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PARENT'S SECTION - ARTICLES
Posted on Tue, Mar. 04, 2003
Special to the Star-Telegram
The Montessori MystiqueHow to know if the early-childhood teaching method is right for your child
By Elizabeth Agnvall
When Leesa Anthony began looking for a preschool for her two daughters, she did what most of us do: She asked her friends. A neighbor told her about a Montessori preschool, and Anthony remembered hearing about Montessori during her training as a speech therapist. Intrigued, Anthony began to investigate. She visited the school, spoke with the director and talked to other parents whose children were in a Montessori preschool. She liked what she heard.
"I work with a pediatric population, and I believe in child-directed education. At Montessori schools, the child leads the educational process. It is not the teacher directing it," Anthony said. Anthony said she visited several traditional preschools and it seemed children were all being encouraged to do things in the same way.
"I would notice that there would be turtles on the wall and everybody had painted the turtle green. I wanted my girls to be able to paint their turtles purple, striped and polka dot if they wanted to," she said.
She enrolled her girls at the Montessori Children's House in Ridglea Hills, which has students from preschool through sixth grade.
Based on the teaching philosophy of Italian psychiatrist and pediatrician Maria Montessori, who started her first school in 1907, the Montessori method is now considered one of the best-established early-childhood teaching philosophies. The schools strive to provide children with a child-centered environment that promotes independence and a love of learning.
Of the approximately 6,000 Montessori schools in the country and 440 Montessori schools in Texas, the Fort Worth area has 10: four that are strictly preschools, four that include preschool and elementary or partial elementary, and two public Montessori schools. Including the two large public Montessori schools that contain grades kindergarten through middle school with 450 children each, around 1,200 children in the Fort Worth area are in Montessori schools. There is a growing trend in Texas for preschools to expand to include elementary grades and some middle-school grades.
When Montessori preschools became popular in this country in the 1960s and '70s, they were predominantly for wealthy children. To some extent, that's still true. Most Montessori preschoolers come from middle- and upper-class families, though the country does have several Montessori Head Start programs. Because Montessori preschools often have all-day and infant programs -- as opposed to two or three mornings a week for younger kids in other preschools -- many working parents use Montessori as child care. The child-care model fits with the original Montessori schools in Italy, which were developed by Maria Montessori specifically for children of the working poor.
While Montessori schools have been flourishing in this country for decades, there's still a mystique about the schools and some hotly divided opinions about whether they are better for preschoolers than more traditional preschools. As Montessori becomes more widely accepted and more of an affordable option for all parents, it begs the questions: Are Montessori preschools still delivering something other schools are not? Are all Montessori schools created equal? And if not, how do you find one that's right for your child?
Those who are hooked on the Montessori way say the preschool education instills the building blocks for independent critical thinking and a lifelong love of learning. Skeptics counter that Montessori preschools lack structure and time for fantasy play. Some parents simply view Montessori schools as too different.
Are they?
The Montessori way
Walk into any two Montessori preschool classrooms and you're likely to see several similarities. Since classrooms are large, and children are grouped in three-year increments, a typical preschool class will have 20 to 35 children ranging from 3 to 6 years old.
One 3-year-old is washing dishes, a 4-year-old is working with a puzzle map of the continents on his mat and two 5-year-olds are working out math problems together with a thousand-bead cube.
The classroom is calm and quiet, with children working on individual activities. Classrooms have more than 50 tasks from which children can choose. The older children take pride in advising and helping the younger ones. Everyone carefully cleans up his or her work (don't ask children in a Montessori school what they are playing with -- they'll quickly correct you to say it's their work). The dishes are put away, towels folded, puzzles put in their places.
The children pour their own juice, get their own snacks and set out their own place mats. Grace and courtesy are important concepts.
Montessori educators say the skills the preschool children are learning are the building blocks for reading, writing and critical thinking. Because the children work individually, they progress at their own pace. Teachers observe and encourage children in their individual interests.
Children can work with their chosen activities as long as they like. While adults often talk about the short attention span of young children, Montessori teachers have found that when children are enjoying themselves, they often have longer attention spans than adults.
"Adults underestimate their potential and their capacity," said Penny Boyce, director of Montessori at Sundance Square in downtown Fort Worth, which has children from infants through lower elementary grades. "[At Montessori], we end up with children that have a strong sense of independence and self-confidence and are not afraid of challenges. Most of all they have a huge love for learning."
Many Montessori preschoolers are reading by age 5. Parents tell stories of 3-year-olds who know the names of all the states and others who announce at dinner the number of jungle gorillas left in the world.
Katie Farmer has two children, 3-year-old Patrick and 18-month-old Caroline, who have been at Montessori at Sundance Square since they were 3 months old. She says her 18-month-old has learned to sit patiently and pretend to read a book and loves to go to school. Her 3-year-old (who is nearly 4) watches the big kids -- the 5- and 6-year-olds -- in his class and wants to copy the reading and math work they're doing. Just last week, Farmer said, Patrick put 100 tiles in order by number on a board at school.
"What I love about it is a teacher doesn't stand over a child and force him or her to learn, and that is a great thing to give a child early on," Farmer said.
Montessori educators stress that early academic achievement isn't part of the goal. "Every child is moving at their own pace to the best of their capabilities," Boyce said. "With the Montessori method, the environment is already prepared for the children to become successful in math, language and sensorial skills."
Amy Henderson, director of elementary education at the 35-year-old Montessori Children's House in Ridglea Hills and president-elect of the American Montessori Society, said because children are in each classroom for three years, the teachers get to know each child and his or her needs. She calls this "following the child." When children are ready to move from one level to the next, the teacher helps them. They don't need to wait for their peers. There is no teaching to the middle.
"What we're looking at is for children to become engaged and for them to become conscientious workers. We want them to learn to choose some work, complete the work cycle and, if it is appropriate, record the work in some way," Henderson said. The misconception about Montessori schools is that children can do whatever they want, she said, but it's all about freedom within limits.
All work and no play?
Of course not every parent and educator believes that Montessori equals preschool nirvana. Some parents worry that Montessori schools are too rigorous and controlling. Others say they're not interested in their children learning to read or do mathematics early -- they just want preschool to be fun and loving. They like the idea of a bunch of children sitting together at a table molding Play-Doh.
Because children aren't encouraged to play together, some educators worry about a system that de-emphasizes the group interaction that will be so important later in life. And not every Montessori school -- or Montessori classroom -- lives up to the ideals of the education philosophy.
Mary Patton, Ph.D., is an associate professor in early-childhood education at Texas Christian University. Patton, who has visited numerous Montessori programs, said there is much to praise about the preschools.
"Research supports the mixed-aged grouping and the idea that the kids have lots of choice in terms of what interests them and what they pursue," Patton said. She's impressed with the hands-on mathematics materials designed to help them understand -- not just memorize -- basic math concepts.
However, a few aspects of the Montessori education concern her.
Patton said that Maria Montessori did not believe in fantasy play, which research has shown is important to childhood development. Also, though the children have many activities to choose from, some schools are very strict in the ways children carry out those activities.
"The Montessori classrooms are beautiful, they are ordered, everything has a place and is returned to that place. There is a lot of choice, but within those choices there are not many choices," Patton said.
Every classroom has its own energy and challenges. Sometimes, if a class has too many new students who haven't been indoctrinated to the Montessori methods, a large classroom full of young children can be a little out of control.
Some parents say Montessori fits some children better than others. Amy Jacobs has a son and twin girls who started at the Montessori at Sundance Square in downtown Fort Worth and then moved to the Montessori Children's House when Jacobs stopped working full time. All three of her children are now at Tanglewood Elementary School.
Jacobs said that her twin girls excelled at Montessori but that her son didn't do as well. The idea that girls tend to do better than boys at Montessori schools is a common one among preschool parents.
"He was not very self-directed," she said. "I don't know whether it was a maturity issue, or boy/girl or personality. I think some kids are exceptionally suited to Montessori. I've heard many people say that with boys you need to give them the gift of time."
The Montessori influence
To many non-Montessori preschool teachers, much of the basic Montessori theory may sound familiar. As one of the first early-childhood-education researchers to create child-care centers, Maria Montessori's philosophy has influenced mainstream preschool education.
Classrooms with scaled-down tables, chairs, toys and toilets -- now the norm in preschools -- were first introduced in Montessori schools. Wooden puzzles with handles on the pieces were a Montessori invention -- designed to aid the youngest hands in fine-motor skills that would lead to writing. These aspects are no longer unique to Montessori, and some of the hallmarks of Montessori have never been exclusive to teaching method. Child-led education is the cornerstone of many early-childhood-education theories.
But Betsy Coe, Ph.D., executive director of the Houston Montessori teacher education program and director of the middle and high schools at School of the Woods in Houston, said most of the methods and teachings remain unique to Montessori schools.
Only in Montessori does a little girl begin to explore a trinomial puzzle cube at age 3 and then learn to match it by size and color by age 5 and eventually -- if she continues with Montessori -- learn that the cube represents an algebraic equation. Only in Montessori will she work with a thousand-bead chain as a preschooler until she learns to count by 10s and then 100s and then finally understand that the chain represents the number 1,000.
Only in Montessori would a little boy start moving around sandpaper letters in preschool, then learn the sounds of those letters and finally learn how to put them into words. If he continues with Montessori elementary schools, he'll learn a history of letters and how the different alphabets were created.
Montessori kids, said Coe, "get the wonderment and awe of the world. Learning is not something they have to do but something they want to do. They are active participants."
How different are Montessori preschools?
At some point, all children move from preschool to the bigger worlds of kindergarten and elementary school. One measure of the success of Montessori is to see how well its young graduates fare in their school years.
According to Tim Seldin, president of the Montessori Foundation, several recent studies indicate long-term effectiveness of the Montessori method on the education of young children.
In a pair of studies conducted in 1991 and 1993, and published in North American Montessori Teachers' Quarterly, researchers found that former Montessori students in Cleveland performed significantly better on the CAT standardized test than students with no previous Montessori education. And a soon-to-be-published study by Alan Gartner and Dorothy Lipsky comparing 201 high school students found that graduates of Milwaukee's public Montessori program outperformed their peers on tests of skill in math, science and social science.
Julie Sawyer agrees with the assessment of the researchers. Sawyer said she was a bit worried when her daughter Samantha was headed to kindergarten at Fort Worth Country Day after being at Montessori at Sundance Square since she was 3 months old. But, she said, her fears were unfounded.
"The thing that made me most happy was when we tested for the private school, Samantha tested really high, and the transition was not a problem at all," Sawyer said. "She just slid right into it."
Maria Montessori: founder of a school of thought
Maria Montessori (1870-1952) was one of Italy's first female physicians. Her specialties were pediatrics and psychiatry. In 1907, Montessori opened her first Casa dei Bambini, or Children's House, in a slum in Rome. The school was one of Europe's first child-care centers and served 4- to 7-year-olds whose parents worked in factories.
Based on previous successful work with developmentally disabled children and the techniques of French physicians Jean Itard and Edouard Seguin, Montessori insisted that the teachers treat the children with the utmost respect and that the children learn to take care of themselves.
The success of her schools led to acclaim for her methods in Europe, the United States and India. In 1929, Montessori founded the Association Montessori Internationale. In the 1930s, Montessori was forced to leave Italy because of her opposition to Mussolini's fascism. She lived during the war in India, where she started a series of training courses for teachers.
After the war, she lived in the Netherlands and died in Noordwijk, Holland, in 1952.
Between 1910 to 1920, Montessori's methods received attention in the United States, but it wasn't until 1960, when Nancy McCormick Rambusch founded the American Montessori Society in Greenwich, Conn., that Montessori preschools began to increase in number and popularity in the United States.
How to find a good Montessori preschool
Every Montessori school is not created equal. Montessori is not a patented name, so anyone who starts a school can call it a Montessori.
One way to begin evaluation of a particular preschool is to check for accreditation. The two largest Montessori associations, the American Montessori Society and Association Montessori Internationale, have rigorous accrediting programs for both schools and teachers; affiliation with one of the two main associations is a good sign. Schools affiliated with the American Montessori Society are staffed by teachers who hold AMS credentials in at least half of the classes. Auxiliary Affiliate Schools are staffed by teachers who hold AMS credentials in fewer than half of the classes. The American Montessori Internationale has a teacher certification and an accreditation program, called Certificate of Recognition, with three levels.
However, leaders of those associations say that just because a Montessori school is not accredited does not necessarily mean it's not a good Montessori school.
Other ways to evaluate a particular Montessori school are to talk with parents whose children attend the school, meet with the director to discuss the school's philosophy and observe a preschool classroom to look for some of these Montessori characteristics:
• Montessori-trained teacher
• A child-centered environment: Generally students work individually or in small, self-selected groups
• Children progress at their own pace
• A relatively quiet classroom
• Montessori materials such as golden beads, puzzle maps, etc.
• Mixed-age groups
• No competition in the classroom
• Children completing tasks for themselves that are often done for them in other preschools (putting on jackets, setting out snacks, etc …)
• Emphasis on polite behavior
For more tips on selecting a Montessori school, see the article How Can I Know If I've Found a Real Montessori School on the Montessori Foundation Web site, www.montessori.org/ Resources/Library/Parent Library.htm or read The Authentic American Montessori School by Dr. Nancy McCormick and Dr. John Stoops.
The cost of Montessori
Are Montessori preschools more expensive than traditional programs? Not necessarily. We called a handful of local schools and asked them what they charge for one child, age 3 to 5, for a full-day, five-day program.
• The Montessori Academy, 3428 W. Arkansas Lane, Arlington
(817) 274-1548; Montessori program; $600 per month
• The Montessori School on Camp Bowie, 1801 Ashland Ave., Fort Worth (817) 731-8373; Montessori program; $540 per month
• Montessori at Sundance Square, 201 Jones St., Fort Worth
(817) 334-0036; Montessori program; $670 per month
• Creme de la Creme, 6805 Colleyville Blvd., Colleyville (817) 416-3683; Some Montessori theories, but not the official program; $935 per month
• St. Alban's Episcopal School, 911 S. Davis, Arlington (817) 226-4390; $351 per month
• Little Tyke Creative Child Care; 902 Monroe St., Fort Worth (817) 335-2273; $420/four weeks
• The Children's Courtyard, 3955 Reggiss Court, Fort Worth (817) 318-7676; Reggio Emilia Program; $532-$540/four weeks
-- Amanda Rogers
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