What Makes Montessori Different?
Montessori is a globally education philosophy that has met children social, emotional, and academic needs for over a century.
Yet contemporary educational researchers have identified six key competencies in the Montessori Pedagogy that prepares a child for success in the 21st century.
- Collaboration: Multi-age Groupings/ Social learning opportunities/ developing a child’s individuality to encourage social engagement
- Communication: Speaking and listening/ query-based program/ Respect of Others
- Critical Thinking: Self-Correcting Materials/ risk taking through choice/ authentic ongoing Feedback & self-Assessment/ Developing the ability to Compare, Contrast, Classify
- Innovation: Engage in Trial & Error/ Cross-Discipline Studies/Discovery Learning
- Confidence: Real Decision-making/ Purposeful Work/ Individual geared Challenge/ opportunity to Self-Correct/ Intrinsic Motivation/Individually selected & completed Tasks
- Pace: traits to adapt and responds and learning to navigate the impact of globalization and the rapid changing technology.
Hence, Montessori programs prepare students to live life with resiliency and to face obstacles as a learning opportunity in a modern world.
A Montessori facility acknowledges the benefit of all other time tested and proven methods of education by combining the best and most advanced forms for the intellectual stimulation and academic and emotional satisfaction and progress of the child.
A Montessori curriculum focuses on the individual child by exposing students to a wide variety of academic concepts where they will learn at their own pace and foster the necessary skills to be successful in life and in school.
Montessori Environments provide classrooms which are design to meet the developmental needs of the children by emphasizing an order from which the sensorial character of the materials will appeal to the young child. The open spaces and room to explore encourage the children to collaborate with their peers which is very appealing to the children.
Traditional School vs. Montessori
The Montessori Educator
A Montessori educator is more than a teacher. The educator is:
- A guide to the child,
- Creates a safe learning environment
- Helps the child learn to focus on learning and work independently,
- Supporting the child (and parent) as the child progresses along the path to independence and autonomy.
- Enhance the child understanding and critical thinking skills.
- Builds a curriculum that is sensitive to the needs of the child
- Promotes the development of the child’s outside-school interests and talents.
The child’s educator acts as a guide, a helper and a constant observer working alongside with the child. It is the educator’s responsibility to constantly test and observe a child’s work, attention span and progress with the goal of bringing a child to realize their capabilities and unending potential. The educator observes each child and researches how that child develops and interacts with his/her environment.
The educators utilizes the prepared environment to specially support a child towards independence. Governed by the needs and responses of a child, a broad range of materials is made available. Each tool provided to a child has a built-in control of error feature, thereby reinforcing the educator’s goal of helping a child to self-assist. The educator is also required to create bespoke materials for a child’s specific needs. In this way, there is a constant process of upgrading the environment with the knowledge from the educator’s observations and accumulated class documentation regarding a child.