Montessori Schooling
Christopher Hobbs
His old daycare shut down (they're converting to a preschool) and we
had to move him. One option we're looking at is signing him up at the
local montessori school.
Does anyone have insight into these setups? Are they detrimental in
your experience?
Hugh M
cwp
Niels Olson
with learning disabilities all day and is very aware of the details of
what happens in classrooms, as she is constantly working the edge
cases. I'm in military, and a doctor, so I spend little time with my
kids, thus I have generally not hesitated when it comes to spending on
their education. My car is a 14 year old Honda, but my kids go to
great schools. We also move a lot. We didn't go "Montessori" per se,
but there are a lot of educators who definitely support Maria
Montessori's methods, along with those of Dewey and plenty of other
great thinkers on pre-school and primary education. I'll share our
wanderings to illustrate both the various top-tier offerings, and then
discuss some other findings from countless school visits.
In San Diego, 9 years ago, the best option by a mile was the
Children's Hospital daycare, but that was only accessible because my
wife was an employee. The class sizes were small, the space was
generous, the minimum level of education was a Masters, with several
PhDs, and it doesn't hurt when the parents are neonatologists,
pediatricians, etc. When we moved to Annapolis, we were in an awesome
neighborhood and my wife opted to mostly stay home and our daughter
stayed with neighbors. When our son was born, there was a gorgeous
Montesorri program in Annapolis that we considered but ultimately
decided to just keep both kids home. In New Orleans we sent our son
and daughter to the Newcomb College Nursery School, generally
considered the best school in the city, again only accessible because
I was a medical student at Tulane.
When we evacuated to Texas in 2005, a complicated extended network of
support got our daughter into an independent school, again the best in
the city, and my mom dropped out of her PhD program to watch my son.
When we went back to New Orleans, my son started back at Newcomb
Nursery. My daughter went to St Andrews, a solid independent school
well situated between my wife's work and Newcomb, where our son was
still going.
When we moved to Virginia, I was in a surgical internship, and we sent
our daughter to Norfolk Collegiate, which is generally considered one
of the top two schools in Norfolk (leans a little more toward the arts
and significantly smaller than Norfolk Academy). Meanwhile, I found
out the staff surgeons all lived in Virginia Beach, and many sent
their kids to the public schools. Norfolk Collegiate, like many things
on the East Coast, was very stressful. (quick tangent: my goal at this
point is to not live on the East Coast again. Four tours there, and I
just like the West Coast mentality soooo much more. I share this,
because I've found there are definitely other people like that, and if
you're a west coaster living on the east coast and hating life, you're
not alone. Come back.)
When we moved back to San Diego, my wife, having already worked in the
San Diego schools, knew where she wanted to live, and now our kids go
to one of the best public schools in the county, and we walk to
school.
Now, what we found in Montessori schools is that you have to visit
them. Anyone can slap "Montessori" on a piece of wood in front of a
building. If you focus on the word "Montessori" you may end up
visiting a lot of schools. Independent Schools -- that's a different
matter. Look for Association of Independent Schools
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_of_Independent_Schools).
That's a very good indicator of excellence. And those folks can point
you to the best pre-schools in the area. While there is something of a
bimodal distribution of "Montessori" schools, where some are great and
others... not so much, I'm not sure there's a single factor that
differentiates the great "Montessori" schools from other great
schools. At that level, each one is different.
One personal opinion, you'll find most of the top schools use the
Chicago math curriculum. My daughter hated it, and while the workbook
pages made me think "Oh! I can totally see how that could be an
awesome way to learn math!" I think, in reality, at least for my
daughter, it was a complete fail compared to the more traditional
Houghton Mifflin program. She can multiply and divide better than she
can add, simply because of her viscerally bad experience in first and
second grades.
One other thing to ask about, ask you get further along, is if the
kids can have their homework for the week on Friday. Our kids invest a
fair amount of time in gymnastics and karate, and, especially for my
daughter, it works a lot better to rock out a bunch of work on the
days she's not doing gymnastics.
And, I swear this is the last thing: Khan Academy is intellectually
appealing for adults, but I find our kids enjoy the glitz of Rocket
Math and Math Blaster more, but I can use Khan Academy to track their
progress better, so I will occasionally withhold the math games until
they get a Khan Academy streak going, mainly for tracking.
Oh, and throw away the TV.
Colin Putney
> Now, what we found in Montessori schools is that you have to visit
> them. Anyone can slap "Montessori" on a piece of wood in front of a
> building. If you focus on the word "Montessori" you may end up
> visiting a lot of schools.
Right. One thing you can do here is look for AMI certification. (see
http://www.montessori-ami.org/) That's the organization that Maria
Montessori founded to train Montessori teachers. I tend to be wary of
certification, but in this case it seems to be a good indicator that
they're serious.
Colin
Damla Dogan Altinoren
* Are there any toys other than Montessori toys in the school?
* Do they have books? Will teachers read books to children? (some schools have only lapbooks, special books designed by teachers to teach on a specific subject)
* Outside activities, are they scheduled? Or will your kid go and play in the garden whenever he/she likes? (some schools don't plan the day, every child should choose their activities, and if they don't have enough teachers to attend children in the garden, children spend too little time outside)
* How's their approach to creative play. For example, if your child decides to play with pink towers as if they were trains, what happens? Or he uses an iron (some schools have real small irons and other real home staff like ovens) as a car? Does he have to paint with a brush, what happens if he decides to use his fingers? Or he doesn't wish to follow teacher's order/sequence when cleaning his table?
http://www.mothering.com/discussions/showthread.php?t=199376
http://www.mothering.com/discussions/archive/index.php/t-416809.html