Winter 2011
volume 23 number 4
Montessori environments encourage choice and self-regulation, but do they support the development of creativity? Montessori herself sometimes disparaged children’s efforts at free drawing and later prescribed a series of activities to develop writing, including the metal insets. In other areas, there are prescribed steps for each material or activity. What is the relationship of these to the development of creativity? When a child veers away from the presentation to less orthodox ways of interacting with the materials, how does a teacher react? Does the presence of the...
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has made standardized testing a key component of the school reform agenda and the primary vehicle to determine whether schools are failing. These same tests are also being used to make decisions on teacher tenure and teacher termination. The U.S. Department of Education has invested $350 million to develop a next generation of tests with the expectation that they will be able to measure complex thinking skills of the kind that Montessori education addresses. I’m skeptical about this. I also am skeptical that...
Having developed sound governance structure within the board, we are now in the process of reorganizing our committees and various work groups with charters, policies/procedures, and schedules that move us forward to meet the goals of our strategic plan. The nine primary goals of our strategic plan are:
Goal 1: AMS will raise the public awareness and understanding of Montessori education.
Rationale: Raising the awareness and understanding of Montessori education is fundamental to the AMS mission to make Montessori a significant voice in education. It also supports the strategic goal of influencing education policy and can widen AMS’s scope of influence.
Goal 2: AMS will be a leading advocate for quality Montessori schools.
Rationale: Advocating for high quality in Montessori schools is inherent to the AMS mission.
Goal 3: AMS will define and...
As technology provides ever more astonishing ways to acquire and share information and to connect with others, educators have new opportunities to increase access, to offer more flexibility to students, and to personalize instruction to meet the pace and style of every learner. Educators also face new questions and challenges: Which technology is most effective? How does one evaluate outcomes? What are best practices when using technology to deliver content? What is the right balance between online and in-person education? Certainly technology is enticing and marvelous, but exactly what are we giving up and what are we getting when we change the way we share and acquire knowledge and skills?
Cast Your Vote!
AMS members: AMS Board of Director elections are now in progress! There are two position openings for professional directors and one for chair of the Heads of Schools Section.
You can cast your vote either online or using a paper ballot (your choice). The last day to vote is January 6, 2012. See the AMS website for more information, including candidate bios and statements and the “how-tos” of voting....
Among all Maslow’s lengthy works on this subject [self-actualization], I believe this is his best description:
Self-actualizing people have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy, however stale these experiences may have become to others. Thus for such a person, any sunset may be as beautiful as the first one, any flower may be of breath-taking loveliness, even after he has seen a million flowers. The thousandth baby he sees is just as miraculous a product as the first one he saw....
Judaism, as a religion and a culture, places a high value on education and scholarly pursuits. As Jewish schools of varying affiliations and denominations look for ways to improve and revive programming, some are exploring the Montessori method. Based on education that follows the child, Montessori focuses on respect, independence, and preparing an environment that nurtures a child’s natural desire for discovery. Jewish schools and Jewish parents are finding that Montessori meshes well with core principles of Jewish faith and culture, such as care for the environment, self-sufficiency, independence, and justice....
In the early years of our middle school program, math classes began as an extension of our elementary model, with students working individually to complete their studies, with small groups or individual lessons from a teacher. Most of our graduates moved on to take geometry in high school. Over the years, with the continued presence of some mathematically gifted students, we began to track our middle school students into separate groupings for seventh and eighth grade rather than meeting their needs within one math setting. Some would go on to take algebra over 2 years while others proceeded twice as fast through the algebra curriculum so that they could complete a high school-equivalent geometry class in their eighth grade year.
It did not take very long for some students and their parents to covet the perceived “gifted” spots in accelerated mathematics. Some parents were led by a misguided perception that such a path would...
With the plethora of point-and-shoot digital cameras these days, there is often someone taking photographs at your school or your child’s school. And if there isn’t, you probably wish somebody would so all those memorable occasions could be recorded. But while the digital age allows us to be photographers, we are not always satisfied with our results. Learning about shutter speed, aperture, ISO, white balance, bracketing, and so on can be overwhelming. However, there are some simple tips that can improve your vision when you compose photographs. These 10 tips are easy to implement and will help you take better pictures instantly....
Results from a new study of student achievement show that U.S. students rank 32nd among industrialized nations in proficiency in math, and 17th in reading. The 32 percent of U.S. students who achieved proficiency in math compares to 75 percent of students in Shanghai, 58 percent in Korea, and 56 percent in Finland. Countries in which a majority or near majority of students performed at or above the proficiency level in math include Switzerland, Japan, Canada, and the Netherlands....
Just when I thought there were enough nursery rhyme collections, one just as good as another, a book, unsolicited, arrived in the mail. It sat in its brown cardboard cover for a week, until one evening...
On the way home from school recently, my son (age 9) was complaining that he hurt his finger trying to fix the clip on the playground’s tetherball, which has been broken for some time now. My daughter (age 13) asked him why he kept trying to fix it if he already knew it was broken. His very matter-of-fact response was...