Montessori Education Was Not Like This

Reflection -a college bound student looks back.  

While you are at the site, take some time to read the other posts.  I've added it to my list of favorites!

What More Could You Want for Your Child?

Lynn A. Weddle wrote this in 2003:

For me, the three most important benefits of continuing Montessori education through eighth grade is that our children develop respect, self-confidence and a desire to learn.  

One of the many advantages of a Montessori education, is the sense of respect our children develop and continue to demonstrate to each other.

• Montessori educated children learn compassion and empathy early on by nurturing others and being nurtured because of the mixed age groupings of each classroom.  This is not to say they never have disagreements—they do—but Montessori students learn to constructively work things out and move on--a great life-time skill.  This becomes particularly important in the latter elementary and middle school years.  Given the small classroom sizes, Montessori students cannot just “drop out” and become anonymous when conflict arises.  These students learn to work together and respect each other’s differences—another great life-time skill.

 Montessori educated children also develop a terrific sense of self-confidence. 

• In Brickton’s toddler classroom, my young daughter was encouraged to put on her own clothes and shoes (even if they ended up on the “wrong” feet!) and she felt such a tremendous sense of accomplishment.  At age 2 ½, we were no longer permitted to dress her!  Cleaning up their lunch tables, helping to shovel snow or plant flowers and even now, for my daughter, being encouraged to make her own lunch (at age 7) creates a strong “I can do it” attitude.  I have seen the effects of this not only in my child, but in the middle school students when they are taking breakfast orders and serving during Planet Coffeewood* mornings.  They conduct themselves with such poise and confidence that we “patrons” cannot help but be very impressed and encouraged for our own future middle school students!

 The continued desire to learn is truly a wonderful “legacy” that Montessori educated children benefit from.

• Because the classroom environment is self-directed and the Montessori works are self-correcting, children are not passively learning or being required to sit still at a desk and all receive the same information at the same time.  In a Montessori classroom, it’s hands on—a sense of discovery and mastery on their own—with individual direction or guidance from the Directress.  They’re taught to problem solve by understanding the big picture first, then the parts.   A directress explained it to me this way:  “Imagine getting hundreds of puzzle pieces and you have no idea what the picture is that you’re trying to form…with Montessori, children are presented with the picture first so that they clearly understand what they’re doing with the bits and pieces.  In this way, these kids don’t easily get bored---they’re actually excited about going to school!

 Respect, self-confidence and a life-long desire to learn…what more could you want for your child?

* Planet Coffeewood - a student-run business

Lynn's daughter, Lily, graduated from Brickton Montessori School in 2011.

It's a problem-Where is the evidence for Montessori?

It is time to come together as Montessori schools to make a persuasive public argument for Montessori.

At the recent AIMS Chicago Winter Conference, Trevor Eissler, author of Montessori Madness, spoke frankly about the need for Montessori schools to purposely and collectively make itself part of the conversation about education. 

John Long, in a recent post on his blog Education By Design , summarizes Steven Hughes',(PHD, pediatric neuropsychologist) recent presentation at the AMI Refresher Course about building the evidence for Montessori schools.

Here's Dr. Hughes hypothesis: 'Montessori schools can demonstrate that their students develop more advanced social skills, creativity, self-control, intrinsic motivation, executive functioning and moral reasoning than do their counterparts in conventional schools – without sacrificing academic performance.'

Background: Unlike conventional schools, Montessori schools care about more than test results. Yes, Montessori schools do care about cognitive development and academic learning; but their first aim is to create positive learning communities in order to develop creative, self-motivated young people who are kind and compassionate, who demonstrate high levels of self-control and self-management, and who work well with others. Just like academic achievement, growth in these areas can be measured. The instruments are out there and are used all the time by neuropsychologists, developmental psychologists, cognitive psychologists, educational psychologists, and educational researchers.

Dr. Hughes is launching a national research project to collect this data over the next five years.

Here are some examples of norm-referenced assessments of social skills, creativity (or this alternative), internal vs external motivation (locus of control), executive functioning, and moral judgment. These are examples of the skills that Dr. Hughes suggests we test over the next 5 years in order to confirm what we know: that Montessori students do better in these areas than students in conventional schools. That is why parents often say, “Montessori kids are different.” This will tell us HOW they are different…and measure it in ways that can be described.

Here's the video of Dr. Hughes presentation.

Yes, it is over an hour.

It is worth every minute of your time.

Montessori-Lone Nut or Leader?

In the Leadership section of a recent Forbe's, Steve Denning outlines the critical need for substantial school reform, a reform that must include the very nature of the school's relationship to the student.  Schools must change from curriculum driven institutions to places that inspire student's to be life-long learners.  It is a BIG CHANGE. Mr. Denning offers a life-line; Montessori schools  have been doing this for years with extraordinary results!

Side-note:

For many years, Montessori education has been marginalized, always seen as the out-sider or even a bit nutty.  Earlier this year, in a post titled, Where You Lead, I posted a video about the difference between a lone nut and a leader.  Take a look.

The Montessori movement is expanding-soon we will need a whole new dance floor! 

 

 

 

 

 

Montessori-Lone Nut or Leader?

In the Leadership section of a recent Forbe's, Steve Denning outlines the critical need for substantial school reform, a reform that must include the very nature of the school's relationship to the student.  Schools must change from curriculum driven institutions to places that inspire student's to be life-long learners.  It is a BIG CHANGE. Mr. Denning offers a life-line; Montessori schools  have been doing this for years with extraordinary results!

See the full gallery on Posterous

Side-note:

For many years, Montessori education has been marginalized, always seen as the out-sider or even a bit nutty.  Earlier this year, in a post titled, Where You Lead, I posted a video about the difference between a lone nut and a leader.  Take a look.

The Montessori movement is expanding-soon we will need a whole new dance floor! 

 

 

 

 

 

Another Brick in the Wall?

Watch this video-then observe in a Montessori school.

Another great reason for children to attend a Montessori school!

The Montessori Mafia - Ideas Market - WSJ

By Peter Sims

Getty

Montessori learners

It may seem like a laughable “only in New York” story that Manhattan mother, Nicole Imprescia, is suing her 4-year-old daughter’s untraditional private preschool for failing to prepare her for a private school admissions exam.

But her daughter’s future and ours might be much brighter with a little less conditioning to perform well on tests and more encouragement to discover as they teach in Montessori schools. Ironically, the Montessori educational approach might be the surest route to joining the creative elite, which are so overrepresented by the school’s alumni that one might suspect a Montessori Mafia: Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, videogame pioneer Will Wright, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, not to mention Julia Child and rapper Sean “P.Diddy” Combs.

Is there something going on here?  Is there something about the Montessori approach that nurtures creativity and inventiveness that we can all learn from?

After all, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were famous life-long tinkerers, who discovered new ways of doing things by constantly improvising, experimenting, failing, and retesting.  Above all they were voraciously inquisitive learners.

The Montessori learning method, founded by Maria Montessori, emphasizes a collaborative environment without grades or tests, multi-aged classrooms, as well as self-directed learning and discovery for long blocks of time, primarily for young children ages 2 1/2 to 7.

The Montessori Mafia showed up in an extensive, six-year study about the way creative business executives think. Professors Jeffrey Dyer of Brigham Young University and Hal Gregersen of globe-spanning business school INSEAD surveyed over 3,000 executives and interviewed 500 people who had either started innovative companies or invented new products.

“A number of the innovative entrepreneurs also went to Montessori schools, where they learned to follow their curiosity,” Mr. Gregersen said. “To paraphrase the famous Apple ad campaign, innovators not only learned early on to think different, they act different (and even talk different).”

When Barbara Walters, who interviewed Google founders Messrs. Page and Brin in 2004, asked if having parents who were college professors was a major factor behind their success, they instead credited their early Montessori education.  “We both went to Montessori school,” Mr. Page said, “and I think it was part of that training of not following rules and orders, and being self-motivated, questioning what’s going on in the world, doing things a little bit differently.”

Will Wright, inventor of bestselling “The Sims” videogame series, heaps similar praise.  “Montessori taught me the joy of discovery,” Mr. Wright said, “It’s all about learning on your terms, rather than a teacher explaining stuff to you.  SimCity comes right out of Montessori…”

Meanwhile, according to Jeff Bezos’s mother, young Jeff would get so engrossed in his activities as a Montessori preschooler that his teachers would literally have to pick him up out of his chair to go to the next task. “I’ve always felt that there’s a certain kind of important pioneering that goes on from an inventor like Thomas Edison,” Mr. Bezos has said, and that discovery mentality is precisely the environment that Montessori seeks to create.

Neuroscience author Jonah Lehrer cites a 2006 study published in Science that compared the educational achievement performance of low-income Milwaukee children who attended Montessori schools versus children who attended a variety of other preschools, as determined by a lottery.

By the end of kindergarten, among 5-year-olds, “Montessori students proved to be significantly better prepared for elementary school in reading and math skills than the non-Montessori children,” according to the researchers.  “They also tested better on “executive function,” the ability to adapt to changing and more complex problems, an indicator of future school and life success.”

Of course, Montessori methods go against the grain of traditional educational methods.  We are given very little opportunity, for instance, to perform our own, original experiments, and there is also little or no margin for failure or mistakes.  We are judged primarily on getting answers right.  There is much less emphasis on developing our creative thinking abilities, our abilities to let our minds run imaginatively and to discover things on our own.

But most highly creative achievers don’t begin with brilliant ideas, they discover them.

Google, for instance, didn’t begin as a brilliant vision, but as a project to improve library searches, followed by a series of small discoveries that unlocked a revolutionary business model.  Larry Page and Sergei Brin didn’t begin with an ingenious idea.  But they certainly discovered one.

Similarly, Amazon’s culture breathes experimentation and discovery.  Mr. Bezos often compares Amazon’s strategy of developing ideas in new markets to “planting seeds” or “going down blind alleys.”  Amazon’s executives learn and uncover opportunities as they go.  Many efforts turn out to be dead ends, Mr. Bezos has said, “But every once in a while, you go down an alley and it opens up into this huge, broad avenue.”

Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that Montessori alumni lead two of the world’s most innovative companies.  Or perhaps the Montessori Mafia of can provide lessons for us all even though it’s too late for most of us to attend Montessori.

We can change the way we’ve been trained to think.  That begins in small, achievable ways, with increased experimentation and inquisitiveness.  Those who work with Mr. Bezos, for example, find his ability to ask “why not?” or “what if?” as much as “why?” to be one of his most advantageous qualities.  Questions are the new answers.

Peter Sims is the author of Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries.

via blogs.wsj.com

What's so funny about creativity and inventiveness?

Let’s Rethink School Altogether | EDUCATING FOR LIFE

A recent article in Slate, “Why Preschools Shouldn’t Be Like School, has been making the internet rounds lately.  Developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik writes about two recent studies from MIT and UC Berkeley, both of which explore the effects of direct instruction on preschool age children.

The basic gist of the studies is that when children are directly shown how to manipulate a toy to make it do interesting things, versus being given the freedom to explore independently, they spend less time with the toy and are less likely to make their own discoveries. Gopnik writes:

As so often happens in science, two studies from different labs, using different techniques, have simultaneously produced strikingly similar results. They provide scientific support for the intuitions many teachers have had all along: Direct instruction really can limit young children’s learning. Teaching is a very effective way to get children to learn something specific—this tube squeaks, say, or a squish then a press then a pull causes the music to play. But it also makes children less likely to discover unexpected information and to draw unexpected conclusions.

Why might children behave this way? Adults often assume that most learning is the result of teaching and that exploratory, spontaneous learning is unusual. But actually, spontaneous learning is more fundamental. It’s this kind of learning, in fact, that allows kids to learn from teachers in the first place.

I don’t think Gopnik or her colleagues are suggesting that preschool can’t be a valuable learning environment.  But this article demonstrates that the typical view of school is still all about direct instruction.  This is the framework that researchers are still using: preschools should be less like “school”.

Well, I’ll argue that all schools should be less like school, if “school” means listening to what teachers say for eight hours a day.  I never cease to find it fascinating (and frustrating at the same time) that Dr. Montessori’s  observations about the developmental needs and tendencies of young children still remain relatively unknown in the world of education and psychology and are being “rediscovered” over 100 years later.

I don’t want to dismiss the value of good teachers (they get enough of that from everyone else these days).  But I do want to encourage researchers and education policy makers to re-imagine the role of the teacher.  The sooner we move away from this antiquated notion of the teacher as the source of knowledge and the student as the vessel, the better.  In certain situations, it is appropriate for a teacher to give more direct instruction…but in most cases, students learn more efficiently, and more joyfully, when teachers are facilitators rather than directors.

On a side note, I’ve read two of Gopnik’s books (The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind,  and The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love and the Meaning of Life, and both are fantastic.)

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More research that supports Montessori education!

Respect and Compassion

Respect and compassion are central to the Montessori community. Simple, yet amazingly complex.  What if I imbedded that within my being and was respectful and compassionite in every interaction and not just when it was conveninet for me?
Recently the Dali Lama spoke about respect and compassion at Stanford:

500 likes by 10-1-2010. It starts with YOU...pass it on!

On 9/10/10 Maria Montessori was featured on
Voices/Education Project: Creating Peace One Story at a Time. 
As of this writing (6:30 a.m., 9/11) there are only 9 "likes" and  3 comments on the Voices Facebook page.
Let's show the world that there are many people who know about Maria Montessori's Education for Peace.
It is an easy way to call attention to and get the attention of others about Montessori.
It will only work if YOU go on the Facebook site, and check "like."
Tell everyone about the promise of Montessori!
Then pass it on.
We can get the word out if we work together.
500 "likes" by 10-1-2010...oh, yeah!
It starts with you.
Go!

Mike Wesch-I love this guy!

Michael Wesch was voted the coolest guy of 2008.  He's a Cultural Anthropologist who has been studying the implications of the new media and technology on our culture.
While living and studying with  a remote indigenous tribe in New Guinea,  he witnessed how the introduction of a new media caused fundamental changes in the tribe's cultural norms and in the very nature of interpersonal relationships.  Once it was introduced, there was no going back.  Shift happened-all because this culture was introduced to the written word!
This phenomenon of change is happening right here, right now; there is no opting out.
Digital media and technology are changing basic assumptions about knowledge and relationships.
So how can we help our students as they negotiate their way through this changing landscape?
Wesch suggest that we move forward with open eyes; revisit our educational practices so that our students are  “open, caring, daring, voracious learners,” who are "knowledge-able as opposed to knowledgeable."  Anything about that familiar to Montessori?  How will this impact Montessori classroom environments?