that culture as one of my most important jobs.

In 1994, one year after moving to the US, she embarked on Montessori primary training at the Orlando Montessori Teacher Education Institute. Cathy taught at private Montessori schools in Central Florida for many years before earning her state teaching license and moving to teach in the public sector. After a year of teaching at a Title I school in Orlando, she was invited to join the faculty of Montessori of Winter Garden Charter School, now Innovation Montessori Ocoee (IMO). Cathy pursued a master’s degree in Educational Leadership, after which she spent five years as assistant principal at IMO The 2022-2023 school year marks Cathy’s second year as principal at Innovation Montessori, a public charter Montessori serving 800 students from primarythrough 8th grade. Cathy is forever grateful to have trained under and learned from some incredible Montessorians over the course of her career, including Helen DeVere, Sr Anthonita Porta, Lorna McGrath, Karen Simon, Dr Michael Dorer, Jonathon Wolff and Patrice Cherico. She looks forward to continuing to learn and grow.

What is a great idea that has been very successful in Community Building for either faculty, parents, or board at your school?

Cathy Tobin was born and raised in Cork, Ireland.

New Leadership in the IMC –Teacher Education Committee

by Kitty Bravo

The International Montessori Council is pleased to announce the appointment of Teri Canaday Freeman and Cathie Perolman as the new Co-Chairs of the IMC Teacher Education Committee. Cathie and Teri have been IMC-TEC committee members for several years and now bring a wealth of Montessori experience to their new role.

While stepping down as the TEC Chair, Kitty Bravo will remain active with the committee as the IMC Board Liaison. Kitty noted, “It is important for us to have leadership with deep roots in the Montessori community; Montessorians who bring diverse perspectives from working with different age groups, a variety of schools, and multiple teacher education programs. Cathie and Teri have such strong commitments to Montessori and supporting teachers that I am confident they are the right team to move the IMC-TEC forward.”

Cathie Perolman has been involved in Montessori education for over 40 years, in which she has served as an Early Childhood, 3-6 assistant teacher, classroom, and level leader. Her work has also expanded beyond work with children as an instructor with several teacher education programs and as a college professor.

Cathie currently mentors teachers, conducts workshops for teachers and administrators, and writes for her blog and magazines. She also serves as a consultant for schools and a school validator for the Montessori Schools of Maryland. Cathie is the creator of the Color Coded Sound Games and the Rainbow Reading System, as well as other reading and cosmic printable materials to enhance classrooms. Cathie is retired and lives with her husband in MD.

Teri Canaday Freeman started her Montessori career in 1973. She helped start the first AMS public Montessori school in Cincinnati, Ohio, under the leadership of Nancy Rambusch in 1975. Since then, Teri has helped start several public Montessori schools and taught in both small and large private Montessori schools. She was Executive Director of the Montessori Early Childhood and Elementary School in Jackson, TN, for 28 years and Director of a MACTE teacher education program. Along with her work as an adjunct instructor at different universities, Teri taught in various Montessori teacher education programs. She has worked as a private Montessori consultant for both schools and Montessori material companies. Her love for filmmaking resulted in her helping produce two Montessori videos with Edvid. Teri’s Montessori certifications are at the Early Childhood and Elementary Levels.

Teri has served IMC and CGMS as a conference presenter, field consultant, member of the Teacher Education Committee, and committee member tasked with creating teacher education standards that are more equitable.

Retired from working in Montessori schools, Teri is now involved with Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. She is certified at level 3 and has just finished creating a new atrium where she works with 4th, 5th, and 6th-grade students. She also facilitates groups that promote emotional healing in prisons and the free world.

The start of a new year ranks solidly at the top of favorite seasons at MACTE. We are energized to reexamine our forever-expanding project list and strategize how to reach our goals for 2023. The new year means conference season is right around the corner, and we always look forward to connecting with colleagues and friends. We also took the time to reflect on the year behind us. We ended on a wonderful note with the MACTE Symposium held in our hometown, Charlottesville, Virginia.

We kicked off our Symposium week with two MACTE Board meetings. The Board voted on accreditation decisions and discussed several MACTE policies and strategic priorities. MACTE members and staff gathered Montessori leaders from across organizations to discuss how we will further the work in the Montessori community. MACTE looks forward to participating in future discussions regarding how to continue the advancement of Montessori around the world.

MACTE Update

By Carolyn Pinkerton

of Psychology at the University of Virginia, discuss learning and how Montessori aligns with contemporary science. Dr. Herman Bounds, Director of Accreditation Group, Office of Post Secondary Education at the United States Department of Education, delved into accreditation as evidence of quality. And we had MACTE Board members share about the work they do and what they find rewarding about their roles. (Should you be interested in serving as a MACTE Board member, please subscribe

to our newsletters and follow our Facebook page to learn more about future open board seats.)

The MACTE Symposium rounded out with Table Talk sessions when attendees can move around to participate in conversations about topics of interest. We always enjoy seeing and listening to lively discussions during this time. MACTE’s President, Dr. Rebecca Pelton, thanked everyone for coming, and we wished our

The 9th annual MACTE Symposium kicked off on Thursday, December 8. We felt inspired listening to Dr. Ana María García Blanco, executive director of Instituto Nueva Escuela, as she shared pictures and stories showing her deep dedication to building community through Montessori in Puerto Rico. John Hunter, founder of the World Peace Game, told engaging stories about his work and led Symposium attendees through a reflective activity. We laughed and were intrigued while listening to Dr. Daniel Willingham, Professor

attendees easy and safe travels back home! So much effort is put into planning the Symposium by our small and mighty MACTE team that it is always a mixture of emotions when the event is over: elation, fatigue, and a bit of relief that we can rest. We are already planning for next year’s event! Whether it is at a spring conference, our NEXT winter Symposium, or a Zoom meeting, we hope our paths can cross with you, the dedicated leaders in this community, soon.

Carolyn Pinkerton