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A goal of the Montessori teacher is for the children to work as if she was not in the room at all. Sometimes, Montessori teachers like to take this idea literally. Recently, I was walking down the hallway and I noticed one of our teachers standing just outside the door of her early childhood class. As I approached, it was clear that she was observing her own classroom. I joined her at the door.
As we watched, 24 children age 3-6 were each so engrossed in their work, that none of them even noticed us standing there. The teacher said to me, in a low voice “It’s almost circle time. Let’s see what happens.” Moments later, one of the older girls in the classroom, looked up at the clock. She looked around the classroom and spotted us at the door. With a confident expression on her face, she put her work away and walked over to where the teacher keeps the class bell. She rung it and the children all looked in her direction. “Excuse me.” She said. “It’s time for circle. Please, everyone come sit down.”
The rest of the children –all 23 of them from the tiniest three-year-old to the biggest 6 year old calmly joined the circle. The girl who had called circle, then looked at us as if to say, “what should I do?” The teacher said nothing, but gave an encouraging look and a hand gesture back to her. We remained at the door. Without missing a beat, the child sat down with her classmates and led them in singing the good morning song and demonstrated the hand signs that go along with it.
I get chills every time I think about that. This is Montessori.

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Meet Franciscan Montessori Earth School and Saint Francis Academy
One of the most remarkable aspects of the Earth School’s education is the integration of ecology, outdoor experiences, and knowledge of the world into the curriculum. Our outdoor learning environments are extensions of the classroom where students connect with the earth, play creatively, and find rest and refuge. At the Earth School we understand the growing need for students to experience nature as companion, teacher, and healer. Our garden education allows students grow and eat food from indoor window boxes and from a large vegetable garden on school grounds and teaches stewardship for the earth. Our Earth Experience trips take our classrooms around the main ecosystems of Oregon. These camping trips represent a key curricular Montessori approach that fulfills the work begun in the classroom. All of our programs are developed to provide our students the tools to acquire individual fulfillment, academic excellence, moral and spiritual development, confidence and independence for lifelong learning.

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Meet Metro East Montessori School
In 1970, a group of parents and community members interested in Montessori education got together to start a community school in the metro east suburbs of St. Louis. For over 40 years, generations of families have attended MEMS and have experienced first-hand the value of receiving a high-quality and holistic Montessori education. Our AMI recognized school, comprised of two campuses, includes three primary classrooms, a lower elementary and an upper elementary.

In honor of our 40th anniversary, alumni, students and staff from MEMS collaborated to create a documentary about our school and Montessori education.
Watch a video!

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Mollie Mostyn Stromberg…
Mollie’s Montessori journey began in Lockport, Illinois at St. Dennis Grade School. During a brief five year period in the mid-seventies, an early childhood Montessori classroom was established at this small parochial school. She is confident that her parents’ choice to send her to this program forever changed the way she perceives the world. At the time the tuition was high for her working class family, but a wise friend told her mother “ If faced with the choice of sending your child to Montessori or saving for their college education…send them to Montessori and they will put themselves through college”. Both Mollie and her brother Jay Mostyn went to Montessori and did just what the friend predicted.
As a parent, Mollie and her husband Jon Stromberg agreed that they would send their children to Montessori school for as long as they possibly could. When their daughter Charlotte was eighteen months, Mollie attended a coffee and open house at Chicago’s oldest private Montessori School. She was devastated to learn that following year because of sibling enrollment there would be essentially no chance their daughter would get into their program. The principal of the school told her that a Public Montessori school would be opening in Chicago and that they were helping them to structure their program. The school, Drummond Elementary was located in the same neighborhood where Mollie and her family were living and just a half a block from the new house they were building. It seemed to Mollie to be divine intervention.
Today, Mollie is proud of her status as a stay at home mom to three Drummond Montessori children, (Charlotte 9, Jon 6, and William 3) and wife of an amazing, supportive and successful husband Jon Stromberg.
Mollie is currently President of Drummond Montessori Magnet School’s Parent Teacher Organization. Drummond is Chicago’s first Magnet Montessori School that starts at age 3 and continues through eighth grade. The Illinois State Scholastic Achievement Tests (ISATS) that as a Chicago Public School Drummond students are required to take have shown drastic improvement since being re-conceptualized as a Magnet Montessori school in 2004. In just seven short years, the composite score has gone from the 44 %ile to the 93%ile. Last year Drummond had 1,900 applications for a coveted thirty six openings. Mollie’s empathy for her friends and even next door neighbors who cannot access Montessori education due to lack of availability and affordability drives her passion to make Montessori more accessible.
In 2010, Mollie conceptualized and Co-chaired a fundraising campaign for the school called Drummond Montessori Matters and its accompanying Pink Tower Party. Both now continue on an annual basis.
Mollie serves on the board of the McCormick Tribune YMCA and is actively involved in the Young President’s Organization (YPO) planning social events for spouses in the Windy City Chapter. This upcoming year she will join the YPO Windy City chapter board as Spousal Forum Coordinator. In her former life, Mollie was a consultant for a healthcare research firm that specialized in patient and employee satisfaction. During her years at this firm she was responsible for the negotiation of contracts with Hospitals and Health Systems across North America. Her graduate work was in Organizational Psychology.
She and her family live in the Bucktown neighborhood of Chicago.

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Thanks for asking for my Montessori story.
I have been a Montessori teacher since 1978. I started working as an assistant in a Montessori School in 1977 and had the good fortune of working with a Master teacher who encouraged me to get the training.At that time there weren’t that many places to go to get trained in my area but I finally found a training center that was near NYC and that I could commute to once a week for a year and all of the summer.I started my internship the following year.

Up until that point I had been having a difficult time with what I wanted to do in life. I was an art major in school and knew I wanted to be creative in some way but did not know how. The moment I walked into a Montessori classroom I knew. I felt a connection with the children, the environment and the philosophy of teaching and at last found a clear vision of what would become my future and my passion.
Thank you for letting me share my joy.
Elizabeth McKinley

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Why did we choose WSMC pre-primary?
First and foremost, we gauged our daughter Ainsley’s interest. She loves Montessori. Ainsley started at WSMC at age 15-months in the Buttercup room. She has always thrived in this environment and still enjoys going to school. What more can a parent ask than for his/her child to enjoy school? Ainsley’s happiness was our primary concern. Armed with the knowledge of a happy daughter, we also considered our own parental concerns. While we want her to be happy, we also want her to learn and grow.
Montessori classrooms promote stimulation and learning. They are bright, warm, and inviting. They go beyond mere numbers/letters and are filled with materials for reading, writing, math, practical life, geography, art, science, culture, sensorial, plants, animals, music, and more. There are so many choices for work. Ainsley was interested in numbers rather than language her first few years. Her teachers assured us that language would be mastered when she was interested. This year (kindergarten) she has become very interested in language and now reads on her own. There is also exposure to foreign languages. Ainsley now corrects our attempts at French and Spanish and even asks when we can visit France.
Montessori classrooms promote social education. The children learn how to interact with each other and how to resolve conflicts. Teachers serve primarily as role models. The children learn mutual respect and how to help each other. We learned the importance of this very early in pre-primary. Ainsley was three, new to pre-primary and crying one morning after drop-off. One of the kindergartners talked to her, told her that Mommy would be back and helped her transition into work.
Montessori classrooms promote practical life skills. In a very real sense, each one cares for their own child-sized environment. They prepare their own snacks/drinks, they go to the bathroom without help, and they help each other clean messes. They cut raw fruits and vegetables, sweep and dust, carry pitchers of liquid, and pour mostly without spillage. These can be very beneficial when brought home. For us, Ainsley has developed a very early love for baking.
Montessori classrooms promote independence. The children are able to make their own choices for activities. And they are encouraged to work until completion thereby helping to develop concentration and self-esteem. The children normally work so calmly and intently that it is clear this is their environment. We love doing observation days and letting Ainsley independently select her work and teach us the lessons. Her pride in self-accomplishment is a wonder to behold.
Montessori classrooms are designed to promote discussion and stimulate collaborative learning. The children move freely within the rooms and select work that captures their interest, rather than passively participating in lessons selected by the teachers. They work together on projects and learn how to share responsibilities. Older children who have mastered certain activities can often be found teaching the younger children how to perform certain work.
Finally, the WSMC community itself is wonderful. Everybody knows the children’s names (e.g., at carline and walking down the sidewalk to class). And the teachers are excited about their work and the children. This can be seen firsthand by observing a pre-primary classroom and/or talking to the teachers at moving-up night.
We purposely moved into Sylvania as it had a reputation for relatively good public schools. But we have continued to decide to keep our children at WSMC. It as an expense that changes how we budget for other things. We feel a good education and a love of learning is the best gift we can give our children. We have found both at WSMC.
Sincerely, Paul and Nicole Nungester

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I’m Bart Theriot, Head of School at the Montessori Academy at Belmont Greene in Ashburn, Virginia. Here are two of my favorite Montessori moments because they represent a cornerstone of the Montessori method –Grace and Courtesy.

About 7 years ago I was observing our lower elementary class. The children were all working and focused and that wonderful Montessori buzz had filled the room. There were two nine-year-old girls (third year students) standing together about 10 feet away from me. They were speaking quietly and I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Suddenly, one of the girls (let’s call her Jane) picked up the small brass classroom bell and gently rang it.
23 children immediately stopped what they were doing, raised one hand and looked to where the sound of the bell originated. Jane confidently addressed the class “Excuse me. Could everyone please come to circle. We have a problem that we need to solve.” The children quietly made their way to circle. Jane held up a pencil which was missing its eraser. “Our problem is that all of the community pencils are losing their erasers. We need the erasers for writing. Does anyone have any ideas on what to do?”
A younger boy raised his hand. Jane rolled him the “talking ball” and he offered his solution. The solution was met with mixed, but polite, respectful reviews. Another child, the girl who had been speaking with Jane, raised her hand. The child rolled her the talking ball. Her solution: if a pencil lost its eraser, it was the responsibility of the last student who used it to replace the pencil with a new one from the teacher’s box or add an eraser topper. The students agreed, at which point they all got up and returned to their work. The teachers never said a word.
In a former life, I spent many years in business meetings and not one of them was as productive, polite and efficient as what I saw that day.
Later that week, I was standing outside a classroom with some prospective parents during a tour of our school. Near the classroom door a three-year old boy sat working very hard on a particularly difficult pin punching work. The noise level in the class had started to creep up as a few of the children had begun to socialize at a table nearby. The boy was clearly distracted.
Moments later, he stood up and walked toward the classroom door. He could barely reach the switch, but he managed to turn off the lights in the classroom. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked toward the light switches –teachers included. The child said in a small voice “Excuse me, could everyone please be quiet? It’s getting very loud in here and I am trying to work.” Without waiting for a response, he turned the lights back on. The class remained quiet and children returned to their work as if this sort of thing happens every day.
Afterward, the parents and I discussed what we saw and we couldn’t decide which was more impressive; the three-year-old with the confidence to make his wishes known in a polite and respectful way, or an entire class of children who shared a mutual respect for each other and understood the child’s right to a calm and orderly class.
Over the years I’ve seen Montessori moments like this almost every time I enter the classroom. I have no doubt in my mind that Montessori children will change the world.

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