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Every year, school administrators and teachers sit down and plan professional development opportunities to benefit teachers and students alike. But when you consider your professional development, do you also consider the stage you or other teachers are at? Is the information and format best suited to your needs? In short, are we delivering professional development in ways that reflect our Montessori teaching practices. It has long been the standard to deliver straightforward information in a workshop format. This type of presentation is reminiscent of conventional education whereby the speaker lectures or tells the audience the information. The majority of audience participation is passive listening. Rather than a test, the assessment in professional development is how well the information is transferred and implemented in classroom practice. Professional Development for Montessori Teachers: Following the Learner Teachers, for the most part, are active learners who take an interest in...

In our previous blog , we discussed the first part of the first full day of school during which the students were introduced to the routines and expectations of the classroom. In this article, we discuss the remainder of the day when students are ready to do some work. Ideas for Work Periods for the First Day in the Montessori Elementary Classroom I find that inviting the students to write in their journals about something they did over the summer is a good way to start them working on the first day. Usually, the new students need direction on page orientation and sentence building. I often ask an older student to help a younger friend if they need help. Once they are all finished, we go outside and have a snack while those who would like to share their stories do. While we are outside, my assistant kindly takes a photo of each student for the scrapbooks that we work on throughout the year. When we return to the classroom, I ask the returning students to start their work, beginning whe...

Our care of the child should be governed, not by the desire to make him learn things, but by the endeavor always to keep burning within him that light which is called intelligence. —Maria Montessori The Advanced Montessori Method, p. 198. Maria Montessori was a maverick. An educational maven years ahead of her time, she turned the focus of education to the needs of the child. She taught us to respect children as human beings capable of extraordinary feeling and an immense capacity for learning. Her insight into child development brought about such changes as child-size tables and chairs, tools that fit the hands of growing children, and materials that appeal to the child at the current stage of development and that prepare them to be independent, capable adults. Montessori didn’t use conventional “approved” methods of educating children. There were no textbooks, no basal readers, no math worksheets. Through scientific observation, she watched to see how and what children wanted to lear...