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

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.

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

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.

Cathy Tobin was born and raised in Cork, Ireland. 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 primary through 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.