Tag: montessori website

Montessori Homeschool

I ran into the blog Somewhat in the Air by a parent who is doing Montessori style Homeschool for a couple boys (hat tip to Ms. De La Cruz). The kids are in elementary but approaching middle school age and they have some great links to resources that they use for projects that would also work well in the classroom or for individual projects.

The blog also contains some of the students’ work and the author’s reflections on Montessori philosophy. It’s a fascinating read and I’m really looking forward to seeing how it evolves as the kids grow older.

Montessori Secondary Training Blog

The training at the Houston Montessori Center for secondary teachers is long and quite intense. Two teachers from a new Montessori school in Lakeland Florida are keeping a blog about their experience to keep the parents and supporters of the school at home updated on what’s going on. It’s a wonderful read.

Ms. Clarke and Ms. De La Cruz are an excellent team. They’re starting up a new program and it’s nice to see the training program from that perspective. I am quite excited to see how their middle school turns out. In their blog, they convey quite nicely the quality of the training program and the impressive quality of the teachers in training.

Living in peace

This blog is my experiment with how my own small and everyday choices for peace impact my life and others. – Peggy Pate-Smith (2010) in “Peace is a choice”

Everyday choices often have a far-reaching impact because we live in a world that’s so interconnected. I tend to think in terms of the environmental impact of my actions: Do I buy this pair of shoes that may have been made by child labor in China? If I get a new, better cell phone will the old one be recycled properly or will it shipped off to some developing country where its corrosion will contaminate the water supply?

Peggy Pate-Smith from Park View Montessori‘s Middle School in Jackson, TN has been thinking about peace. Her blog, appropriately titled Peace is a Choice, logs her thoughts on small and big matters regarding peace. I’ve found it a great place to find out about peace projects, many with a Montessori link, in which students might be interested in participating.

This year I decided to do an experiment with peace. My hypothesis is that if each day I make at least one conscious decision to choose peace in my life AND blog about it that I will find my life more peaceful. I want to move beyond imagining peace and make a deliberate effort to choose peace. Peggy Pate-Smith (2010) in “Peace is a Choice”.

Ms. Pate-Smith’s master’s thesis, “Implications of Peace in the Montessori Environment” won American Montessori Society’s 2007 Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award.

Montessorian on the web: Dr. Sarah Baird

Sarah Baird, from the Sea Pines Montessori Academy‘s Middle School, has recently started posting articles on K-12 education at Savannah K-12 Examiner. Dr. Baird was a research scientist (chemistry) before getting into Montessori so she’s not afraid to delve into the scientific literature to support her articles, yet her writing is targeted to a general audience.

“I am doing it to write (because I love it) and educate teachers and parents outside Montessori about our philosophy…. I feel like Montessorians keep all the info to themselves. We need to share and be proud to even have a little positive impact on our public schools,” Sarah Baird (2010) personal communication.

Having been blogging here for a few months I can say I greatly appreciate this sentiment, especially since one of the things I’ve been most impressed about with the Montessori approach is how it encapsulates so much of the modern pedagogy about constructivist education.

Score one for adding another intelligent voice with a Montessori perspective to the web.

Twittering a Montessori Middle School

I ran into the twitter page for the Montessori Middle School of Louisville today. It is regularly updated (as of May 2010) and the tweets give a fascinating glimpse of what a rural Montessori school near Knoxville, Tennessee, is up to. They have everything from programming computer games with Flash to working the gardens and composting.

The school’s website is at: http://www.discoveret.org/mms/ and they also have a blog at http://montessorimiddle.blogspot.com/