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5 Facts About Montessori Schools

What is Montessori?

Montessori is the name of a very popular approach for teaching preschool and primary-age children. We'll explore the reasons for its popularity later. First, let's examine how Montessori got its start. As with many great movements, Montessori began with an idea and some theories by one of those remarkable visionaries who dot the pages of history.

Life and Work of Dr. Montessori

Dr. Maria Montessori (1870-1952) was born and raised in Italy.

• She came from a family of modest means.
• Her father did not approve of her desire to be educated, much less to become a doctor.
• Women didn't do such things back at the end of the 19th century.
• Despite the many obstacles that stood in her way, Maria earned her degree from the University of Rome in 1896.
• Her specialty was pediatric medicine.

While Dr. Montessori worked towards her degree, she studied and worked with mentally disabled children. She got her chance to put her experience, observations, and theories into practice when she was invited to open a school for the children of working-class families in 1907.

• The school was located in a low-income housing project in Rome.
• The first was a traditional school with desks, chalkboards, and all the other accouterments of classrooms of the day.
• Dr. Montessori herself did not teach.
• She left that task to the building

So, let's assume that somehow, we could rank private schools. After all, asking how a particular school is ranked is something most parents want to know. We are accustomed to comparing just about everything these days. We comparison shop constantly. We rank our favorite teams. We know which pop artist is on top of the charts. And so on. Comparing and ranking anything and everything is just the way we do things. Doing so lets us know that we are getting the best value possible.

That comparison shopping approach works fine for most things in our daily lives. Unfortunately, it does not work when it comes to ranking private schools. Why? Because each private school is unique. How it is run, where it is located, the courses it offers, the sports programs, the extracurricular activities, its philosophy, and the results it gets are all unique. That doesn't mean we can't compare the various features of private schools. That is doable, but it is a lot of work. As we have pointed out in Do Ranks Matter? it is extremely difficult and time-consuming for ordinary people to find the data and information we need to arrive at a ranking system for private schools. But if we did rank private schools, here is how we would do it.

Alexis offers some useful tips for the school selection process in the following video.

Visit the schools.

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What is a lab school? It is a K-12 school or school with some variation of those grades which typically is operated by a university or college. Sometimes it is called a demonstration school. A few lab schools are not affiliated with any institution of higher learning.

The school is a lab or laboratory school because teachers in training and the faculty of the college's education department usually have a hand in teaching and running the school. Like scientists experimenting in their labs, these educators use the lab school as their place to try out theories and methods. They also provide student teachers a controlled situation where they can learn the art of teaching.

Most lab schools are progressive schools as well. What are the differences between traditional and progressive schools? from the Wingras School in Madison, Wisconsin illustrates the main differences. Lab schools adopt the progressive philosophy as part of their child-centric approach to education. The flexibility inherent in the progressive approach works well with student teachers who are just coming to grips with how children learn.

The list of schools which follows includes only private lab schools. Many state and public universities operate their lab schools in conjunction with the local school district. As such they do not charge tuition or charge very little tuition. The private lab schools do charge tuition.

Grades: K-8
Program: "The school's purpose is to educate students in a wholesome, challenging

Progressive schools have been around since the early 1900s. Some educators think that progressives are rebels against traditional rote learning. Progressive educators like to think of themselves as reformers. The truth is somewhere in between the two points of view.

This video offers an overview of the Progressive movement.

The movement has an interesting history. Read about (1859-1952), the modern founder of the movement in the U.S. You can only wonder what might have happened to public education had some of his ideas taken root. As it is, progressive educators and schools that employ their philosophies are confined to the private sector. A list of private schools that embrace progressive ideals, teachings, and curricula is below.

• Bank Street College of Education
• Buxton School
• The Calhoun School
• The Children's Community School
• The City and Country School
• Dalton School
• Greenwood Friends School
• The Little Red Schoolhouse and Elisabeth Irwin High School
• The Little School
• The Manhattan Country School
• The Miquon School
• Oak Lane Day School
• Oakwood School
• The Park School of Baltimore
• The Park School of Buffalo
• The Philadelphia School
• Presidio Hill School
• The Putney School
• San Roque School
• The School in Rose Valley
• Sequoyah School
• St. Francis School
• Westland School
• Windrush School
• Wingra School

The Origins of the Progressive Movement

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Roman Catholic Boarding Schools

Educating the young has been a mission of the Roman Catholic Church for as long as anybody can remember.

• While curricula and teaching methods have changed dramatically over the years, one thing is immutable: these schools do a great job educating their students.
• The proof is the very high percentage of their graduates who go on to colleges and universities nationwide and abroad.
• Most Roman Catholic schools are day schools, typically affiliated with a parish or diocese.

With many other boarding schools charging $65,000-85,000 a year for their services, these boarding schools offer good value as such things go.

• A couple of schools are single sex schools. The rest are co-educational institutions.
• Roman Catholic orders, such as the Jesuits or Salesians, who specialize in teaching, run many of these schools.

The standards are high.

• Most schools have uniform or dress codes.
• Core values are also taught, along with plenty of instruction in the Catholic faith.
• These Catholic schools produce graduates whose solid spiritual and academic foundations anchor them for advancement in later life.

Canva generated this picture of coats of arms.

The Schools

Check out the profiles of these schools. Many of them also take day students, so if you live in the area, you can have the best of both worlds.

Grades 9-12
350 students
Coed

"The Canterbury experience is a rich one for both boarding and