Starting preschool in a foreign language: How the Montessori environment helps children transition when they don’t speak the classroom language.

Every year in our toddler and preschool rooms, we welcome children who do not speak the classroom language. Mostly, we’ve welcomed non-English speakers into our English-language rooms. Now, with our new Spanish and Mandarin immersion programs, we are also helping English-speakers to transition into classrooms with a new language for them—a very similar transition, as both teachers speak only Spanish/Mandarin, all day long!

Parents often ask how children who do not speak the classroom language handle the transition. After all, it’s already a new environment—and now they need to enter it without understanding the language the teachers and many of their peers speak!

To help you address these concerns for your child, this blog post discusses how the Montessori environment is optimally set up to support the learning of a second language, how we help children transition, and what you, as the parent, can do to help your child make a successful start in his new environment.

How the Montessori environment supports learning a new language

  • An environment that is largely accessible without language. The Montessori classroom is a very hands-on environment. Most materials are readily usable without any language skills: children can take a puzzle, blocks or play dough, and enjoy themselves even if they cannot speak the language. There are few all-group, language-heavy activities. What group activities there are—read-aloud, song time, small-group lessons—tend to be voluntary, so that a child who doesn’t have the language skills (or just isn’t interested!) has the option of doing something else.
  • Individual demonstrations, with materials, not purely verbal lessons. In Montessori for toddlers and preschoolers, most of the instruction is one-on-one. A child sits down with a teacher who demonstrates, in slow, careful movement, how a certain activity works. The child can follow along and learn how to do it, even if he initially doesn’t understand the words the teacher offers.
  • A multitude of materials and experiences to support language acquisition in response to a child’s interests. Research has shown that language learning happens optimally when the words provided tie to an activity in which the child is engaged. In his Montessori classroom, your child will work with a wide range of activities, which enable the teachers to provide never-ending responsive language. Here are just a few examples:
    • Practical Life activities lend themselves for teaching the names of common things, as well as lots of verbs and adverbs. A teacher may show your child how to paint at an easel. There are all the words for the material in use (easel, brush, color, water cup, apron, sponge and so on); all the words for the activity (hang up the paper, paint, clean, dry); and, of course, the words to describe the end product (clear, colorful, bright).
    • Sensorial materials are great for teaching adjectives of all kinds. Many activities in the sensorial area are designed to isolate a certain attribute—the sound something makes (loud, quiet, high tone/low tone), the color (dark blue, light pink), the texture (coarse, fine, soft, hard), the smell, the taste, the shape, the size, and so on. All of these are wonderful activities for teaching language skills!
    • Grace and Courtesy lessons help the child learn to express his needs and feelings with words. A key skill all children need to learn—even in their native language—is to use words to communicate needs and emotions. We actively model respectful, kind interactions: “May I please have this block back? Jack is working with it!” We describe what we see, calling children’s attention to the emotions of others: “Sam’s face shows me he is sad. See the tears in his eyes? See his eyebrows: they’re in a frown!”
  • An explicit language curriculum. Montessori guides are experts at giving children new words. We use a very simple but effective approach called the Three Period Lesson:
    • Naming Period: “This is a cow.” The teacher may show an object, or a picture, and provide the child with the name, then pause to allow the child to repeat the name.
    • Recognition and Association: “Point to the cow.” To check the child’s understanding, the teacher will play a game of asking for an object or a picture, guiding the child to hand it to her, put it at the edge of the table, back in the basket, and so on.
    • Recall: “What is this?” Only after the child has shown he can identify the object, does the teacher ask her to name it un-aided.

    This Three Period Lesson gets used all over the classroom: we have many language cards with common objects, such as things from around the house to clothing, from vehicles to animals and so on. We also use this approach to, later, teach more advanced concepts—such as the names of countries, the parts of animals, or types of rocks.

  • A clear, repetitive structure to support independence. Consistency and predictability are a great help to a child who enters any new setting. This is especially true when a child enters a classroom without speaking its language. Our Montessori toddler and preschool rooms combine freedom for individual activities with a very clear structure and routine. Children learn that they can choose any activity from the shelves, and work with it for as long as they want. They learn that the teacher rings a bell when it is clean-up time, and that they may either put their activity away, or, for older children, mark them as theirs to come back to after lunch.
  • An ability to observe and learn from peer modeling. Much learning in our classroom happens when children observe other children do activities. A child who joins at age three without language skills can watch as another child builds the Pink Tower, or punches out the shape of a continent, or uses scissors to cut along lines. She can see how children return activities to the shelf, how they clean an easel after using it, or how they sit down at the snack table when a spot is free. Because much of the learning happens at a perceptual, non-verbal level, even children who do not speak the language can easily model after others.
  • A community where older children are eager to help. Our Montessori classrooms are mixed-age, family-like environments. Just like younger children in a family learn much language from the older children, younger students who enter a Montessori environment learn much language from their older peers. Older students often naturally act as translators for younger peers who speak their language!
  • A focus on polite, gracious interactions between children. Some parents fear that children who do not speak the language may suffer socially. We don’t see that happening in our classrooms! Instead, our students all receive lessons in “Grace and Courtesy”: they learn how to greet a child, how to offer help, how to express their feelings and needs using words. As a result, our students tend to be quite empathetic, and willing to help a new child find her way around class.

Special support for those new to the classroom language

  • Teachers add gestures and hand signals to spoken language. Our teachers are experts at using gestures and body movements to help children understand them and, in short order, learn to recognize key words and phrases in their new language. We may point to a jacket and pantomime taking it off. We may pull out a chair and point to the child, then the chair, to show the child where to sit down. We may point to the toilet to suggest it’s time for a child to use it. Basically, we do what you did when your child first learned to speak: we slow down, we point, we repeat—so your child can learn his second language by absorbing it from his surroundings, just like he did with his first.
  • Pairing up of new students with language-skilled peers. Since we have mixed-age classrooms, we are often able to pair a new child with an older child who speaks her language. This is especially true in places like Irvine, where we have a many children who come to us speaking Chinese, Korean or Japanese. Feel free to ask your Head of School if there are classrooms with other children who speak your native language; while we can’t guarantee a match-up all the time, we will do our best to accommodate your child’s language needs. (In our immersion classrooms, we may pair-up English-speaking students with those who already know Mandarin or Spanish.)
  • Frequent updates and check-ins with parents. While we encourage all parents of new students to check in with us regularly, we place a special emphasis on frequent updates for those children who come to us without speaking English. Please do share any concerns you have, and help us by letting us know any needs your child may have that he cannot yet reliably communicate in English or the immersion language.

What parents can do to help

  • Explain school routines to your child. Before your child starts, review the flow of the school day with him. You may find it helpful to watch some of our videos, and explain to your child in your native language what will happen during the day as you watch these videos. You can also access your campus’ photo gallery, and use the photos as prompts to talk about school with your child. Feel free to ask your teacher or Head of School for a detailed schedule of your child’s classroom, so you can share all the details with her. Finally, it will be helpful if you can explain a few basic classroom rules to your child before she starts—such as having only one activity out at a time, putting it back on the shelves when done, and not stepping on the rugs children place on the floor to delineate work areas. We can help you with explaining these rules when you come in for your Meet and Greet with your child’s teacher.
  • Teach your child a few key words in English. It’s very helpful if your child comes to school knowing a few key words in English to make his needs known. Some words to consider teaching: (I’m) hungry, thirsty, tired, hurt; pee, poop; (I need) help, water, food, bathroom. (We don’t need children to learn these words in Spanish or Mandarin Chinese in our immersion classrooms, as our immersion teachers speak English in addition to Spanish or Chinese.)
  • Provide the teacher with a few words in your language. We’d love it if you provided us with the same list of words in your language, so we could better meet your child’s needs during the initial transition.
  • Help your child toward independence (especially if he’s three and above). Our Montessori curriculum places a strong emphasis on helping children become functionally independent—on learning to dress themselves, eating by themselves, using the toilet independently, completing a work cycle on their own. If you, a relative or a nanny have been helping your child with many of these everyday tasks, you can help with the transition to school by slowly introducing more independence at home as well. This article offers some good ideas on how to get started.

One more thing: if you speak a language other than English at home, and are enrolling your child in one of our English-speaking classrooms, we’d encourage you to continue speaking your native language at home. Living in America, and being in an English-speaking setting all day long, your child will learn English well—so well that, unless you consistently speak your native language at home, it will disappear from his life. Growing up bilingual is such a gift, it’s worth the hard work that goes into making it happen!

montessori preschool

 

montessori preschool

 

montessori preschool

 

montessori preschool

 

montessori preschool

 

montessori preschool

 

montessori preschool

 

montessori preschool

Books Children Love – LePort 2013 Suggested Books for Toddlers, Preschoolers and Elementary Children

books

Colder, shorter days are upon us, and the outdoors are not quite as welcoming. But as the dark comes early, so does the opportunity to cuddle up with our children in a favorite spot and explore the timeless treasure of great books.

At LePort, we are big believers in the power of literature. Beautiful, inspiring literary works help children become voracious readers who look to books for enjoyment as well as education. Whether it’s a 3-year-old enraptured as a teacher reads to her, a 5-year-old reading to a younger child, or a group of 8-year-olds engaged in animated discussion about a read-aloud character, we love seeing our students discover the joys that await them in the pages of a good book.

As a parent, you can help your child discover the joys of reading. In looking for that perfect gift this holiday season, we offer up the list below of favorite books, from simple picture books for toddlers and younger preschool children, to more elaborate stories for older primary students, and beginning chapter books that elementary students can read by themselves, or that you can read to your five-year-old.

This is our fourth holiday book list, and we plan to make it a yearly tradition! You can help us by sharing your favorite books for this age group in the comments; maybe you’ll see them in next year’s list.

P.S. If you aren’t yet sold on reading out loud daily to your child, or want an even broader range of book recommendations, check out reading advocate Jim Trelease’s web site. He has free excerpts from his Read-Aloud Handbook with helpful advice, and lots of ammunition on why reading aloud is so important.

Click sections below to view books.

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While we will continue to recommend only products we personally use with our own children or in our classrooms, LePort is piloting an affiliate program with Amazon.com. Items placed in your Amazon cart directly from the above links earn LePort Schools a commission of up to 8%, which we donate to our Support LePort scholarship fund. We hope to offer a similar program from other vendors in the future. To learn about other ways you can contribute – or how to apply for a scholarship for your child – please click here. Together, we can spread Knowledge for Life to children across America.

For more book ideas from our 2012 holiday book list, click here.

Temper Tantrum Prevention

Do You Know How Excessive Screen Time May Harm Your Child’s Brain?

montessori preschool

I recently talked with two well-meaning mothers who proudly explained how they use electronic toys and tools to give their children the "best start on learning." "I make sure my son watches educational TV shows", one mother reported, adding eagerly that "we even use dinner time as learning time, by watching shows like Blues Clues and Dora while we eat." Another mother proudly told me that she bought her 20-month-old "only educational toys, like children’s computers that teach colors, sounds and letter names. He loves my iPad, and can already use some of the apps I uploaded for him!"

It was clear to me that both of these mothers wanted the absolute best for their children: They spoke of them lovingly, were articulate about the importance of education, and either had selected or were researching quality Montessori preschool programs.

At the same time, it surprised me that they were largely unfamiliar with the idea that screen experiences—even so-called educational apps—might in fact harm children. They didn’t seem to be considering the possibility that the very technology-based activities they embraced could make their children susceptible to cognitive challenges in later life.

My conversations with these mothers got me thinking in general about attitudes towards screen time for young children. Most parents encounter the idea that TV and computer games are bad for young children. Many are even familiar with the recommendation by the American Academy of Pediatrics that children under the age of two not spend any time with screens, and that older children spend no more than one or two hours a day with any type of screen-based entertainment.

But encountering an idea is not the same thing as understanding it. The lack of a clear understanding of the underlying why behind limiting screen time may be one factor leading to well-meaning, thoughtful parents falling for the lure of "edu-tainment" apps and toys.

Why is excessive screen time so bad? Why might educational apps actually harm rather than help a child’s developing mind?  What is the precise impact on a child’s cognitive growth?

montessori preschool

Two Underlying Premises

In exploring the "why" behind the argument to limit screen time, we start with two underlying premises. The first is simple: a child’s environment impacts the development of his mind. If we put a child in a language-rich environment, in general he’ll acquire greater verbal skills; if a child plays sports earlier, he’ll acquire gross motor skills more quickly. The mind’s development occurs in an environmental framework, and the nature of the environment impacts the nature of that development.

The second key premise is that the differences in cognitive development manifest as physical differences in the brain. If we blindfold a child’s eyes for an extended period, his brain will show the effects of that deprivation; if we instead provide rich visual stimulation, his brain will show the results of that enrichment.  

Recent neurological studies on human beings, using sophisticated methods like fMRIs, as well as numerous animal studies, have demonstrated this "plasticity" of the brain, evincing that the specific environmental experiences a developing child encounters can dramatically impact the way his brain develops. Dr. Marian Diamond, a professor of neuroanatomy at the University of California at Berkeley, puts the point this way: "There is absolutely no doubt that culture changes brains, and there’s no doubt in my mind that children’s brains are changing. Whatever they’re learning, as those nerve cells are getting input, they are sending out dendritic branches. As long as stimuli come in to a certain area, you get more branching; if you lose the stimuli, they stop branching."

These two straightforward ideas—that environment impacts cognitive development, and that the cognitive impact manifests itself in the wiring of the brain—are the basis of evaluating the effect of TV and video on young minds. But the question remains: what is the specific impact of excessive screen time?

The Impact of Screen Time on Cognitive Development

In her book Endangered Minds, Dr. Jane Healy argues that the problem with excessive screen time is that undermines a child’s ability to think conceptually. According to Healy, the extensive use of TV and video games by ever-younger children is making harder for children to excel at the slow, deliberate, focused tasks necessary for success in school and in many 21st century careers, and this deficit is evident in the impact on a child’s brain development.  

Young children who spend significant time in front of screens risk being negatively impacted in two fundamental ways:

montessori preschool

  1. Children acquire bad "habits" in response to the screen experiences—especially shortened attention spans and a need for highly-stimulating content. Watch any current children’s TV shows or video games today, and you’ll notice their fast-paced, attention-grabbing nature: shows are dominated by sudden close-ups, pans and zoom; there are lots of bright colors, quick movements and sudden noises, which, as Dr. Healy points out, are no accident: these features arrest the brain’s attention, and keep children literally glued to the screen.

    Just as a terrible food diet will have a structural impact on the body, this over-stimulating cognitive diet has a structural effect on the brain, and decreases the all-critical capacity to sustain attention on a task. Dr. Jennings Bryant of the University of Alabama, who served on the advisory panel for Sesame Street’s sibling, The Electric Company, now believes that it was a mistake to choose such a fast-paced format for these shows: "It reduces what we call vigilance [the ability to remain actively focused on a task]. If they watch lots of fast-paced programs, and then we give them things to do afterward, such as reading or solving complex puzzles, their stick-to-it-iveness is diminished; they’re not willing to stay with the tasks. Over time, with lots of viewing, you’re going to have less vigilant children. This is especially critical with very young children—about three to five years seem to be particularly vulnerable times."

  2. As real-life, enriching experiences are crowded out by screen time, young children miss out on opportunities to form important neural connections—such as those underlying motor and language skills—during key sensitive periods.

    Research shows that brain areas mature and become ready to learn at different times. If the appropriate stimuli are not received during these sensitive periods, learning becomes much harder.  Especially early in a child’s life, the learning experiences must be active and self-directed to lead to lasting, beneficial brain changes. Dr. William Greenough, in a seminal experiment with rats, found that those rats acting within an enriched environment increased their synapses by 20-25%, but rats who merely observed other rats in the same environment received no benefit: "It appears that active interaction with the environment is necessary for the animal to extract very much appropriate information. Merely making visual experience of a complex environment available to animals unable to interact with it has little behavioral effect."

    Screen time, especially watching any type of TV, no matter how educational, is merely visual.  To the extent that the study on rats extends to human beings (and there many reasons to believe it does), then every hour of passive screen time is an hour lost to the all-important, active, self-driven exploration of the world that produces actual learning. For the average three- to five-year-old in the US, who consumes twenty-eight hours of screen time per week, that’s a lot of active learning not happening!

    Even in the case of more active video games and apps, the screen time is still crowding out other types of self-initiated engagement with the world. For instance, it reduces the amount of high-quality language experiences—conversations with adults, who use elaborate, detailed language, time to listen to stories, or to read books. Spoken and written language is largely symbolic: children need to actively engage to make meaning; they need to visualize, to re-create a scene in their minds as they listen to a story; they need to concentrate to interpret and connect words in a sequence as the action unfolds. In short, they need to use higher-order, integrative brain processes. TV watching in particular is primarily visual, immediate, holistic activity. Time spent watching TV crowds out both the direct ability to learn more sophisticated grammatical structures and vocabulary (which are largely absent on screens), and the very higher-order thinking processes children will need to succeed in school and in life!

Screen Time and Montessori

Long before fMRIs and modern neuroscience, Dr. Montessori observed that children have sensitive periods—for language, for fine motor skills, for order. She designed an educational environment that enables children to freely choose from a range of active, multi-sensorial materials that correspond to the sensitive periods—and with which students engage for extended periods of time, exhibiting astounding attention spans, and rapid progression in skills heretofore thought impossible.

montessori preschool

Excessive screen time is anathema to the careful, sequential, active learning a toddler or preschooler experiences in a good Montessori environment. Children who are fed a daily diet of hours of TV shows and video games at home, who miss out on reading time and meaningful conversations with adults, are at a clear disadvantage when they enter their Montessori environments: they find it harder to concentrate, because their brains have become addicted to the artificially fast-paced world of TV; they are behind in oral language skills, as they have never learned to listen carefully, and thus find it harder to learn to read and write; they lack creativity and imagination, as their brains have been conditioned to passively consume visual content, rather than to actively play with ideas and engaging in what-if scenarios.

Often, parents ask us how they can best support their children’s Montessori education at home. A great place to start is by turning off all screens (or at least limiting them to a few hours per week, preferable as shared parent-child watching experience). Instead, speak with your children, read stories, and engage them in real-world experiences.

Sometimes, what is best for children isn’t obvious, and even well-meaning, educated parents, like the mothers I spoke with, can fall prey to the seemingly innovative appeal of modern gadgets and screen-based edu-tainment. It may be counter-intuitive, and at odds with our love for gadgets as adults (I like my Kindle and iPhone as much as the next person!), but if this research is right, our children gain more from shopping for and preparing dinner with us, from talking with us while eating, and from jointly cleaning up afterwards, than they could from any TV show or gadget, no matter how well-regarded, entertaining or "educational" it may be.


Key photo: child with iPad. By Intel Free Press [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

A Story of Pursuing a Passion and Passing on Lessons Learned

One of our goals at LePort is helping our students find and live their passions in life. We want to inspire them to apply the knowledge they acquire at school to make happy lives for themselves, or, as our tagline summarizes, we want to equip students with Knowledge for Life.

Our passion is educating children. That’s why we are touched that one of our graduating 8th grade students from the Spectrum campus has found a passion in working with our preschool-age students at the LePort Lake campus. Sydney, who has been a student in our upper elementary program, started interning with the Montessori students at the Lake campus last summer, and has continued to visit and work with the children one afternoon a week for the entire past year. She plays with the children, helps them with their afternoon snack, and reads books with them.

Here is what Sydney shared with me recently about her volunteer experience:

montessori preschool private school

One of my teachers at LePort, Miss Journo, had observed that I really liked being with younger children. So she suggested that I might want to do an internship in the LePort Montessori program—and several of my other teachers also encouraged me to pursue my interest in working with young children.

I’ve been really excited about being with these two- to four-year old children. They get so excited about small things; they are so eager to learn. Since I’ve been visiting for a year now, I’ve been able to witness the children develop and grow up. I met a little girl last summer who joined the program with hardly any English language skills, and I could tell it was a challenge for her; she really didn’t have any friends at first. Now, a year later, she speaks English really well, and it’s so great to see her play and talk in English with the many friends she has made.

I’ve noticed that it’s easy for these children to relate to me. I think it’s in part because they realize I am not that much older than they; they can implicitly feel that I can relate to them, that I am close to their world. It’s the same way with us older students and our young, passionate teachers at LePort: having someone just a few years older makes it easy to become relate at a personal level.

I also think I’ve learned how to relate to the younger children by observing what my own teachers do. Here at LePort, the teachers are expected to get to know each child as an individual, as a person, not just a student. I love that Ms. Longley, my homeroom teacher, really wants to find out who I am, what I like, what my interests are, and that she then uses those insights to make learning more fun and engaging for me. At most schools, this type of personal relationship just doesn’t exist!

Now that I am working with the children at Lake, I try to the same thing: I show the preschoolers that I respect them, that I want to find out who they are. There is one boy who is really excited about anything related to construction equipment, and another one who just loves trains, and it’s fun to engage them in activities or read them books related to their interests.

Working with children is definitely a passion of mine. I’m not exactly sure where it will take me, or whether it will become a part of my future work, but I’m planning to continue my weekly visit with my little friends at the Lake campus even after I move on to high school this fall. I’m grateful that my teachers at LePort have encouraged me to pursue my interest in working with children!

We’re glad, Sydney, that you have found something you love to do, and that you are clearly good at, and we’re so happy you’ll continue to be a part of LePort with your work at the Lake campus even after you have graduated!

Play vs. Work: A Wrong Alternative

PART 1 of 3 on Montessori and Play

Recently, I’ve read several articles in which articulate, well-informed commentators caution parents against emphasizing academics for preschool children, and which advocate “developmentally appropriate play-based preschools” as a better alternative.

Here are some quotes I read this year which illustrate this concern:

A parent recently asked my advice about choosing a preschool for her son. I responded with my belief that the purpose of preschool is socialization, and that a developmental ‘learn through play’ program is best.

Janet Lansbury

There must be a vision for preschool classrooms as engaging, interactive environments, full of open-ended opportunities for play as learning, and focused on early childhood learning guidelines that address the whole child’s learning and development, not just on early academics.

Laurel Bongiorno, writing in the Huffington Post

I’m sure you’ll receive many enthusiastic endorsements of Montessori preschools from satisfied parents, but my son’s play-based preschool was overwhelmingly wonderful and completely perfect for us. I think the Montessori brand name appeals to anxious parents who want to start the academic rat race at age 3. I say save your money, and let your child play while s/he’s young.

Parent response on Berkley Parents Net

These quotes, written by intelligent individuals who obviously understand and care deeply about children’s well-being, are premised on the idea that there is a necessary trade-off between joyful play on the one hand, and rigorous academic learning on the other. On this trade-off view, parents must choose between fun and academics—between a child-led realm from which serious academic learning is mostly absent, or an adult-dominated preschool environment that strongly resembles the failed traditional school model most children enter when they turn six.

montessori preschool childcare daycare

The subsequent argument these commentators make against Montessori education is that it represents the “academic” side of the choice between academics vs. fun, and that play-based preschools are superior because they represent the “fun” side.

But is there in fact such a necessary trade-off between academics and childhood play?

Does a parent have to choose between learning and fun?

We don’t think so. In our view, the learning vs. fun trade-off is a false alternative, and in practice the most profoundly joyous childhood environment is precisely the one which best satisfies a child’s cognitive needs.

Children by nature are curious about the world. They are capable of an astounding amount of early learning when given the freedom to explore to their heart’s content, particularly in an environment of carefully prepared engaging, meaningful explorative activities. In such a setting, learning so-called academic skills, such as handwriting or arithmetic, is experienced as a playful, enjoyable activity. The pleasure and deep satisfaction of such concentrated engagement is natural and to-be-expected because it is consistent with the actual needs of the child. Psychologically, the satisfaction derived is exactly the satisfaction that comes from play. As Maria Montessori put it, “play is the child’s work.”

A child’s early years represent an irreplaceable period in his life—a period that biologically serves the purpose of helping him become familiar with the world around him, and capable of purposeful action in pursuit of the things that matter to him. In this time period, certain skills are learned effortlessly that, if delayed to the elementary years, unfortunately become more of struggle for many children (such as building a long attention span, developing refined fine motor control, acquiring neat handwriting, learning to read, and mastering foundational arithmetic skills). The acquisition of these life skills is not an imposition on the child—to the contrary, his whole being is oriented towards acquiring precisely such skills.

But the fact that there’s a developmental benefit to an activity does not mean an activity is not experienced as fun, fulfilling, exciting. Just as the fact that an adult’s need to work does not mean that one’s job must be drudgery, so too a child’s need to grow does not mean growth must be listless. Many adults—indeed, the most fulfilled adults—approach their work as an exciting, satisfying activity, and do not “live for the weekends”. In a Montessori classroom, we don’t assume that activities that have long-term utility must be empty of joy.

Many educators struggle with this apparent chasm between joyfulness, and academic rigor and structure. Progressive educators, following Dewey, usually err on the side of making learning “fun”, even if it means sacrificing a sequenced, comprehensive, rigorous curriculum. Traditional educators, in contrast, excel at defining what academic skills and content a child is to master, but often rely heavily on extrinsic motivators, like grades, class parties or the threat of a trip to the principal’s office, to entice children to do the dreary drilling needed to achieve their goals.

Montessorians need not accept this false alternative. Our vision is not learning vs. enjoyment, but an integrated, joyous learning. Dr. Montessori’s unique method of allowing the child freedom to choose in a carefully prepared environment is the revolution that enables parents to have their cake and eat it, too—to ensure their child will stay curious, joyful and intrinsically motivated to learn, and at the same time master challenging and advanced academic skills and content, from preschool onward.

Let’s spread the word: If this is possible, why would anyone settle for less?


This blog post was originally featured on the Maria Montessori website.

Applying Montessori Ideas When Reading With Your Child

Part four of four of our reading aloud blog post series

montessori preschools huntington beach

While the "why" of reading aloud to children is discussed everywhere, the equally important "how"often receives short shrift. That’s unfortunate, because as valuable as it is to know why reading together is important, it is getting better at reading with your child that will actually ensure that the experience is mutually joyous, and help you build it into your routine.

Here are some Montessori-inspired ideas to implement as you read with your child:

  1. Embrace and celebrate repetitive reading. Most preschoolers love to read the same books, over and over again, just like they go back to favorite activities in their Montessori classrooms. This need for repetition is a wonderful opportunity for learning during read-alouds: it is often when we read a story the 5th or 10th time that children begin to use its words, or remember its moral lessons. And it’s only during the preschool, picture book years that we have this audience eager to read the same book over and over again! Make the most of these few years by reading books at different levels:
  2. montessori preschools huntington beach

    • Read for the story during the first take. Get caught up in it, and read through with limited stops, maybe just to explain a key term here and there, and to answer a brief comprehension question. Talk about the story afterwards.
    • Become progressively more interactive on subsequent reads. Stop to give short definitions of vocabulary terms ("An dwelling is a house, a place someone lives. Our dwelling has green walls, and a big garden around it.") Point out interesting things in the illustrations. Talk about why the events happen, how the people in the story feel, how the setting compares to the world your children live in. There are some good articles out there detailing how to implement interactive reading, but the general principle is to guide your children to be interactive explorers of the books they read!
  3. Integrate ideas across books and into your child’s real-world experience. When we study literature in the upper grades at LePort, we explicitly highlight the ways in which books are guides for better living: we discuss the moral lessons books offer, and help children draw on literary experiences to illuminate the choices they make in their own lives. While we’d not suggest quite such an abstract approach for preschoolers, there are many ways you can connect the reading you do to your children lives, even at age 3 or 5:
    • Consciously use a book’s vocabulary in your daily conversations. ("I’m exasperated right now, Max, because your crayons are all over the floor!") Repeating and using the vocabulary from books will reinforce the learning, and help your child comprehend the new words and use them actively in speaking and writing.  It also develops an implicit awareness in your child that the language in a book can be extended to life as such.
    • Highlight how your child’s experiences relate to those of characters and settings in books. ("You found a creative solution here, instead of giving up, just like Sadie did in Sadie and the Snowman!" "I know this flu shot hurts, but it’s better than the prospect of sending you away for months, like Marvin’s parents had to do in the book we read.") Engage in real-world activities that relate to the books you read: go to a park to look for butterflies after reading Where Butterflies Grow; bake bread after reading Sunbread; re-read Hello Oceanbefore a trip to the beach.
    • Make connections for your child between different books. Highlight similarities and differences, and tie them to your child’s experience.  ("See, the family in When I Was Young in the Mountains has to heat their house with a wooden stove, just like Laura’s family did in The Little House on the Prairie! We don’t need to cut wood today, or light a fire, or clean a messy stove; we have gas furnaces that work at the flick of a switch.")

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  4. Let your child choose books. While you need to do the initial selection, especially for those books you buy and expect to read over and over again, let your child choose from the books you selected. It’s fun to discover which books your child likes—and a great starting point for conversation about values and choices we make: why is this book a favorite? Why doesn’t he like that one? Once they are older, let children pick library books, even those you may not love: it helps to have an occasional not-so-exciting book to highlight the special joy we get from better ones!
  5. Provide firm guidance around reading behavior. In our house, my son loves books, and he’s a born story-teller. Often, he’ll take the first opportunity during reading time to launch off into a story of his own. Sometimes, when it’s just the two of us, I’ll follow his lead, and reading morphs into 20 minutes of my 4-year-old spinning his own yarns. At other times, when we read with his sister or visiting friends, he has learned that he needs to raise his hand or put it on my arm to let me know he has something to say when we get to a stopping point in the book. Making reading interactive does not mean anything goes: interrupting constantly, talking with dolls, or running around usually means the reading stops, until the children choose to pay attention again. It’s the same "freedom within limits" approach your child experiences in our Montessori classrooms, and it can work just as well at home!
  6. Never tie rewards or punishments to reading. While there are many programs that offer incentives for children to read (free Pizza, anyone?), we recommend never tying reading to any rewards or punishments. Don’t reward reading; don’t offer reading as a reward; don’t withhold reading as a punishment. Extrinsic rewards or punishments debase the activity they are tied to, and reading is just too important an experience to risk!

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If you can make reading something you and your children treasure, infuse it with meaning by selecting great books, and make it a pleasant, interactive experience, you’ll do something amazing: you’ll lay the foundation for a love of reading in your child—and create a storehouse of wonderful, shared memories.

Selecting Read-Aloud Books, the Montessori Way

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Part three of four of our reading aloud blog post series

Great books are essential if reading with your child is to be a joyful, replenishing experience, a highlight of the day.

When I first set out to find books for my two children, I quickly discovered that choosing outstanding children’s books is a challenging task. Our local library has an extensive picture book collection. I headed there, and asked a few of the librarians for advice. One handed me a somewhat helpful trifold booklet of 25 favorite books; another one suggested some well-known classics (The Hungry Caterpillar, Goodnight Moon, The Big Red Barn.) It was a start, but few of the books really got me excited, and much of what was suggested just didn’t seem right for my vision of reading.

Over the past five years, as my children have grown older, I’ve discovered many good resources, approached Montessori-inspired friend and LePort teachers for ideas, and built a library for our family that we treasure, filled with picture books all of us love to re-read many times, along with an ever-growing list of books we put on hold and pick up at the library.

If you want some guidance on selecting books that are in line with your child’s Montessori education, books that you might enjoy reading as well, here are some principles to keep in mind on your library trips:

  • Find books that "are real or could be real" for your younger reader. To a toddler or young preschool child, the real world is full of mysteries. A three-year old is fascinated by how different animals live, how things work, what the world looks like, why people act the way they do. Because young children do not yet have a clear conception of the difference between reality and fantasy, they are best served by books that either are about real things (non-fiction books) or stories that could be real (events that could actually happen, even if they are fictional). So when you select books for children younger than 5 or 6 years old, make sure you pick a preponderance of books about the real world. If you choose to share some occasional fantastic stories (of which there are some great ones, e.g. of the type that includes talking, anthropomorphized animals), make sure you help your child to understand what is real, and what is just pretend. ("Do animals talk? No, they don’t: this book is a fantasy book.")
  • Read up to your child, not down. Toddlers and preschoolers are in what Montessori calls the sensitive period for language: like little sponges, they absorb effortlessly the language around them. Preschool children can readily learn big vocabulary words, when the words are introduced in an accessible way. By selecting books with appealing and appropriately complex language models, you greatly aid your child’s language acquisition. Many children’s books unfortunately use very short, choppy language, and are overly simplistic. My rule of thumb is to buy up, not down: I’ve always picked books that had bigger words, longer sentences, more elaborate constructions, than most people would think appropriate for a 2- or 4-year old. In most cases, my children were engaged—and I was surprised and delighted to hear them pick up and use the language of the books. ("East sky purples, sun is coming", my then 3-year-old daughter echoed after Bats on the Beach. "Mama, we don’t need to dread this knight: he’s extinct, like the dinosaurs", explained my 3-year-old son as we read Cowardly Clyde.)
  • Search for beauty and don’t settle for less. In Montessori, we surround our students with beauty, from the clean lines of our natural wood furniture, to the delicate porcelain bowls in the Practical Life area, to the art work hung at child’s height in class. Let the same sense of beauty be your guide as you choose books: look for illustrations that are realistic and detailed, not cartoonish and simplified. For a 2- or 3-year old, much of the learning from picture books comes from the pictures. Real art illustrations or beautiful photography will add to your enjoyment of the books you read, and, over time, will elevate your child’s taste, too. We’ve put together a collage of favorite picture book pages here, so you can get a feeling for how visually pleasing these carefully chosen books can be.
  • Broaden your horizon. While I select individual books based on their unique appeal, over the years I also strive to expose my children to the world via books. We read about different settings (cities, beaches, forests, mountains, space, the US, China, Japan…), times (pre-history, ancient times, the past century, today), different beings (animals, plants, human beings in different societies and of different ages), different types of stories (historical fiction, non-fiction, poetry). These virtual journeys around the world give us a lot to talk about—and, without an explicit effort on their part, provide children with a wonderful bounty of vocabulary and background knowledge they will draw on later in their lives.
  • Make sure you enjoy the books you buy. I saved the best for last: when you preview a book in the store, via Amazon or in the library, make sure it appeals to you! If you don’t enjoy it, you won’t like reading it over and over again. I’ve made the mistake to buy books I didn’t like (usually books that violated one of the first three points above!), and found myself reluctant to read them. And, yes, I’ve even hidden away some of these books, to avoid feeling reluctant when my children bring them to me to read!

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Following these guidelines, I’ve put together two starter book lists, one for toddlers and younger preschoolers, and one for older preschoolers and younger elementary children. These books are personal favorites in our family, collected over time and based on recommendations of many knowledgeable teachers and parents: they are books we treasure and couldn’t imagine not having read to our children. 

Enjoy!

LePort Blog: A Prepared Reading Environment

Part two of four of our reading aloud blog post series

Just as a piece of land has to be prepared beforehand if it is to nourish the seed, so the mind of the pupil has to be prepared in its habits if it is to enjoy and dislike the right things. Aristotle

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In Montessori classroom, much of the magic happens because children act within a carefully prepared environment. Activities are displayed beautifully, always in their proper spots, always ready to use. The children’s time and space to explore is respected for several hours each day. The Montessori guide is an expert at observing, and only stepping in when she finds a child ready for a new lesson, or in need of someone to make a point of interest with a material.

The Montessori prepared environment makes it possible for three- or four-year-olds to enter a classroom, take off their outside clothes, choose an activity and work with focus. It’s an environment that instills a lot of good habits: respecting other’s space, developing a pro-work attitude, using inside voices and walking, not running, in the classroom. If you’ve seen your super-active, noisy, goofy 4-year-old enter his Montessori classroom and be transformed into a serenely joyous, responsible, focused Montessori child, you’ve experienced the power of the prepared environment at work!

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In the book The Power of Habits, Charle Duhigg explains that much of what we do happens on auto-pilot: we receive a cue (entering the classroom), which triggers a routine (calming down and picking an activity from a shelf and working on it), which in turn leads to a reward (the feeling of accomplishment of having mastered a new skill.) To instill any habit, Duhigg argues, we need to put in place a cue-routine-reward system that supports the change we want to make in our life. The prepared environment, in Montessori, functions as such a system, and supports what we call the childhood choice to learn. Duhigg’s idea of a cue-routine-reward framework is something we can also apply at home to enable our children to develop good habits.

Take, for instance, reading aloud. As we discussed elsewhere, reading can and should be a joyous, daily experience shared by a parent and a child—but for it to be so, certain conditions must be met. If you are already experiencing your own Bed Time Book Club, congratulations! If not, read on for some ideas on how to prepare your home environment to facilitate a habit of reading together.

 

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    • Create cues for reading. Cues can be certain times of day: right after you come home from picking up from school, first thing in the morning before getting out of bed, right before bed at night. Cues can also be certain areas of the house that invite reading: you can place a book basket by the sofa, out books on the nightstand next to your bed, or upon a low shelf or magazine rack next to your child’s bed. Finally, cues can be certain other activities: why not put a few books in the car, and make it a habit for one parent to read, while the other is driving? Or place a book in your purse—as a reminder to take it out and read when you are waiting anywhere with your children! (iPads and Kindles are great for this: just make sure you always have a book to read to your children at the top of your favorites section—another cue to think about reading, whenever you turn on your device!)

 

    • Make it a routine. Your toddler or preschooler is your best ally here: 2- or 4-year-old children love consistency, so if you want to instill the habit of reading, start by making reading at certain times and places an expected, recurring event. In our house, we always read at bedtime—and there is no way our children would ever let us get away without doing it: even when we come home late from a trip, or an evening out, we still have to read at least for a few minutes, or risk the major drama that is a preschooler whose favorite routine has been interrupted!

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  • Ensure reading is a rewarding experience. By this, we emphatically don’t mean offer rewards: research shows that extrinsic rewards, such as stickers, sweets or even praise, devalue the activities associated with them. Instead, make the reading itself a time you and your children treasure. Cuddle up somewhere comfortable. Have the books close by, so you don’t need to walk to another room to get them. Shut off all electronic distractors, from phones to TV. Be fully present—and really engage in the wonderful worlds you encounter together in the books you read. Importantly, the pleasure of reading needs to be felt by both the children and by you, the parent: the goal is to make you crave reading time just as much as your children do, so you won’t want to miss it, ever! For me, no matter how tumultuous a busy evening is, no matter how many limits my 4-year-old tested that night, reading has become a healing factor: when we cuddle up with our books, we feel a comforting bond, a calm and connection that brings us back together as a family at the end of every day.

A reading habit is a powerful habit to instill in our children—and a rewarding way to feel connected to them, every day.  Do you have a favorite way of fostering reading with your children? Please share with us in the comments!

Reaping the Return on Your Investment: A Parent’s Perspective on the Kindergarten Year in Montessori

Guest Post By Dana Bettwy, LePort Parent

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I have two children currently enrolled at the LePort Montessori campus in Woodbridge (the Irvine – Lake campus.) Our son just completed his second year, and our daughter, her first.  Montessori is expensive indeed, especially times two!

We have weighed whether we should stay with Montessori for the kindergarten year, or whether to make the jump to public school, for most of the past year.  For many of us parents, economics are an important factor as we mull the question whether to keep a child in Montessori for their kindergarten year.

Beyond finances, however, there are other factors as well—some that may not appear all that dramatic on the surface.  Still, I think these "less obvious" differences are critical to making an educated decision, one that is in your child’s best long-term interest.  Different aspects matter more or less for different parents.  For me, certain factors such as parent fund-raising, and the food they serve at school are incidental.  Social development, the learning environment and overall happiness of my child are the most important considerations for me.  Academics are important, but I am more interested "how" my child learns to learn at this stage in the game, as opposed to "what" they learn, per se. 

Since last fall, I have been taking notes on what I think are the pros and cons for staying in Montessori for the 3rd year of the primary program, looking at each of my children’s development and growth in their Montessori experiences so far.  At the same time, I’ve talked to many friends with children in public school, and I’ve done much on-line research.

The first and biggest factor for sending a child to a public school kindergarten program in Irvine is the obvious one—hard cost.  Public school is free.  Montessori is not.  For many, the money factor may be the deal breaker. I, however, think it is equally important to look at the very real costs of taking my son out of his Montessori education at such a critical stage in the game.  After all, we will have invested in two years of Montessori…what if the third year is the cashing-in year on that investment, and he would miss it by departing to public school now? 

While there are many things to consider, these are the differentiators I thought most important in making our decision:

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  1. Having invested 2 years into Montessori, the third, the equivalent of traditional kindergarten, is when all of his earlier hands on lessons come together.  The lessons of the third year solidify his understanding of the concepts he has been working on for the past two years.  His early introduction to addition with large numbers will be further developed with more advanced lessons into the thousands, and a gradual progression from concrete to abstract operations.  This is the year he will move on to even more engaging lessons and advanced Montessori materials, from story writing to grammar, from geography to multiplication and division into the thousands.  If I yank him now and put him in public kindergarten, all the counting and language skills he acquired in two years of hands on, sensorial lessons will be put on a shelf for several years and most likely lost (ugg!).  This is the tender age where sensorial learning is the most critical—the critical time when he uses the materials to understand, and to scaffold his progress as he moves on to more abstract learning.  The third year gives him the essential amount of time to complete this cycle of growth and learning BEFORE the program is changed.  In order for him to take everything he has learned with him to become a permanent part of his understanding, this year is the most critical.  Otherwise, it’s kind of like going for a Masters degree and skipping the thesis!

  2. Montessori has mixed age classes, which has benefited both my children tremendously.  My son has waited two years to be one of the leaders of his class.  He talks about the lessons the older (kindergarten) children are learning, and he cannot wait to take on that role.  As a result, he is motivated to further his own learning—on his own—without being offered the gold stars, points, prizes, trophies and treats that traditional teaching uses.  The kindergartners in a Montessori class are looked up to as role models for the younger ones.  This teaches them leadership skills beyond what can be learned in a same age classroom, where competition and prizes are the main motivator.  Research has shown this has powerful benefits for both the older, experienced and the younger, less experienced learners.
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  4. After reading through the milestones and learning objectives of IUSD kindergarten curriculum, it is clear that the primary Montessori curriculum is much more advanced.  However, content isn’t just the most important issue.  The age of five to six is a very critical year of learning and development.  Children still require a sensorial approach to learning allowing them to see, feel and touch the materials.  They need to actually do the lessons.  Research shows that children from age 3-6 learn by observing and manipulating their environment, not through textbooks and workbook exercises, which is what he would get in public kindergarten.  The Montessori multi-sensory, hands-on activities are designed to directly address this critical need.  Most importantly, my observation of my children’s Montessori teachers is that they are sophisticated masters at facilitating each lesson, allowing the students to work at their own pace and check their own work effectively with freedom and ease.  As a former professional corporate instructor, I so appreciate that.  I fear my son will not receive a fraction of the individualized attention in public kindergarten.  This is invaluable.  By age six the gap for learning by doing begins to close and children typically need more abstract, intellectual learning.  Montessori harnesses that critical third year to close that gap, to aid them in this transition from concrete to abstraction,  and to prepare them for the next cycle of development. 
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  6. After two wonderful years with his current teachers, my son’s teachers know him very well.  His primary teacher understands his unique learning style, his challenges and his quirky little personality.  I want him to focus on his love of learning and not have to take several months to adjust to a new system, a strange teacher and completely new teaching methodology.  I don’t believe the one size fits all curriculum at public school would benefit him at this point.  As far as socializing, I’m not clear why parents feel it would be "better" in a public school.  My son has many good friends, not just in his class, but the entire school, where there are about 90 primary children, of which 20 will be my son’s age.  Both my children have good relationships with all the other teachers on campus, who all know them both by name.  They are exposed to new friends when the occasional child does get taken out and transferred to a public kindergarten, so I’m not sure what the concern about social peer group comes from.  We are still deciding whether to keep our children in Montessori after kindergarten.  As for my older son, by age six, he should be ready to make an adjustment to public school, if needed.  Now is not the time to expose him to a big change, especially since he is an early October child, and one of the youngest amongst his age group.

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    In LePort’s Montessori program, my son can continue to progress at his own pace.  In traditional kindergarten, he would have to wait for other children to catch up, as the Montessori program is much more advanced academically than the IUSD kindergarten curriculum.  Montessori children typically learn about geometry, fractions, and all four operations of arithmetic by the end of their third year—while public school programs only expect addition and subtraction of whole numbers up to thirty. They write full stories, usually in cursive handwriting, and even begin to learn to analyze sentences and get an initial introduction to grammar. Montessori kindergarten children study cultural geography and begin to think and grow as global citizens.  In his third year, my son will learn about lakes, islands, peninsulas and other geological forms, rather than having to repeat circles, squares, and rectangles, concepts he already mastered his first year.  He will be exposed to fine art, rather than repeating the basic colors, which my daughter in her first year is already mastering. Many of these topics are usually not taught in public school until about third grade or later.  I also like that the curriculum actually includes teaching grace and courtesy as a practice, not merely as a concept they read in a book.

  7. Importantly, in a Montessori classroom, learning is not focused on rote drill and memorization.  My son really does understand his work and loves to learn.  I’ve read too many horror stories about how the average American student really doesn’t understand why they are learning something.  This gets drilled in with standardization and tests, even homework in kindergarten. (There is no homework at all in the Montessori 3rd year, which leave us precious family time after school is out!)

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While these differences may appear subtle, I believe they are hugely significant. I see that allowing both our children to complete their third year in Montessori will have a long term, positive impact on them; it will shape how they learn as teenagers, and who they will grow into as adults.

In the end, for us, the “soft cost” of all of the above far outweighs the "hard cost" of what we pay to send our children to LePort Montessori.  I am clear that the third year is really the completion year of our investment in the education; it is essential in reaping the return on the money we spent.  Next year, we’ll go back to the drawing board, and look at the pros and cons of keeping them in Montessori for their elementary years!

Beauty in Words and Pictures: A Visual Tour of Favorite Picture Books

Note that each photo is linked to the book on Amazon.com, to make it easy for you to buy books that appeal to you.





LePort Blog: Reading for Happiness

Part one of four of our reading aloud blog post series

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Much has been said about the benefits of reading with your child. Reading together regularly helps your child develop basic literacy skills, such as the left-right progression of words and the connection of print to the spoken word; it enriches his vocabulary; it offers her the background knowledge essential to understanding written content, once the progress beyond decoding simple books. Perhaps most importantly, by reading with your child you model the practice of turning to books for information and entertainment, rather than defaulting to TV and video games. Children who acquire a habit of reading for fun consistently show higher academic achievement, both in school and in college.

All these are valid reasons for reading with a child. And they are certainly true: in our classrooms, we can readily tell which children have a strong literacy environment at home. They are the ones who listen attentively when we read aloud, the ones who ask the best questions, draw the most creative pictures, and can’t wait for both silent reading time and the opportunity to write their own stories.

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As a parent, however, these concrete educational benefits are not why I read to my two children every day.

I read with my children because sharing great books brings joy to us. We devour books because reading is a personal value, because I love doing it, and because sharing this value with my children, and seeing the pleasure they derive, is a highlight of every day.

My children, in turn, can’t wait to cuddle up next to me with a good book. They are excited when we go on our bi-weekly library trips, which usually end with us sitting amidst a pile of book when we get home, forgetting all about making dinner or cleaning up the family room, losing ourselves in story after story. When I come home from work, they often greet me excitedly holding up an Amazon package that arrived in the mail, eager to open it and discover a new favorite book.

In Montessori, we distinguish between the direct and the indirect lessons a child learns from an activity. The direct lesson—tying laces, preparing and serving snack, creating art with the Metal Insets—is often what interests and motivates the child. The indirect lesson—finger dexterity, following multi-step processes, impulse control, pencil grip—are inherent in the design of the activity, and a key pedagogical reason for offering it to the child. Yet they usually hold no motivational value to the child.

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A 4-year-old does not draw dozens of Metal Inset in order to improve his pencil grip, so that he’s ready for handwriting later on. No, he is drawn to the Metal Insets because of the pleasure of working with it, and the pride he takes in seeing the picture he has created. The power of a Montessori environment is that a child’s direct, inner motivation and joy is what fuels the motor driving his development forward.

Similarly, when we read with our sons and daughters, our direct motivation should not, and cannot, be the academic benefits that result, no matter how important and real they are. To the extent we view read aloud as a mere educational tool, a “should do” rather than a “want to”, we’ll find it hard to fit it into our busy days, where another “to do” is the last thing we need. We’ll feel guilty if we don’t read, because we know its good for our children, but it just won’t happen as often as it “should”. When we do squeeze reading in, we are tempted to make it a lesson. Our children will notice, balk at being made a means to an end (even if the end happens to be their own future), and resist engaging fully.

If, instead, we manage to make reading a want, something both we and our children crave, if favorite picture books become, as one dad reminisces, “evocative of some of life’s best things — wet hair, clean pajamas, the end of working days”, then reading with our children will not be yet another imposition on our time, but instead a treasured moment we will protect jealously.

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At LePort we believe that education and parenting is all about facilitating a child’s quest for his personal happiness. For us, this means not just helping a child become a successful, fulfilled adult many years down the road, but just as importantly, making childhood and the process of learning a joyous experience. At the deepest level, we reject any dichotomy between these two profound needs.

If you find it challenging to fit reading into your daily routine, if you’d like to read more, but can’t seem to find the time, if reading seems like a “should do” rather than a “want to” at the end of a busy day, I’d encourage you to reframe your purpose: think less about how reading will help your child succeed in the future, and focus instead on how fun it will be to share a story with your child today in the here and now. Approach reading a book with the same attitude that you would approach going out for ice cream or throwing a football or playing a board game—not a necessary means to a future end, but a treasured and cherished end in itself.

Happy reading!

Purposeful Movement, not Random Activity: The Montessori Contribution

Often, when we talk with parents of two- or three-year old children, especially boys, they express a concern that their child is rambunctious, active, maybe even a little wild or clumsy—and that as such, perhaps they would be out of place in a Montessori classroom. Visiting our schools, they see children intently focused on their activities; they notice the quiet, busy hum in the classroom, they watch little people move about in a very coordinated way, and I can almost read their minds as they think, "My son would stick out like a sore thumb in this class!"

If these parents go on to enroll, they almost invariably discover that their fears were unfounded. Their child too comes to move purposefully, channel his energy towards activities that engage him, and flourish in the Montessori environment.  The reason this happens is simple: a Montessori prepared environment is deliberately designed to meet the needs of a developing child, including foremost the need to move purposefully.

A child’s impulse to move is central to his biological development. In many settings today, this need to move is satisfied in  one of two ways: a child is given an opportunity to run around, climb things and generally engage with others in wild, unstructured physical play; or a child participate in organized sports, from soccer to dance to swimming, where his movements are coordinated around the rules of the game and often directed by adults.

These are valuable experiences, but a Montessori environment offers a child the opportunity to engage in a different, third type of movement: concentrated, self-initiated movement.

As Montessori educators, we recognize that children have an innate, almost instinctive need to engage in purposeful, mind-guided action, and we know that this need manifests itself in concentrated activity. Through concentrated work, children utilize muscles through activities that draw them, they repeat the same task over the over to master their own body, and they build simpler acts (such as pouring) into increasingly complex logical sequences (such as washing a table).

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Purposeful, deliberate movement is at the core of the Montessori approach to early childhood education. While you will not see children run, climb on furniture, or throw materials around in our Montessori classrooms, if you watch closely, you will see coordinated movement everywhere:

  • A two-year-old may be getting the table ready for a meal. He’s teaming up with a friend to carry one little table and place it right next to another, so several companions can enjoy a meal together. Next, he carries little chairs and places them by the table, then puts placemats or a tablecloth on it. He retrieves, one-by-one, small, real china plates from a nearby shelf; he carefully carries them with both hands, and places them with a graceful, controlled motion onto the table. He adds forks, spoons, napkins, glasses: this process may well occupy him for the better part of half an hour, and it involves numerous voluntary motor movements,
    all of which are purposeful and deeply satisfying to the child!
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  • A three-year-old may be carrying a heavy wooden block with inset cylinders from a shelf to a table. He’s straining his upper body muscles to heft this huge object; he’s exercising control over his arm muscles as he carefully holds it level lest the cylinders crash down on the floor. He controls the speed of his movement as he sets it down on the table, trying to do so without a sound. All that, before he has even begun the work of removing the knobbed cylinders and replacing them with a three-finger grip!
  • A four-year-old may be walking on an oval line on the classroom floor, carefully putting one foot right in front of the next as he exercises his sense of balance, and learns to purposefully slow down. He may challenge himself further by carrying a glass full of water, or balancing a pillow on his head, or by moving his feet in rhythm with the quiet music playing in the background.
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  • A five-year-old is working on grammar. The teacher, sitting in a corner of the room, hands her a little slip, on which is written "the spotted cow." The girl reads this, then carefully walks to the Little Farm on the other side of the room, and picks out a figure of a spotted cow. She carries it, controlling her urge to run with her find as she walks around the mats where her friends work, around the shelves with the materials, and puts the little figure back on her table. She then carefully picks out grammar symbols identifying the article, adjective, and noun, and places them above the words on the slip of paper.

When children live daily in a Montessori classroom, they learn through activity to coordinate their muscles and place them under the ready control of their mind. The joy they experience in this purposeful movement is akin to the motivation we as adults feel when we master a new sport, an instrument, or any other purposeful physical feat. In Montessori’s words:

The external aim [of the activity] was only a stimulus. The real aim was to satisfy an unconscious need, and this is why the operation is formative, for the child’s repetition was laying down in his nervous system an entirely new system of controls, in other words, establishing fresh co-ordinations between his muscles, co-ordinations not given by nature, but having to be acquired. It happens no differently with ourselves in sport, in all games that we repeat with enthusiasm. Tennis, football, and the like, do not have for their sole purpose the accurate moving of the ball, but they challenge us to acquire a new skill–something lacking before–and this feeling of enhancing our abilities is the real core of our delight in the game. (The Absorbent Mind, p. 180)

montessori preschool

Many teachers in elementary schools have noticed that children come to them unable to control their bodies. They lack the dexterity to hold a pencil properly to write. They bump into furniture and each other as they move about the room. They cannot control their muscles well enough to tie shoe laces, or to replace food in their lunch boxes without making a mess, or use utensils properly to eat. Often, they have not learned to control their bodies well enough to hold themselves still in situations that call for stillness. .

While children grow in height automatically as they age, they do not grow in motor skills the same way. Without proper motives for activity, such as those found in a Montessori environment, children may miss the sensitive period in which coordinated movement develops optimally. Instead of channeling their childhood urge to move towards concentrated activity that helps them to gain control over their own bodies, they may expend much exuberant, plentiful energy in less purposeful movements, which do not yield the same benefit of coordination, refinement, and intellectual as well as muscular growth (and which as a result are not even as emotionally satisfying to a child).

montessori preschool

As Dr. Montessori so wonderfully put it:

To give them their right place, man’s movements must be coordinated with the center–with the brain. Not only are thought and action two parts of the same occurrence, but it is through movement that the higher life expresses itself. To suppose otherwise is to make of man’s body a mass of muscles without a brain. (The Absorbent Mind, p. 141)

So when we look at an active, rambunctious 3-year-old running into our classroom on the first day of school, we do not see a misadjusted or hyperactive child. We see a child at the cusp of a sensitive period for movement, a child whose mind and body are calling for an opportunity to concentrate, a child who, in a carefully prepared environment full of enticing stimuli, will bring his abundant physical energy under the control of his will. We are excited to welcome him into our midst, and to experience together with you, his parents, the wonderful journey of growth as this little person learns to master his body to manifest his own unique personality.

In Montessori, True Creativity Forms Below the Surface

At gathering of parents who are interested in our Montessori preschool programs we often hear questions like this one that a father who seemed impressed with Montessori asked: “But what about creativity? I get that the environment in your classrooms helps build important executive functioning skills, and that the academics are strong. But will all the structure in Montessori it stifle my child’s creativity?”

This father’s question spoke to an important educational issue: A recent poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the most critical leadership skill, one which, for the first time ever, has been in decline in the US since the 1990’s.

montessori preschool

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This father’s concern is plausible. At first glance, a Montessori preschool or elementary classroom doesn’t scream “this is a creative space.” Experts do not come in to offer specialized art classes during the school day. Children’s creative expression is not prominently on display along the walls. The classroom atmosphere is calm, orderly, and a touch zen-like; there isn’t a messy art zone in sight, nor are there lots of unstructured toys or pretend play materials out and about all over the room. The Montessori preschool materials, while esthetically beautiful and inspiring, are designed to impart certain specific skills, in a very definite manner: the ability to identify colors by lining up the Color Tables in a careful gradation, to perceive and match tones of music by comparing the tones made by the Montessori Bells, to control a pencil by carefully coloring in the Metal Insets with parallel lines.

Yet we who advocate for the Montessori preschool see it as the paradigm of a creativity-nurturing approach. The reason is that we don’t agree with the conventional view that creativity comes from opportunities to engage in momentary, spontaneous bursts of expression. We agree that this is often how creativity manifests itself, and we celebrate such expression—but we think the capacity for creative output has an entirely different source: the ability to naturally and repeatedly apply one’s knowledge and life experiences to the problems that capture one’s interest.  While creative output often resembles and feels like an inexplicable lightening bolt from the sky, it is made possible by a rich base of accumulated experiences, knowledge, and values, and by the capacity to engage in motivated, self-generated action in pursuit of a goal. 

Sir Ken Robinson, author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative, points out three common misconceptions about creativity:

  1. Creativity is not learned, but innate: those who are creative have a special inborn skill that others just cannot acquire.
  2. Creativity is limited to specific areas, like the arts.
  3. Creativity is about spontaneous free expression not involving any skill base.

He argues that these assumptions are false: that we can all learn to be creative, that creativity is everybody’s business, applicable to engineers just as it is to artists, and that creativity requires the application of unique insights to solve a problem in a new way, drawing on relevant facts and skills of the creator. He holds that children are born to be creative, but that traditional education, with its focus on memorization, standardization and testing, kills their creative potential.

Montessori preschool supports the development of creativity at much more than just a superficial, finger-painting level. (There’s absolutely nothing wrong with finger painting—our point is just that it’s not the primary way to nurture a creative capacity.). Montessori—from infant and toddler daycare through middle school—allows the child to slowly develop himself, to become an individual capable of meaningful, motivated thought and action as he grows, free from the destructive constraints of traditional education. Here’s how Montessori fosters creativity:

montessori preschool

  • Creativity happens throughout the Montessori classroom experience; it’s not relegated to art class. When you visit a Montessori preschool classroom, you’ll find artistic expression everywhere. Fine art prints may be displayed along the walls, at the children’s eye level; books available for reading are illustrated with high-quality drawings. A 3-year-old may be cutting colored pieces of paper, and assembling them into a mosaic in the practical life area; another may be painting at an easel outside; yet another may be filling in geometric shapes with colored pencils in the language area. A 4-year-old may be carefully painting a map of the world with watercolors as part of her exploration of geography; another one may be working near the kitchen, arranging flowers for all to enjoy. A 5 1/2-year-old may be making a book about a recent trip to a tide pool, illustrating the creatures he saw, and writing about them, combining art with language skills and science. By elementary school, art becomes more sophisticated, but remains integrated into the classroom experience: children may draw a timeline of life, illustrate a research report on penguins with beautiful drawings, or apply their skills in perspective drawing as they research famous architects and the history of how people met their needs for shelter through the ages.

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  • Montessori encourages children to express their own unique ideas, instead of completing adult-directed projects. In a traditional preschool art classes, children typically work on and complete adult-designed art projects: Every child makes a turkey project at Thanksgiving, or a flower out of some crafts materials for Mother’s Day. The teacher provides the same materials to all children, and directs them on how to complete the project: the sky in the picture has to be colored in with blue water color; the fish in bright crayons, and so on.
    In a Montessori preschool classroom, in contrast, children are free to create their own art, following their own interests. They paint what they want on their easels. They draw pictures that interest them and write about them. They make collages from cut papers that express their view of what looks pretty together. Maybe more importantly, children have the freedom to be artistic when they feel drawn to art: all art materials are available all day long, and are always ready when the inspiration strikes! Others may be drawn to music, or to beautiful words, and pursue those interests. In Montessori, it’s all about the self-generated process of exploration and expression, not the product; it’s about allowing the individual child’s creativity energy to develop, not about producing a standardized art project to take home for parents to admire. (The outcome of such creative work, of course, is often a product to be admired by peers and parents.)

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  • Montessori children master the skills and knowledge they need to be creative. To be truly creative, children need to master essential skills, and build a solid foundation of knowledge.
    Writes Po Branson in a recent Newsweek article about the decline of creativity: “Researchers say creativity should be taken out of the art room and put into homeroom. The argument that we can’t teach creativity because kids already have too much to learn is a false trade-off. Creativity isn’t about freedom from concrete facts. Rather, fact-finding and deep research are vital stages in the creative process.”
    Take one example: To become a compelling writer, children need to acquire a breadth of vocabulary, a firm command of grammar, the knowledge of meaningful things to write about, and the skills to put words together on paper in a compelling structure, in order to express their ideas. In Montessori, from preschool through middle school, we help children learn these skills and to apply them in practice, from a young age. Preschoolers learn neat, cursive handwriting—so they can then write stories, not complete fill-in-the-blank worksheets. Elementary students research a historical period that interests them—not to passively bubble in a standardized test, but to write a research report, which challenges them to apply both the historical knowledge they gained, and the grammar and vocabulary they studied.
    Throughout, the Montessori curriculum doesn’t conform to drill-and-kill standardization, but strives for cross-curricular integration, and an application of knowledge learned to real projects, the type of approach which fosters the divergent, integrative thinking needed for truly creative work! Montessori teachers integrate history and math as children bring out three thousand-chains to better understand what 1,000 BC means. Elementary school students learn about the animals of South America or the constellations in the sky by drawing them. They sing about the parts of speech or the 50 United States. They use math in cooking, in sewing, in carpentry projects, in school or at home. In Montessori, knowledge is never merely about tests: it’s always about using one’s mind to understand the world, to make sense of it and to successfully live in it! Transfer (the application of something learned to new context, which is often lacking in traditional education) is built into the foundational approach of Montessori education.

montessori preschool

  • Montessori children learn to follow their interests, not to conform blindly to extrinsic expectations.  Nothing stifles creativity as being told, every hour of every day, what exact standardized content you have to memorize for the next text, and being measured, constantly, against some arbitrary measure of performance set for your grade level! In order to be creative, we must first and foremost be unique, be individuals with our own take on the world, be curious about how things work, and how to make them better, and be confident in our own abilities to succeed in this world.
    In a Montessori classroom, we adhere to the “follow the child” principle: In all we do, we look to bring out your child’s unique potential. Instead of making all elementary school children write about butterflies in spring, we notice a little boy who loves dinosaurs, and encourage him to write, draw and read about T-Rex and Pteranodon and Triceratops. Instead of grading essays with letter grades on a curve, which focus a child’s work on our approval and his performance relative to his peers, we provide detailed, one-on-one feedback on how each child can improve his own work, and encourage children to. edit each other’s work, such learning by teaching. Instead of pushing a barely six-year-old not ready for elementary work up into first grade, or holding back a precocious 5 year old eager to take on greater challenge, we protect each child’s creative potential from harm by giving him an extra half-year in Montessori preschool/kindergarten, or sending him to visit the elementary room a half year early, so that he encounters new work when he is able and excited to meet them joyously.

The most profoundly creative act of a child is that of constructing himself into the unique human being he will be. And, as Peter Davidson put it compellingly, Montessori is the best environment for this essential process of self-creation, on which all later creativity rests:

The entire [Montessori] environment was designed to allow for that most creative of all acts—the self-construction of each individual child according to his/her own pattern and pace. That essential creative act, which began at birth and continued throughout their early childhood as they learned to walk, and speak, and care for themselves, continues here unabated in an environment full of the raw materials of self-construction and with the time and freedom to do this important work.

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The Original One World Schoolhouse

When you read the following quotes, what learning environment would you guess that the author is describing?

At the end of the day, however, the fact is that we educate ourselves. We learn, first of all, by deciding to learn, by committing to learning. This commitment allows, in turn, for concentration.

Denied the opportunity to make even the most basic decisions about how and what they will learn, students stop short of full commitment.

Students should be encouraged, at every step of their learning process, to adopt an active stance toward their education. They shouldn’t just take things in; they should figure them out. … If you think about it, asking kids to be active is nothing more than asking them to be their natural selves. … Students are not naturally passive. Perversely, they need to be taught to be passive. … Active learning, owned learning, also begins with giving each student the freedom to determine where and where the learning will occur.

Once a certain level of proficiency is obtained, the learner should attempt to teach the subject to other students so that they themselves develop a deeper understanding. As they progress, they should keep revisiting the core ideas through the lenses of different, active experiences.

This kind of learning fosters not only a deeper level of knowledge, but excitement and a sense of wonder as well. Nurturing this sense of wonder should be education’s highest goal; failing to nurture it is the central tragedy of the current system.

To state what should be obvious, there is nothing natural about segregating kids by age. That isn’t how families work; it isn’t what the world looks like; and it runs counter to the way that kids have learned and socialized for most of human history. … Take away this mix of ages and everybody loses something. Younger kids lose heroes and idols and mentors. Perhaps even more damagingly, older kids are deprived of a chance to be leaders, to exercise responsibility, and are thereby infantilized.

The author above sounds a lot like another educator, who proposed an approach very similar to the one above:

Education is not something which a teacher does, but [is] a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. It is not acquired by listening to words, but in virtue of experiences in which the child acts on his environment. The teacher’s task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child.

Discipline in freedom seemed to solve a problem which had hitherto seemed insoluble. The answer lay in obtaining discipline by giving freedom. These children, who sought their work in freedom, each absorbed in a different kind of task, yet all belonging to the same group, gave an impression of perfect discipline.

It follows that the child can only develop fully by means of experience on his environment. We call such experience "work." … The child who has extended his independence by acquiring new powers, can only develop normally if left free to exert those powers. The child develops by the exercise of that independence which he has gained.

The education of today is humiliating. It produces an inferiority complex and artificially lowers the powers of man. Its very organization sets a limit to knowledge well below the natural level. It supplies men with crutches when they could run on swift feet. It is an education based on man’s lower powers, not on his higher ones.

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There are 60 years separating these sets of quotes: the top six are from The One World Schoolhouse, by Salman Khan, the founder of the Khan academy, published in 2012. The bottom four are by Dr. Maria Montessori, in The Absorbent Mind, first published in English in 1949.

I recently read Mr. Khan’s book, and as someone familiar with Montessori, I found it fascinating. It describes, in essence, how we could use technology to more fully apply the principles of Montessori education for the upper grades. I’d go as far as to characterize it as an applicationof Montessori principles. The problem with that characterization, however, is that throughout the book, Mr. Khan does not mention the Montessori method. Not even a single time!

Salman Khan is perhaps the most famous of the wave of innovation sweeping educational technology.  Mr. Khan’s innovation, however, goes far beyond merely incorporating technology into the classroom. Although made possible by technology, it is at root a pedagogical innovation.  Mr. Khan’s core idea is that we "flip the classroom" from the traditional model. In most schools today, children sit in class, listening to a teacher delivering a lecture, solving sample problems on the board. They are then sent away with homework, and asked to apply what they learned on their own, without either teacher or another student there to help them. In this model, "homework becomes necessary because not enough learning happens during the school day."

In the classroom envisioned by Mr. Khan, the approach would be reversed: students would independently, individually watch recorded lectures on iPads or other devices. They’d be able to repeat unclear sections, or watch another video that explained things from a different perspective. The iPad, in this approach, would serve to present conceptual levelcontent analogous to the way Montessori materials present perceptual level content in the earlier stages of a Montessori education. Assessment modules on the iPad would allow students to check their basic understanding of the materials, to engage in a first-level application through work of what they have learned. The teacher wouldn’t need to be involved in grading or correcting the work: the computer would be the control of error.

Mr. Khan emphasizes that his computer-based lectures are merely tools for a revolution in the classroom. His descriptions of his ideal school, in fact, sound a lot like what a Montessori adolescent community might look like. Just read these quotes about different aspects of the school he envisions:

I believe that the school of the future should be built around an updated version of the one-room schoolhouse. Kids of different ages should mix. Without the tyranny of the broadcast lecture and the one-size-fits-all curriculum, there is no reason it can’t be done.

But rather than three or four separate classes of twenty-five kids and one lonesome teacher, I would suggest a class of seventy-five to a hundred students with three or four teachers. To me there are several clear advantages to this, all of which stem from the enhancement of flexibility in a system such as this.

The students would seldom if ever all be doing the same thing at the same time. And while nooks and alcoves within this imagined school might be perfectly quiet for private study, other parts would be bustling with collaborative chatter. At any given moment, perhaps one-fifth of the students would be doing computer-based lessons and exercises aimed at a deep and durable gasp of core concepts … with one of our team teachers circulating among them, answering questions, troubleshooting difficulties as they occur. The feedback and the help are virtually immediate, and the twenty-to-one ratio is augmented by peer-to-peer tutoring and mentoring—a central advantage of the age-mixed classroom.

But what about the other eighty students? I can see (and hear!) a boisterous subgroup learning economics and trying out market simulations by way of board games such as those we’ve used with good effect at our summer camps. I would have another group, divided into teams, building robots or designing mobile apps or testing out novel ways for structures to capture sunlight. A quiet corner of the room could be devoted to students working on art or creative writing projects. A less quiet corner would be reserved for those working on original music.

The most important aspect of this is that it would carve out space and time for open-ended thinking and creativity for all students. In today’s schools, it’s not hard to find "different-thinking" students who are too often neglected, misunderstood, and either alienated or simply left behind by the rigid standard curricula. I’m talking about the kind of kid … who becomes obsessed with solid geometry and isn’t ready to let I go when the lesson ends, but rather wants to derive its equations and spin out its implications all on his own. Or the kid who is happiest racking her brain over a math problem that might not even have a solution. Or formulating an approach in engineering that has never even been tried.

These are the kinds of curious, mysterious, and original minds that often end up making major contributions to our world; to reach their full potential, however, they need the latitude to follow their own oblique, nonstandard paths.

I believe that a big part of the reason kids revere and obey their coaches is that the coaches are specifically and explicitly on the student’s side. … The teacher, like a coach, needs to emphasize that anything less than mastery won’t do because he or she expects you to be the best thinker and creator that you can be.

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Such words are music to a Montessori educator’s ears! There is much more of the same wonderful vision in Mr. Khan’s book, and clearly much his way of re-imagining education has in common with Montessori.

Just think about what could be accomplished if the global reach of Mr. Khan’s technology-based efforts were combined with the world-wide network of mixed-age, co-taught, individualized Montessori classrooms?  Just imagine how much power the practical genius of Mr. Khan could have if embedded in the profound, philosophic account of human development offered by Maria Montessori?

While there are undoubtedly differences in the two approaches, what strikes me most is the similarity of the over-arching vision. It seems to me that Mr. Khan and the Montessori movement are fellow travellers headed in the same direction, but who have yet to find each other. Maybe you, dear MariaMontessori.com readers, can find a way to help make an introduction, and begin a dialogue that has the power to transform the world?


This blog post was originally featured on the Maria Montessori website.

Supporting Your Child’s Budding Independence at Home

 

We just bought a small table and chairs for Sophie’s play room. At the end of the day, I went to the room and I was so surprised and laughed so hard.

Erin I.

I heard some moving around upstairs this morning. I went to check on Hailey and she had gotten out of bed and was brushing her teeth all by herself. She put the cap back on the toothpaste and put her toothbrush back after she was done. (This is not the norm in my house). Hailey started in the toddler program and has been at Le Port for 2 years now. It’s great to see the progress she’s made.

Lori P.

At lunch today, I took the suggestion from the Tuesday folder and put the girls’ dishes and cups in a basket on a low shelf in the kitchen. I already had some cloths stored on a low shelf with tablecloths, and the girls have a small table in the kitchen to eat at. Audrey (3 1/2) set the table for herself and her sister (17 months) and then both of them sat and ate. After they were both done, she cleared the plates and utensils and cups and put them in the sink and then, most stunningly to me, took a cloth and wiped off the table before pushing in all of the chairs. She was so enthusiastic to be able to do it all herself, and smiled broadly when all was clean. Thank you so much for instilling such awesome skills in my little one.

Reba N.

When toddlers and young preschoolers start in Montessori, parents are often amazed at the sudden spurt in independence and skill their children display.

If your child is starting in a Montessori toddler or preschool program, and you want to witness this incredible development in your own child, it helps if you are able to prepare your home environment in ways that support your child’s new skills and desire to be independent.

Here are some ideas to consider:

    1. Provide simple storage spots for belongings right inside the front door.  A small rug to place shoes or a basket to put them into and some hooks to hang jackets are a great start.  This can help your child get out of the house and back in more independently, and maybe prevent some meltdowns!  A little stool to sit on helps, as well.

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    1. Make your kitchen accessible to your child.  Find a low shelf or drawer to store cups, placemats, and utensils within your child’s reach.  Buy glass cups and inexpensive ceramic plates (IKEA is great!) that you don’t mind getting broken.  Invite your child to set his own place at the table.  A bigger step stool, or a learning tower can be a great help to little people who want to join you in the fun cooking activities at counter height.  And, of course, when it comes time to sit down and eat, encourage your child to feed himself:  Even young toddlers can eat finger-foods on their own, and start using a spoon; this is what they do in their Montessori classrooms, too.

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    1. Organize and simplify the play area.  Fewer toys, displayed on open shelves, are preferable over lots of toys in boxes that the children can’t see.

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    1. Small chairs and tables facilitate independent snack time and organized playtime.  Provide some buckets, sponges, rags, and child-sized brooms, and your child can even clean up after himself.

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    1. Facilitate getting dressed independently.  Low open shelves, low racks, a mirror and a bench with brush or comb can enable even 2- or 3-year-olds to begin to dress independently, especially if you pre-select an outfit the night before, or lay out two simple choices for a younger child.

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    1. Consider a floor or other low bed.  Some Montessori parents never have cribs; instead, they baby-proof an entire room and let even infants sleep on a floor bed.  While this may not work for every parent, a low bed or a twin mattress on the floor can be a great step up after a crib, instead of a toddler bed.

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    1. Make books accessible and create cozy reading areas.  The more that books are all over your house, the easier it is for your child to grab a book instead of asking for your iPhone or the TV when you are not available to play.

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To see growth in your child’s independence, it’s not necessary to reorganize your entire house (who has the time and energy for that?!).  Just pick one or two ideas and make little changes over time.  You might think your child is too young to take advantage of these kinds of opportunities for independence—but once she starts school, you might be just as surprised and thrilled as the LePort Montessori parents who wrote the Facebook posts above!

Thanks to Bernadette, a LePort parent of three children, ages infant to preschool, for inviting us into her house to take many of these beautiful pictures!

Movement, Montessori and Active Children

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Why is it that boys struggle more in elementary school than girls do?

Study after study show that girls outperform boys in elementary school. Boys are more likely to be diagnosed with learning disabilities, especially in elementary school. 60-80% of learning disabilities occur in boys, and boys are two to four times as likely to be labeled as ADHD than girls. At all ages, the National Assessment of Educational progress shows that girls outperform boys at reading and writing tasks.

At LePort, our holy grail is individualization. Our approach is to observe, identify, and address the needs of the particular students under our care. As a result, we’re generally not interested in whether the "average" boy struggles with reading or the "average" girl is less confident in math. We believe that in the big picture, over time, boys and girls both need to acquire the same fundamental content and learn the same key skills, and that they are both capable of doing so.

That said, we’re open to research suggesting that boys and girls may, at certain periods of their development, have different needs. There’s no denying that in schools across the country, boys on average perform far more poorly in elementary school. In their book Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson, two of the country’s leading child psychologists, argue that this is a reflection of two well-established developmental differences between boys and girls:

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The first … is that girls’ verbal abilities, on average, mature faster than boys’: they talk earlier and more fluently. Boys tend to catch up later, but in the early grades especially, feminine superiority in this area is readily apparent to parents, teachers, and researchers. The second difference is that boys tend to be more physically active than girls, moving faster and staying in motion longer.  [Emphasis added.]

According to the authors, many boys struggle in early elementary school because it is not optimized for their learning needs. Alan, a 12-year-old in therapy with one of the authors, offered a simple insight into the cause for this struggle.

He talks some more about classes he likes—not many—and those he doesn’t like, and it’s clear that, whatever sophisticated planning has gone into curriculum design at Alan’s school, the distinction between a good class and a bad class, from his point of view, has a lot to do with the freedom it offers to stand up and walk around.

In his weary review of life at school, Alan has described the nature of the problem so many boys have there. In essence, they sit all morning … And if they can’t move around, they feel trapped and turned off to anything the teacher might have to offer.

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On top of being trapped, many boys experience themselves as "slow" in elementary school. They often enter with pre-reading skills behind those of same-aged girls, and may not be developmentally ready for the one-size-fits-all instruction in reading and writing found in traditional classrooms.

If it is true that on average, boys develop verbal abilities later than girls, and that on average, they need to move around more often than girls, then it is no surprise that on average, more boys struggle upon entering a traditional first grade classroom.  In such a classroom, students are expected to sit still; they are expected to work precociously without regular opportunities to move around and recharge; they are not given space to learn, over time, to channel their energy, to redirect it from physical to intellectual activity. 

Fortunately, whether or not it’s true for traditional schools, this is not the experience a boy (or girl) would have at LePort. Far from limiting ourselves to merely differentiating between boys and girls, our lower elementary class differentiates between the needs of each and every child, boy or girl. 

Montessori elementary provides an environment where each child can develop at his or her own pace, and thereby avoids presenting more active boys with the challenges they typically face.

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  • The Montessori environment allows for freedom of movement. Montessori elementary classrooms retain the same set-up a Montessori child is familiar with from his preschool years. Students choose their activities. They pick a place to work—a mat on the floor, a table. They can get up and move around the classroom when they want to, whether it is to go get a pencil, use the bathroom, have a snack, or to observe a peer at work. All this movement happens in the same deliberate, courteous way the children have learned in their preschool classes, as students carefully walk around mats, tables and shelves, and talk with each other in quiet indoor voices.
  • Instruction is individualized, and allows each child, boy or girl, to grow at a natural pace, optimized by the teacher in response to particular, individual observations of that child’s strengths and weaknesses. If it happens to be that girls come into the elementary class with nicer cursive handwriting and more fluid reading, no problem. Boys who need more time to develop these skills find that time in Montessori. And teachers know to tie in boy interests to verbal skills. A boy who is captivated by geography may find himself reading about the animals and plants of different continents, and creating detailed maps showing a continent’s physical features. In the process, he improves his reading, fine motor and writing skills. 
  • Montessori primary helps students develop critical early skills they otherwise might lack. If it is the case that boys on average take a little longer to "put together" all the foundational skills they’ve acquired, the 3rd year in primary Montessori is well suited to address that circumstance. This last year in primary helps students refine their fine motor skills. It offers a chance to learn language skills in an active way not found in traditional schools: an insightful teacher may help a very active student become engaged in reading by asking him to fetch items from all over the room after reading little labels. She might place him in the far corner of the room, with a moveable alphabet box, and ask him to walk across the room to her for each word he should write.

The authors of Raising Cain provide a critical piece of advice to parents of boys entering elementary school, advice which is just as applicable for parents of girls:

montessori preschool huntington beach

The most important thing to remember, the guiding principle, is to try to keep your son’s self-esteem intact while he is in school. That’s the real risk to this success and to his mental health. Once he’s out of school, the world will be different. … But if he starts to hate himself because he isn’t good at schoolwork, he’ll fall into a hole that he’ll be digging himself out of for the rest of his life. [Emphasis added.]

If you are a parent of an active child, boy or girl, and are at all concerned with how your child will adjust to a sit-still, work-book focused traditional first grade classroom, consider keeping him (or her) in Montessori at least for the early elementary grades. With the careful guidance of our expert teachers, by 3rd grade he’ll master the skills so many active children struggle with in traditional school.

Most importantly, he’ll retain the love of learning he’s gained in preschool, and continue to view himself as a capable, likeable young person.

Isn’t that the best gift your could give your child at the start of his school years?

What I learned From the Messy Marker Episode — And How We Apply These Lessons at School

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When my daughter Cailey was not quite 3, she asked me if she could color with markers. Up until that time, she’d only used crayons, chalk or colored pencils for her art endeavors.

Without a thought, I produced the markers that I’d bought sometime before and gave them to her to use. She took out a sheet of paper and dug in.

When I checked in with her a few minutes later, I received a mild shock.

First, I saw that Cailey had colored vigorously all in one place so the paper was wet through and beginning to disintegrate. Second, caps and open markers were strewn all over the table and carpeted floor around her. There were also colorful marker streaks on the table, her hands, her face, and the front of her shirt (where the open markers had inadvertently rubbed as she colored).

Even with "washable" markers, it was going to be quite a job to get everything cleaned up. How quickly it can happen! Big sigh.

The mess wasn’t Cailey’s fault, of course. Rather, it was I who had neglected to show her how to use the markers.

What’s the big deal? –You might be asking yourself. Isn’t this par for the course for the under six set? They make a mess and we, the adults, clean up after them. You might be thinking that I’m lucky she didn’t color all over the wall.

On the contrary, I think this kind of outcome (one that’s frustrating for parents and doesn’t do much for our children) can be the exception, not the norm. Everyone–parents, and with their guidance, children too–can strive for and reach a better standard.

Let’s contrast this scene to the time I showed Cailey how to use watercolors, a much more ambitious activity than markers for her to do independently. (It involves many items: an apron, tray, paintbrush, paper, water bowl, paper towel, and watercolor set.) That time, I consciously prepared in advance what I would say and gathered the necessary materials before demonstrating to her. When I guided her through the process, I did so with simple instructions and a few parameters. She was able to go from the first step of carrying her tray to the table, to the last step of rinsing her water bowl in the sink, without so much as a "Remember, watercolors need a brush that’s good and wet" from me.

Now, looking at the mess of markers and stains before me, I couldn’t avoid having to point out–in as nice a manner as I could–how her paper was falling apart, how she and the table were covered in marker, and to please take a look at the floor…all because I hadn’t prepared her or myself in advance.

Indirectly, I was implying a whole host of things done wrong, putting a damper on something that could have been a home run.

Sure, no disaster took place. But I don’t think life with young children is about just getting by and avoiding disasters. It’s about creating optimal circumstances for their healthy development–development that includes accomplishments with the big and little things, an ever-increasing sphere over which they have mastery, and ensuing feelings of pride.

I’m not saying we should carefully orchestrate everything so that we can protect our children from bum experiences with markers or anything else, not at all. But life already hands us many situations that are rife with disappointment and "learning."

My point is that, as parents and teachers, with a little planning, we can provide experiences that promote a strong self-image in our children because they are confidently prepared to meet the challenges that come their way (even the ones that provide appropriate doses of frustration or disappointment).

All I would have needed were a few statements beforehand about how markers are different from crayons, a guideline or two, an-easy-to-access container for the markers, and a damp sponge. What ended up being something of a fiasco could have instead been an enjoyable experience for both Cailey and me.

At LePort Schools, our Montessori teachers apply this type of forethought throughout the classroom. It’s what we call "setting up a prepared environment," and it includes everything from how the materials are displayed, to how we introduce them to the children. Our teachers consistently use the "watercolors" approach described above, in which they prepare their students in advance by showing them how to. This enables each child to experience success as the norm, not as the exception, even when tackling tasks that many view as challenging for two-year-olds–such as painting with watercolors.

After the messy marker incident, I vowed to not settle for less as a parent. Now, in my role as Montessori Curriculum Coordinator at LePort, I see this "advanced preparation" carried out every day in our classrooms. And seeing the results is truly a delight: toddlers who joyously engage in learning activities that fascinate them, who succeed at what they attempt (at times, of course, after constructive struggles), and who become confident, eager explorers in the process.

This is what every toddler can experience at LePort. See for yourself: come in for a tour, or start by taking a sneak-peak into our toddler rooms with this video. Enjoy!

The Purpose of a LePort Education: A Child’s Personal Happiness

montessori preschool private school daycare

Throughout the ages, cultures have held different positions on the core purpose of education. Some have seen education as a means to preparing children for war (Sparta), or preparing them for a monastic life (middle ages), or getting them ready for factory work (late 19th century). Intellectuals have argued that education should be aimed at creating a just society (Plato), developing socially conscious adults (John Dewey), imparting universal classical knowledge (Mortimer Adler).

Of all historical conceptions of the purpose of education, the one LePort most identifies with is the approach adopted by the Greek city-state of Athens. The goal of the Athenian education was to enable a child to become the best adult possible, to achieve arête, or excellence, the full realization of his human potential, in body, character, and mind. The ultimate purpose of this excellence was the child’s personal happiness, which he could achieve by living a good life, a life that is, in the words of historian Will Durant, “the fullest one, rich in health, strength, beauty, passion, means, adventure and thought. [The ideal human being] combines beauty and justice in a gracious art of living that frankly values ability, fame, wealth and friends…” *

At LePort, we embrace such an Athenian ideal. We see our purpose as helping our students achieve “the good life”, a life in which an individual uses the full power of his mind to achieve and enjoy chosen values. Whatever ends any child ultimately pursues in adulthood—advancing in a fulfilling career, sustaining a thriving marriage, earning health and wealth, raising children of his own, furthering some important social end—our responsibility is to make sure he has the requisite cognitive tools necessary to achieve those ends.  We seek to ensure that each unique, irreplaceable child under our care acquires the cognitive common denominators necessary to achieve a life of personal happiness.

montessori preschool private school daycare

LePort of course does not have a monopoly on student well-being. Many schools share the desire to help students thrive, as is clear from their focus on academic achievement, their efforts to offer students a rich variety of meaningful extra-curricular experiences (theatre, overnight trips, sports), and the dedication with which they pursue their educational program. What makes LePort unique, however, is that our students’ personal fulfillment is our exclusive purpose.

Peruse most schools’ mission statements and you’ll find that in addition to helping students self-actualize, there is also emphasis on inculcating a spirit of public service. Schools pride themselves on encouraging “responsible, global citizenship”, transforming children into “exemplary citizens of a global society”, training students to make “meaningful contributions to the world community.” While there are many variations on the object of the service —the community, the country, religion or faith, the environment — the common thread is that these schools aim to nurture a service mentality in children.

We collaborate with and have deep respect for many schools that take this approach, and we recognize that some parents will want a mission of service as part of their child’s learning environment. But at LePort, we operate on a very different foundation.

Our view is that a child’s purpose is to live his own life according to his own chosen values, in the pursuit of his own happiness.  While it’s the mark of an educated mind to be able to take a global perspective on life, we don’t believe it’s our place to prescribe or imply the particular ends a child must serve. What matters to us is not whether a child “makes a meaningful contribution to the world community,” but whether he achieves the things that give his life meaning (which may or may not include making a meaningful contribution to the world community).

Here are a few ways this difference in approach comes up in practice:

montessori preschool private school daycare

  • Learning as a child’s highest moral purpose. To encourage children to value the experience of learning, we try to create a culture of curiosity, of genuine interest in understanding and exploration. This means de-emphasizing external motivators (like a bad grade as a punishment or a class party as a reward). It also means not adding any special prestige or importance to so-called “volunteerism” efforts, even when a child chooses it voluntarily. If one child wants to spend her weekend visiting a homeless shelter, and another wants to spend it taking apart a toaster to figure out how it works, we treat both choices with full respect to the extent that both are equally an expression of a desire to learn. We don’t celebrate the first as somehow morally superior, because it involves “service”. We’re much more interested in the process by which a child is making choices—is she pursuing a certain experience based on thoughtful, active reflection about what matters to her, or is she motivated by false prestige, or popularity, or a neurotic need to be first among her peers. We nurture a genuine exploration of life and learning, and leave it up to each individual child to determine how that process unfolds.
  • Moral neutrality with respect to career choices. At LePort we don’t treat certain callings—a nurse, a teacher, or joining the Peace Corps—as somehow morally better than a life dedicated to other, more “materialistic” careers such as creating movies, or running a successful business, or becoming a professional tennis player. Our view is that the child’s goal, as a human being, should be to live his life to the fullest—and we leave it up to him to identify, over years as he grows up, what form that fulfillment will take.
  • No mandated community service projects. We celebrate each child’s interests, whatever they may be. If one of our students is a passionate, accomplished figure skater, we help ensure she has time to pursue her passion. If another one loves marine life and wants to volunteer at a rescue center for marine mammals, we’ll help him find the right place. If yet another is in love with reading and aspires to become a fiction writer, we’ll help her find the books and make the time to read as much as possible. We believe that if these children are pressured to give up the pursuits that are personally meaningful to them in order to perform community service, that at a deep level they will end up resenting rather than feeling goodwill towards their fellow men.
    Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. Howard Thurman

montessori preschool private school daycare

  • An individualized, self-motivated approach to learning and discipline. Because we value each child as an end-in-herself, we don’t put much weight on whether she conforms to the views of her community. Instead, we work hard to discover what inspires her: her interests, her temperament, her strengths and challenges. We encourage her, not to obey adult commandments, but to learn the self-discipline she will need to pursue her own, chosen values. Toddlers choose their individual activities from the shelves; preschoolers learn to concentrate for an hour or more to write a story they want to tell; elementary students decide when and where to complete their weekly work assignment; and middle school students learn to keep themselves organized using our planner system, so that they can have ownership over their quest for knowledge.
  • Hiring teachers who model loving their work and loving life. If we want students to embrace the challenge of creating a happy, fulfilling life for themselves, we need to ensure that they have the right role models. That’s one of the reasons why we hire teachers who relish teaching, who love learning about the subjects they teach, and who are enthusiastic about working with children. Our students don’t see their teachers as martyrs who have selflessly devoted themselves to the next generation, but as passionate, joyous professionals motivated to be their best selves.
    No written word, no spoken plea
    Can teach our youth what they should be,
    Nor all the books on all the shelves.
    It’s what the teachers are themselves.

    Author Unknown

The result is an educational program wholly devoted to helping our students achieve lives of personal fulfillment and joy. Here’s how we put it in our mission statement: “At LePort, we help our students acquire the essential knowledge, thinking skills, and strength of character required to flourish as joyous children today, and as successful adults tomorrow.”

* Will Durant, The Life of Greece, pg. 298

“The Red Coats Are Coming”: Visualizing and Feeling in Teaching

At LePort, we are always looking to improve ourselves as educators. And that means documenting and learning from each other’s ideas about great teaching practices. Over the years we’ve come to see that a major facet of great teachers is their ability to cultivate strong imaginations in their students and elicit even stronger emotions. Below is an internal paper written for our teachers on a related pedagogical tactic we employ daily. It is called visualization, and it is just one element of our experiential approach to education.

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Internal Paper: Experiential Teaching

Everybody has heard the line "The Red Coats are coming", usually at some point in elementary school. But how many of us can see and feel it? How many have a rich visual scene in their heads, with a real emotional connection to go with it?

Too often in school all we hear is words. Disconnected, uninteresting, non-visualized words. At LePort we know that words matter, and we revere them, because they are the means by which we grasp and communicate knowledge. But we also know that for words to actually represent knowledge students must understand them.

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An important method by which we ensure that words are understood, that our students connect what we’re talking about with their own personal context, is visualization – the eliciting of images in a individual’s mind. This tactic allows students to see what we’re teaching and to feel the emotional connection that comes only from experiential learning, ultimately making knowledge a student’s own.

To illustrate this idea, let’s travel back in time to our own elementary school, to our 5th-grade History (or Social Studies) class, when most of us first heard the "Red Coats" phrase. But on this occasion, let’s give the presentation the visuals and feeling it deserves, let’s make it a LePort style lesson:

Transport yourself to a cabin in early Colonial times (you know, homespun clothes, dirty hands, farm life). You’re ten, and you’re sitting in the living room around a fireplace reading. Above the fireplace, as in most homes of the time, sits a musket. Your dad is there, maybe a brother or sister if you have one. Mom’s out somewhere, don’t know where. Each of you are enjoying a book, you an exciting novel, though you’re a little tense because you’ve heard that British troops – Red Coats – have landed in your town and are abusing locals, some of whom are your friends’ parents. But the presence of the troops is still not fully real. It is still merely a news story to you.

You’re just reaching the climax of your novel, and your mind is now completely absorbed in your book. All of a sudden you hear shouting from outside the door. The voices are garbled at first, but then you make out the words. "The Red Coats are coming! The Red Coats are coming!!" Your eyes immediately shoot to the fireplace, and then to just a few feet up, where your dad’s musket sits. You see the musket as if it’s for the first time. Everything is quiet, motionless; life itself seems to have stopped. Then you remember that your dad is with you, in the living room. You look over to him. He is completely still, so still that his stillness belies what’s occurring within. In his eyes you see the deepest, most serious agitation you have ever seen in a man. One question then immediately comes to your mind: What is dad going to do?

At this point in the lesson, there is not one boy or girl who is really "in" the classroom. Each is in his own mind, living out his own visual story. And each wants to talk about it, to share his feelings. Hell, I want to share my feelings! This is when the teacher would transition to a class discussion – and boy what a discussion it would become.

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As teachers, all of us have experienced those special moments when every child, seemingly without exception, is engaged. In this case, the engagement is accomplished through storytelling. But why is this particular story so compelling? I think it’s because it offers the children a visual and emotional experience. When dramatizing this story in class, there are a few actual visuals a teacher would use – a picture of a British troop (a Red Coat) and a video of a musket being shot – but the real visuals come from within the child’s mind, from his capacity and willingness to use his imagination, to turn the teacher’s words into images … to paint his own unique picture of the story.

Our students have such a capacity in them, if we can provide the spark. Through visual and emotional teaching, we gain huge in our efforts to impart knowledge. And that is why I believe whenever we are speaking in class, our intent should be to help kids see and feel what we’re saying. We’ll succeed if we go in with this underlying objective to make words visual, to transform sounds coming from our mouths into the equivalent of experiential knowledge. This applies throughout subject areas, whether we’re teaching a novel, some math formulas, a grammatical concept, or a species of tree. (No doubt this tactic is most challenging in math, but maybe all the more reason to make it a stretch goal!)

So the takeaway here is simple. Whenever we are prepping what we will teach our kids, or whenever we are up in front of the class ready to say a few words, let’s ask ourselves: Will my students be able to see this, will they be able to feel this? The more we can answer "Yes", the better our classrooms, the better our teaching will be.

Great Teachers Matter – Credentials Don’t

montessori preschool irvine

How much will your child’s success in school and life be influenced by the quality of his teachers? Here is what studies say:

The available evidence suggests that the main driver of the variation in student learning at school is the quality of the teachers. Ten years ago, seminal research based on data from Tennessee showed that if two average eight-year-old students were given different teachers—one of them a high performer, the other a low performer—their performance diverged by more than 50 percentile points within three years…

Another study, this time in Dallas, shows that the performance gap between students assigned three effective teachers in a row, and those assigned three ineffective teachers, was 49 percentile points. In Boston, students placed with top-performing math teachers made substantial gains, while students placed with the worst teachers regressed—their math got worse. Studies that take into account all of the available evidence on teacher effectiveness suggest that students placed with high-performing teachers will progress three times as fast as those placed with low-performing teachers.

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Another recent study, quoted in the New York Times, put a monetary value on the damage done by just one bad teacher:

Conversely, a very poor teacher has the same effect as a pupil missing 40 percent of the school year. We don’t allow that kind of truancy, so it’s not clear why we should put up with such poor teaching. In fact, the study shows that parents should pay a bad teacher $100,000 to retire (assuming the replacement is of average quality) because a weak teacher holds children back so much.

nytimes.com

No matter where you look, the answer is clear: Good teachers matter tremendously—and if you want to choose a school for your child, you should find one that hires the best.

But what does it mean to be a good teacher? And which schools will ensure your child will have good teachers, consistently?

Unfortunately, public schools, with their strict, union-driven work rules, often take a simplistic approach to teacher quality. While there are no doubt great public school teachers peppered through the system, the underlying approach to teacher selection rarely guarantees that your child will consistently have the best teachers, even in a good school district.

  • Hiring practices that exclude many capable potential teachers. Public schools usually draw their teacher candidates from graduates of education colleges, that is, credentialed teachers. At first blush, this sounds like a good idea: after all, you want a teacher who is well trained, and a credential certifies that the teacher has completed course work on teaching. Many credentialed teachers are in fact highly dedicated, intelligent individuals who are passionate about educating children; but many others, in fact, are not.

    Yet it’s important to understand that teaching credentials are neither necessary nor sufficient in hiring the best teachers.

    • montessori preschool irvine

    • Many smart, dedicated students who graduate with a B.S. or B.A. in a subject field—math, science, literature, history—would make great teachers. They often are passionate about their fields of study; they may have discovered a knack for explaining and mentoring while in college; they have a deep grasp of the subject that they could readily pass on to students. Yet, leaving aside a few alternative certification programs in high-need areas, these outstanding young people are often excluded from teaching by narrow certification requirements that impose onerous additional coursework of questionable merit.
    • A credential, by itself, isn’t necessarily a good indicator of whether someone will make a good teacher. Teacher candidates vary widely in their skills, and admission standards of teacher colleges typically are not as rigorous as those of the top schools offering subject-matter degrees. Certification programs vary significantly in their content—some are more rigorous on subject matter knowledge, for example, while others require students to spend much of their time on courses on teaching processes (which may or many not be of much practical use in the classroom.)
  • Limited ongoing development. In many public school systems, first year teachers immediately teach a full class load. They rarely have extra time to develop or even adapt curriculum; they rarely receive the benefit of regular coaching, or even have the opportunity to observe in a master teacher’s class. Once in, the public school approach seems to be “sink or swim” (beyond whatever support the teacher gets as part of completing her teacher credentialing program).
  • Fast and largely irreversible tenure, which means ineffectual teachers stay on, even when everybody knows they aren’t doing a god job. Most junior teachers get tenure after teaching a mere three or four years, and the standards for tenure are lax. An L.A. Times article reported that 98% of teacher candidates in LA received tenure, after a process so lax that it requires just one unannounced classroom visit by school administrators! Admits the districts superintendent: “Too many ineffective teachers are falling into tenured positions — the equivalent of jobs for life.” Terminating a poorly performing teacher is nearly impossible. Instead, when parents successfully protest about a teacher, the teacher gets moved on to another school or another district, in a process so common it has a name: the “Dance of the Lemons.” 

To summarize:

  • Good teachers are important – critically so!
  • Public schools don’t consistently hire the best and brightest young people as teachers. They don’t train new teachers well. They put teachers on tenure, making it practically impossible to fire teachers who aren’t performing well.

At LePort, we understand how important great teachers are. That’s why our hiring, training and development practices are diametrically opposed to those of public schools:

  • Hiring based on relevant skills and personality traits, not merely credentials. At LePort, we want to hire the most capable and motivated teachers possible. That’s why we hire based on three standards:
    • Deep skills in and passion for the subject the teacher specializes in. In our 4th – 8th grade program, students have different teachers for different subjects: a homeroom teacher, who usually covers literature and language arts, as well as specialist teachers in math, science and history. We believe that these teachers first and foremost must be knowledgeable about their subjects, and passionate about what they teach. This seems obvious—how can a literature teacher instill a passion for books, if he doesn’t love reading—but it’s unfortunately often ignored in other school settings!
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    • A love of and skill in working with children. Being a great scientist isn’t enough to teach science at LePort: we understand that a teacher must love sharing his knowledge with students, and must be able to relate well to children, in order to be effective.
    • Joyous, growth-minded character. We want our students to be inspired by their teachers: we expect teachers to model the type of growth-mindset and joyful living we want our students to achieve. What better way to kill a child’s aspirations than to put a cynical teacher in front of him?!

    While some of our teachers hold teaching credentials, we also hire strong candidates who hold Bachelor’s or advanced degrees in the subject matters they want to teach, and in some cases even hire individuals with little formal training in their area but a clear lifelong passion and knowledge in a given area. We regularly review hundreds of resumes and conduct dozens of interviews, to find the best possible teacher candidates.

  • An intensive, structured on-boarding and ongoing development program. Teaching is a skill that can only grow with practice, practice, practice. New teachers at LePort have many opportunities to develop their skills under the guidance of our academic staff:
    • An onboarding training program. When we hire multiple teachers to start for a new school year, we put on a multi-week, intensive training program. Teachers get immersed in our unique curriculum. They practice teaching lessons the LePort way. They observe each other and give and receive feedback. They learn about our systems, from report cards to organization, from classroom management to parent communications. Most of all, they form a learning community – the basis of growing together throughout the year.
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    • Ongoing observation and guidance. All teachers, but especially new teachers, receive regular feedback from our academic supervisory staff (the Head of School, the Assistant Head of School, and our Executive Director for the Elementary and Junior High program). We regularly observe teachers in class, and give them feedback on how to improve. We also expect teachers to observe each other’s classes and to give each other detailed feedback. (Curious about this feedback? Click here to read a sample of the feedback one of our newer teachers received after such an observation.)
    • Reduced course loads. While many elementary school teachers in other settings teach all day long, with rarely a break, at LePort, even home room teachers have several hours off during the school day, while the subject matter teachers take over the class. This provides time for them to prepare lessons, observe other classes, and think through any classroom or playground issues so that each student has an optimal learning experience. It also enables them to participate in weekly or bi-weekly departmental meetings to discuss curriculum and pedagogy issues specific to their subject area. Every month during minimum days, teachers also have an afternoon to participate in development workshops and further strengthen their teaching skills by collaborating with each other.
  • A willingness to part with teachers who do not live up to our standards. Letting a teacher go is extremely hard: students and parents connect with teachers, even with some that are not top performers. And bringing a new teacher on board to replace one we let go means a lot of effort and cost. Yet because we know how crucial great teachers are, and because even the best hiring and training system cannot guarantee that every single teacher we bring in is a great fit with our program, we find that we on occasion need to replace a teacher who cannot meet our standards, despite much coaching. Because we are a private school and not bound by onerous union contracts, we are actually able to replace under-performing staff members in a timely fashion.

If you are seriously considering LePort for your child, we invite you to do your research about our teachers. Scroll down and read what some of our parents say about our teachers. Review bios of our teachers (Huntington Pier campus & Irvine Spectrum campus). Watch some videos of our teachers in action. Call us to schedule an observation: we invite you to come in, spend an hour or a half-day in our schools, so you can judge our teachers for yourself.


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Elementary & Junior High: Who We Are
Parent Testimonials


LePort teachers love what they do, and care a lot. A great education boils down to the teachers. At LePort, every single teacher is very passionate about his subject, has deep knowledge, and cares personally about his students. There’s a personal relationship that grows between a teacher and each child. The teachers become the student’s role models and mentors. Our son wanted to please his teachers, because he respected and admired them—and that made him strive harder. When his teachers gave him their constructive feedback, it thus motivated him, and allowed him to go back and do even better. I really believe LePort teachers care—they take a vested interest in each student, and there is a strong personal relationship that goes on. You can see that—watching my son leave the school, and how sad he is to have to go, and to not be able to see his teachers every day any more. The heart of LePort is the teachers, individually and as a group. They are all a little different, they have put together a good mix of nice people with their own styles and personalities. Every single teacher at LePort actively engages the children in learning, and connects with them socially.

Kevin G.

The teachers at LePort inspire their students. They are all young and engaging – not teachers that have been doing it for 20 years, and are just going through the motions. Every one of them is sincerely concerned about a student’s personal growth. As they do the academics, they constantly talk about how they relate to the rest of life. All the teachers at LePort are the same way – they have a passion for their work, and it shows with the kids.

Lina S.

LePort’s teachers are consistently amazing. At other schools, you’d have a teacher here and there who would be great; their reputation is well known among parents and students—so you’d hope that your son/daughter was in their class at some point. The astonishing thing about LePort is that every single one of their teachers is excellent. The consistency is incredible: you never have to worry about which teacher your son/daughter will have the following year. To have an entire school of outstanding teachers speaks to their recruiting standards, their processes and how they train teachers as they come into the school. This is even more amazing given that all the LePort teachers are incredibly young!

Maritza A.

All the LePort teachers are excellent. I don’t think there was a bad teacher at LePort at all. Every one of them is an incredible professional, they are into their subjects, they are excited about teaching and learning. And that attitude transferred to the students.

Noreen M.

LePort teachers have what I like to call, “youthful enthusiasm”. This is probably due, in large part, to their clear philosophy that no teacher can teach a subject that they are not personally passionate about. If you think about that, it makes so much sense: if teachers love what they are teaching, that passion is present in every day classroom activity and that enthusiasm filters down to the students. It is apparent that the teachers feel supported. The equation is quite simple really: Happy teachers’ = happy students= happy parents.

Ruthie T.

I am really excited about the LePort teachers’ passion. My daughter will come home talking about history with such enthusiasm, that I even get excited and ask her questions about her history class! Because the teachers are so passionate, students become passionate—and go into real depth to explore the subjects. They become enthusiastic learners, and always ask to learn more. It’s a major contrast to some of our past experiences, where it appeared at times that the teachers didn’t want to teach the subjects, that they just went through the motions, to get the day done.

Tami W.

The passion and compassion of the teachers is rare—it is something that’s difficult to find. My younger daughter would just talk non-stop about her teachers, about how much she admired them, and how she respected them and enjoyed working with them. The LePort teachers took time to work with each of my girls, to help my older daughter fill in her knowledge gap due to illness, and to inspire my younger daughter to become an eager reader and writer. It also inspired my girls to be able to see a woman as amazing as Lindsay Journo, the head of school, and to dialogue with her every day: their teachers truly became role models – and that’s a hard thing to achieve in middle school.

Tom C.

5 Ways LePort Is Different: Your Choice, In a Nutshell

Since you are reading this blog post, you are probably researching a private school for your child. Maybe your child is in a private school already; or maybe you are just deciding between public school and private school.

This choice may be one of the most important you’ll ever make for your child – and, if you choose private school, one of the biggest investments you’ll make as a parent. Private schools, after all, need to charge tuition for their services, while public schools don’t require much payment from parents (beyond, of course, the taxes you will be paying, whether or not your child attends public school).

Faced with the choice of “free” public schools and the private school alternatives, parents naturally wonder: is it worth paying for private school?

It’s a very personal question, dependent on your family’s financial circumstances and your other values. In many cases, the answer may well be that private school is not worth it: in some cases the difference just doesn’t make enough of a difference. Yes, private schools usually offer nicer facilities, more extra-curricular options, and smaller class sizes. Beyond these factors, however, many private schools aren’t that different from public schools: Often, they follow the same California Standards and use the same text books as public schools; they hire teachers from the same education colleges; they use the same pedagogical approach in the classroom and prepare students for the same standardized test battery. Sure, class sizes are smaller and there’s more accountability—but is that alone really worth all that money if at root private schools offer the same educational product as the public schools?

If we ask a different question, whether LePort Schools in particular is worth the investment, it won’t surprise you that we believe the answer ought to be yes for many, many more parents. The reason is that LePort Schools offers a truly different education. In our view, we offer a wholly different product, not just a better quality of the same thing offered by public schools.

Here are five fundamental differences between an education at LePort and at many other schools, private or public alike:

  1. A deliberate, carefully thought-out focus on your child’s long-term happiness. What is your goal for your child’s education? How does it line up with what the schools you consider aim for? For many schools the answer is either very specific (“getting children into good colleges”, “achieving proficient scores on API tests”), or very broad (“responsible, global citizenship” or “making meaningful contributions to the world community”). At LePort, our core goal is different: we want to enable your child to achieve his own personal happiness. As we put it in our mission statement, “At LePort, we help our students acquire the essential knowledge, thinking skills, and strength of character required to flourish as joyous children today, and as successful adults tomorrow.” This difference in purpose has many implications; stay tuned for an upcoming post just on this topic!
  2. A carefully sequenced, content-rich curriculum. With the dominance of No Child Left Behind and now Race to the Top, public elementary schools focus excessively on a narrow, test-driven, memorize & regurgitate approach to the basics – reading, writing, arithmetic. Many traditional private schools unfortunately follow a similar approach. Others, identifying themselves as progressive schools, commit a different mistake: worried about the negative impact of rote learning, they throw out an adult-guided, structured curriculum altogether, and rely instead on child-led, project-based exploration, which may leave children with significant skill and knowledge gaps. We reject both these approaches. Instead, we have developed a carefully sequenced, academically challenging curriculum that respects the child’s motivational context. Click here to learn more about five key ways in which LePort’s curriculum differs from what your child would encounter in public school. (In case you are concerned about test scores, we do want to assure you that our students test well – see here for recent scores.)
  3. Motivation by interest and joy, not grades and fear. Here’s a question you should ask of each school you visit, private or public: how do you motivate children to learn? For many schools, the answer relies heavily on extrinsic motivators, which reward “good” behavior and results with stickers, praise, class parties, treasure chests or good grades, and punish “bad” behavior with loss of privileges (recess, independent work time), extra work (more homework!), bad grades or a trip to the principal’s office. Sounds familiar?! LePort is different: we understand that in order to really learn, children have to make a choice to want to learn. We think it is our responsibility to make what we teach so interesting that children can’t wait to learn. Curious how that works? Click here to find out!
  4. Passionate professionals as teachers. A teaching credential: at most schools, public and private alike, this piece of paper is a must-have, do-or-die requirement for becoming a teacher. Not so at LePort. While we do have many credentialed teachers, we didn’t hire them because of their credential—and many of our teachers never attended a teacher’s college. Instead of relying on a credential, we have our own exacting hiring standards. Parent feedback, student comments, and our academic results all bear witness that our hiring approach consistently leads to high quality teachers who connect with their students and motivate them beyond the parents’ wildest dreams. Click here to find out how we manage to consistently hire, train and retain excellent educators, or click here to read bios of our staff at the Irvine Spectrum and Huntington Pier campus.   
  5. A focus on individualization, made possible by small class sizes and low ratios.  At LePort, we limit class size to 16 students for grades 4 – 8. (Our Montessori elementary classrooms typically have 24 students, with two teachers, for a 1:12 ratio.) As impressive as a 16-student class size is, our actual teacher-student ratio is closer to 1:10: each class of 16 has a dedicated homeroom teacher, who usually specialized in language arts. In addition, students receive instruction from subject-matter specialist teachers in history, math, geography and science. Our typical 4th – 8th grade program is staffed by 10-12 full-time teachers, for a 1:7 or 1:8 student teacher ratio. Hiring this many highly-qualified staff members isn’t cheap, but we think it is essential to providing a great education: we expect our teachers to get to know and appreciate each child and family; to motivate the student by understanding his temperament, talents and interests; to provide detailed coaching feedback on each assignment (as against just assigning a letter grade and moving on); to help the child learn personal skills (such as organization, time management, goodwill during competitions), in addition to strictly academic content; to create ample time for questions in class and an opportunity for each student to participate. There is just plainly no way this level of personalized instruction is possible in classes with 25 children in 1st grade, or even 35 or more students by middle school (numbers unfortunately now typical of most public schools, and even many private schools).

These are five of the fundamental differences between an education at LePort and at many other private and public schools, and there are more subtle differences that parents pick up on when they become LePort parents.

In some ways, the process of becoming a LePort parent is like purchasing that very special car you’ve been eyeing. Before choosing the car, you probably first decide what type of car you want: sedan or SUV, roadster or truck. Then, your next step is a test drive.

As you research schools for your child, we encourage you to follow the same process: identify first what type of education you want for your child, then search out schools that offer a program in line with your goals. Next, take a “test drive” by spending a few hours observing at a few different schools you are considering.

Here at LePort, we love to have prospective parents come visit and sit in our classes and see our teachers in action. No matter how much we write about our unique approach, the best way of understanding it is to come in and see for yourself. Feel free to come for a guided tour, ask to meet with our Heads of School, or schedule a time to observe classes in action.

While many private schools and most public schools limit parents to pre-scheduled open houses, we think the decision of which school to send your child to is so important that you should have the opportunity to see for yourself. (Isn’t it ironic that car dealerships will do anything to get you in to look at their cars, while many schools are resistant to having parents even come in for an observation – and this is the education of your child, not just a test drive of a sedan!) So, please contact us and set up a tour: click here to find all campuses phone numbers.

Is Montessori Preschool Worth It For Just 2-3 Years?

This week, a parent asked the following question on Berkley Parents Net, a well-read Bay Area forum:

Hi there,

We are looking for preschools for our daughter, and are wondering about parents’ thoughts on whether sending your child to Montessori for just 2-3 years is worth the cost over other play-based daycares. We can’t afford to do a Montessori school for her whole education–do the two years make a difference?

Thanks for your thoughts!

Parent on Berkley Parents Net

It’s a good question, and one that I bet many parents have.

At age six, my daughter just completed a mid-year move-up from the Montessori preschool class to the Montessori elementary class, after about 3 years in the Montessori program at two different Montessori preschools, and my answer is a qualified yes—if two conditions are met.

  1. Even 2-3 years of Montessori preschool can have a huge impact, especially if you can make it possible for your child to stay through the critical third year of Montessori primary (the equivalent of traditional kindergarten.) Montessori preschool, done well, is a 3-year cycle: a child typically starts at age three, and spends a lot of time learning foundational skills during the next two years. He’ll strengthen his arm, wrist and hand muscles doing activities such as pouring water, washing tables, transferring objects with spoons etc. He’ll develop the skill of concentrating, by building the pink tower, matching sound cylinders, and making maps of the world by tracing puzzle pieces and coloring in the maps. He’ll be introduced to the letters of the alphabet with sound games and by tracing sandpaper letters; he’ll begin to build words with the moveable alphabet, and start to learn about math with number rods, spindles, and the bead materials.

    If he attends right from age three, then by age 5 (i.e. before kindergarten), he’ll typically have learned his letter sounds, will be able to write the letters and sound out simple words.  He’ll have learned the basics of numbers to 100 and beyond. He’ll be able to choose activities independently, complete multi-step processes, focus on a task for an hour or more. He’ll have developed strong social skills: taking turns with materials, sitting attentively at group time, asking for help politely without interrupting, and looking out for his peers, helping younger ones at tasks he has already mastered. All of these will get him more than ready for traditional kindergarten: in fact, many Montessori 5-year-olds have already accomplished most of what is expected of children by the end of Kindergarten! Yet it would be a shame to take him out of Montessori at this point…

    California writing standards – Kindergarten

    Because then, in the third year, the magic happens: with the careful preparation of the prior two years, most Montessori children make a HUGE leap in their capabilities during the third year in the program. Suddenly, they go from sounding out individual letters, to reading 2nd or 3rd grade level books. They go from carefully writing a few words, in still tentative cursive, to writing multi-sentence stories, in handwriting that’s better than that of many 2nd or 3rd graders. And they get math, progressing from concrete materials (like the Golden Beads) to arithmetic into the thousands.

    I’ve just seen it with my daughter: In September, at the beginning of her 3rd year in Montessori primary (the time she’d have entered kindergarten), she read longer, but still phonetically controlled books, like Mr. Sanchez and the Kickball Champ. Now, shortly after she turned six, she’s able to read real books, reading aloud entire shorter books like Amelia Bedelia or Poppleton to us,or alternating pages with me as we read chapter books like The Boxcar Children or In Aunt Lucy’s Kitchen. She writes longer stories, and her handwriting has become much more neat and consistent.

    After three years in the Montessori classroom, she’s not only made great strides in academics; she’s learned that work is fun (the story in the picture is a voluntary, Saturday-morning effort, not required homework); she can focus for hours at a time, a crucial prerequisite for all future schooling. She’s independent in fulfilling her own needs, making her own snacks, helping with cooking at home, taking a shower on her own, and getting herself ready for school and bed with nary any assistance from us. And, maybe most importantly, she’s developed a great self-confidence in her ability as a learner, and an eagerness to mentor and help others (including her little brother, at least most of the time.)

    If our daughter were to go to traditional school for first grade next fall (which she won’t), my main concern would be that she’d be bored, and that she wouldn’t be happy at being told to do things in lockstep with a large group of children. She’d probably resent the mindless worksheet work all too common in many other schools, and the need to do busy-work homework with limited choices. But at least she’d have learned to love learning, she’d have mastered reading, writing and the basics of arithmetic, so that no matter what class she’d enter, or what teacher she’d encounter, the basics would be there, for life.

  2. Make sure that you enroll in a real Montessori preschool. Unfortunately, the name Montessori alone doesn’t mean much: it’s not trade-marked, and anybody can call their preschool Montessori, whether or not they abide by the philosophy. Many preschools, in fact, take some pieces of Montessori, but then mix it up with different ideas, so that some preschools are really mostly play-based preschools, with some Montessori ideas and activities thrown in.

    So what is a parent to do? I didn’t know much about Montessori four years ago, so I picked a “Monte-sorta” preschool for our daughter, and later found I needed to move schools to give her a real Montessori preschool experience all the way through her third year of the three-year Montessori cycle. Now, I have a cheat sheet for you: here are four things to look for in assessing whether a school is a true Montessori preschool.

    • Mixed-age preschool classrooms: ages 3-6 in one class. Much of the Montessori preschool magic depends on a family-like community of mixed ages, where one teacher leads a child through three years of development. So ask each school you consider, before you even tour: do you have mixed-age classes, or do you separate out the kindergarten aged children? Many schools bow to convention and have narrower age ranges (2-3, 3-4, Pre-K, K): those are not authentic Montessori programs.
    • A three-hour, child-led “work period.” Freedom of choice and time for child-led, uninterrupted exploration of the Montessori materials is indispensible for your child to have the full benefit of Montessori. Good schools offer 2 ½ to 3 hours of “work time” in the morning, and 2 hours in the afternoon—time that’s not interrupted by any mandatory group activities, such as circle, snack, or teacher-led arts & crafts. Many so-called Montessori schools instead have at most 90 minutes of work time, and then lots of play-based type group activities.
    • AMI or another year-long, in person Montessori training. Being a Montessori teacher is a challenging calling: the teacher must master hundreds of activities, each of which have special ways of presenting them, all of which need to be taught in a certain order, and only when a child is ready for them. That’s why the best training programs, such as that offered by the Association Montessori Internationale (AMI), take a full year of full-time, on-site training under the guidance of master instructors—and why the best Montessori schools then pair up new teachers with a more senior, Master teacher, for at least 6-9 months, to learn the craft. Be wary of teachers who only have a “quickie” training, have learned their craft via a distance, internet learning course, or who are only trained “in house.” While some of these may be wonderful teachers, you can’t assume that; you’ll want to spend a lot of time observing in their class, or ideally have a knowledgeable Montessorian observe in the class to assess whether the teacher able to implement an authentic Montessori preschool program.

    • Teaching cursive handwriting. Most Montessori preschools, even some excellent ones, have bowed to the unfortunate standard of teaching print for handwriting first, then re-training children in 2nd or 3rd grade to write cursive. If you see a preschool that teaches cursive from the start, as intended by Dr. Montessori because it is consistent with a child’s motor development needs, this is a good indication that the school is taking Montessori seriously, and is willing to do what’s right, even if it’s not the easy path. But don’t take the lack of cursive as a death blow: while the first three criteria are must-have items for great Montessori preschools, this last one is just an indicator, and I wouldn’t throw out an otherwise good preschool if it taught print.

The Fundamental Choice

It is the child who makes the man, and no man exists who was not made by the child he once was. Dr. Maria Montessori

Last May, I had the opportunity to observe a kindergarten and first grade class at the local elementary school my then 5-year-old daughter would have attended in fall, if we went the public school route.

The school I observed is about as good as it gets in public education. It’s a “Blue Ribbon”, “California Distinguished” school, with standardized test scores in the top 5% of the state. It has families all over the city vying for spots. The principal, whom I had the pleasure to talk to at length, is a kind man and a good listener; he struck me as the type of educator deeply dedicated to providing the students in his charge with a quality education.

private-school

Generally, public schools are reluctant to allow observations by prospective parents. After I shared that my daughter attended Montessori school, and that I was concerned how she would transition to the public school environment, the principal made an exception to his usual policy and invited me to observe some of his best classes.

I saw a lot in the time I spent in each of two classrooms. The kindergarten students were working on individual letter sounds q, v, and z. The 1st graders were writing 3-4 sentence paragraphs and working with numbers up to 100. The contrast with a Montessori classroom was dramatic. Kindergarten-aged children in a Montessori environment are reading real books and writing multi-sentence stories in cursive, and elementary 1st year students are writing page-long stories, reading chapter books and doing arithmetic into the thousands.

But while the contrast was dramatic, it wasn’t surprising to me. I went in expecting this difference in academic progress. What really took me by surprise was just how deep the difference between the programs went. The traditional classrooms I observed were, in a thousand ways large and small, training students to conform passively to adult rules and expectations—a completely opposite behavioral mindset than the active-minded independence we encourage in Montessori preschool and elementary programs.

Let me share just two small observations among many, one from each class.

First grade: Teachers as guides or as servants? Children as independent actors, or passive observers?

In the first grade class, the children were studying how seeds grow into plants. Each child was asked to observe how a few lima beans and sunflower seeds germinated, and to record their observations in a science journal—a project that you might well find in a Montessori lower elementary classroom.

But here is how the project was implemented in this classroom: the teacher walked around the tables in the room, stopping by each child. She tore off a paper towel, put it on a plate, and sprayed it with water. She then had the child put the lima beans and seeds on the paper towel. After that, the teacher folded the towel, and inserted it into a zip lock bag, upon which the child had written his or her name. Over the entire 15 minutes I observed, the teacher was occupied making these kits for the children, while children were apparently supposed to be working independently on other tasks, but in fact spent much time chatting and mingling without a clear purpose, as the minutes ticked by. The teacher completed the kits of approximately 6 out of the 30 students in the room, suggesting that she was going to be occupied by kit making for well over an hour that afternoon.

private school

As someone familiar with Montessori rooms, I could not believe that the children had such a passive role! This was a class of 6 ½ to 7 ½-year olds, fully capable (one hopes!) of tearing off paper towels, of wetting them by using a sprayer, of counting out beans and seeds and placing them on a towel, and so on. These children could have and should have made these science kits by themselves! Instead, the teacher did it for them. The teacher was in charge, the students, outside observers of their own education.

I couldn’t help but contrast this with how the same experiment would happen in a Montessori classroom. The teacher might take 10 minutes in the morning, collect a group of students ready for this experiment, and give them a brief introduction, describing the purpose of the work and demonstrating how to assemble the experiment. She would then set up a table with all the materials, and invite the children to make their own kit. The children would autonomously make their own bags, taking turns at the table. They would have ownership of their work, and reinforce many practical skills in the process. They would help each other if one got stuck, with the teacher monitoring from afar to ensure that the peer interaction was to mutual benefit. The teacher would gain over an hour to dedicate to her actual job, helping students learn, rather than spending her time in essentially the role of an unwanted nanny or servant, doing things to children perfectly capable, and almost certainly eager, to do them for themselves.

Kindergarten: Respect for intellectual independence, or conformity and obedience?

In the kindergarten class, I arrived during a silent work period. I was pleasantly surprised at first: after all, independent, engaging, self-initiated work is the core means to develop concentration skills in children!

But when I observed more carefully, here’s what I saw: these 6-year-old children were totally silent. Not one word was spoken. They were glued to their desks, upon which were found things like play dough, simple coloring pages and other very basic activities typically undertaken by 3- or 4-year-olds in a Montessori class. Some children were engaged, but many more seemed bored and disengaged.

And then the work period ended. The teacher turned on the light, and started counting, loudly: “Five, four, three, two, one. All eyes on me!” Without giving children time to process her expectations, she immediately started directing her students: “Sara, put that down. Ian, stop. Look at me, now. Come on class, remember our agreement: when I count, you stop working. Let’s try that again. Put your fingers on your noses, all eyes on me!”

I stood, stunned, as I saw these twenty-odd six-year-olds touch their noses, line up, and stare at the teacher. I cringed as they were ordered to clean up, pronto (“you have three minutes to clean up, then please find your spot on the carpet” and “Peter, you are late, pick up your pace.”)

Compare this scene with the work periods I observe regularly in Montessori classrooms. There, children have 2-3 hours of uninterrupted work time, twice a day. During this time, the classroom is calm, but not eerily silent, as children are free to move about, talk in appropriate volumes as they work with friends, and select from a wide range of stimulating activities much more engaging than play dough or coloring pages.

private school

In such a Montessori room, here’s how the work period might end: the Montessori teacher would ring a small bell, and speak gently in a quiet voice, “Children, I invite you to finish up your work and put it away if you are interested in coming together in circle.” After this request, children are free to complete their activity, and to put it away on their terms. A child immersed in an advanced task might continue with it, even as the other children join the circle and the teacher starts reading a book or singing a song. Another child might leave his work out, with his name badge on it, so he can continue and finish it in the next work period.
Consider the difference. In the public school class I visited, the implicit theme is obedience to adult rules. In practice, students learn to conform habitually and unthinkingly to cues and prompts and commands. In a Montessori class, in contrast, the theme is respect for each individual, and the result is that a child develops the ability to responsibly take care of his own work, learning how to act freely while also considering the needs of others.

I cannot be sure how representative my observations are of public schools in general. As a parent, if you’re considering public school, you should definitely make the time to observe the school and classroom your child would be joining. What I know is that this was a highly-rated school, and the two classrooms I observed were chosen by the principal as examples of what a good public school education can look like.

If what I saw is indeed indicative of a pervasive characteristic of public education (and sadly, I suspect it is), then the implication is that in choosing between a public school and an authentic Montessori school, you are making a choice that goes far deeper than just the difference in academics. You are choosing the type of implicit values that will be emphasized to your child: respect vs. obedience, creativity vs. conformity, active-mindedness vs. passivity.

As Dr. Montessori put it, it is the child who makes the man. I’d encourage you, in judging your child’s future classroom, to ask yourself what kind of man or woman you want your son or daughter to become.


This blog post was originally featured on the Maria Montessori website.

How to lay the foundations of literacy in preschool

private montessori school

What differentiates a child that learns to read joyfully, becomes a voracious reader and succeeds academically, from one that struggles to read at grade level, and falls behind?

Decades of research provide a clear answer: for a child to become a reader, he needs three things (1) instruction in phonics, (2) a systematic way of building a store of "background knowledge" to help him make sense of what he reads, and (3) an early start to reading, definitely during his first six years before he enters Kindergarten.

Our preschool program at LePort provides your preschooler with all of these. We start pre-reading skills in our toddler program, and throughout make learning to read enjoyable for your child, so he will become a capable, eager reader by the time he graduates from the 3rd year in preschool/primary (the equivalent of traditional Kindergarten.)

private montessori school

What makes the Montessori approach to learning to read and write so effective? And why and how is it different from the way literacy is approached in other preschools and elementary schools? Here are five key highlights of what we do at LePort:

  1. Teach "phonemic awareness" early and playfully. Research tells us that one fundamental difference between children who learn to read easily and those who don’t is that "the former can discern individual words in sentences and sounds within those words. … The ability to discern sound seems to reflect some basic difference in neurological wiring." The good news is that these critical phonemic awareness skills can be taught. At LePort, toddlers play "sound games", where the teacher guides them to isolate the "d" sound at the beginning of "dog." Slightly older preschool students pick out an object from a tray based on its beginning sound. And preschool children as young as 3 or 3 ½ year old learn to associate these sounds with the corresponding letters, as they say the sounds while they look at and trace "Sandpaper Letters." (This sound-focused approach is in sharp contrast to most preschool programs, which teach letter names, a la the ABC song, which do not help children learn to read!)
  2. Break skills down into a careful sequence of steps. A key success factor for teaching preschool children is to make the process of learning rewarding. In our preschool classrooms, children have many opportunities to learn component skills of writing and reading through activities they enjoy. They learn to control a pencil as they create artwork by coloring in geometric shapes with the "Metal Insets." They sit down on the floor and "build words" using the "Moveable Alphabet." They take a box of small objects, and engage in independent reading, by decoding little labels and placing them next to a fan, a cup or a dog as they work with the "Phonetic Objects Box." No worksheets here, no boring drills, no rewards or punishments; just joyous, child-chosen, purposeful learning!
  3. Teach writing first, then watch for the "explosion into reading." Writing is putting symbols together to form words, and it is a more natural process than reading, more akin to speaking, where we put sounds together to make words. That’s why, in Montessori preschool, students build words with small moveable letters, before they read. Then, usually between age 4 and 5, comes a moment of beauty, when the child discovers he can make sense of the black scribbles on paper: he "explodes into reading", in a joyful, natural discovery of his own capabilities.
  4. Immerse children in a language-rich environment. Study after study show that a strong vocabulary at age 3 or 4 is a predictor of reading success later on: "The three-year-old test subjects who had the highest rates of vocabulary growth turned into third graders with the strongest language skills and highest reading comprehension." That’s why language development is everywhere in our classrooms: teachers read aloud to students daily, and students learn vocabulary in carefully structured "three period lessons" all over the classrooms, from colors to shapes, from naming dimensions, to learning the names of animals for toddlers, and the names for the parts of animals later on.
  5. Guide children carefully from decoding to reading for meaning. English is a complex language: the 26 letters of the alphabet are used to represent 44 different sounds, which can be spelled with over 70 phonograms, or multi-letter combinations, such as "ck" or "oo" or "igh." Because of this complexity, children need explicit instruction in deciphering the "advanced code", as well as appealing, yet deliberately controlled reading materials that allow them to enjoy reading as they gain practice. That’s why our Montessori program offers many ways of practicing reading "phonogram words". It’s also why we have recently invested tens of thousands of dollars in designing and implementing an outstanding reading program called Books to Remember to all of our primary classrooms, going much beyond what even other high-quality Montessori programs offer.

Does it work? Here’s what one LePort preschool parent says:

Every day at preschool is a learning process: my children are never bored. Early on, my daughter came home all excited about the sandpaper letters – and I didn’t even know what they were. But now, with the help of the sandpaper letters, my daughter writes in beautiful cursive: she writes all the birthday and thank you cards for the family, and she’s just 6 years old!

This summer, before my daughter started in 1st grade, she was reading the Wizard of Oz by herself. She would stumble over some of the big words, of course – but she read the whole book! And it’s not just that she reads, and how advanced she reads: it’s the way she reads, her clear pronunciation, the expressiveness of her reading: it’s almost perfect. And I think a lot of it is due to the Montessori Method: they learn the letter sounds, not the letter names. At first, I was concerned that she didn’t know that "A" is called "Aye"- but when they start reading, it really makes sense to just do the phonetic sounds. It’s hard to believe: my daughter is reading real books, fluently and with expression – and she just turned 6 in April!

Preschool Parent

The most exciting part of this, of course, is that it is also possible for your child.

What Sets LePort Montessori Apart From Other Montessori Schools?

montessori preschool daycare palos verdes

If you are reading this, you may be looking for a preschool–and may be curious about whether Montessori is a preschool education that makes sense for your family.

As you research Montessori, it is important to know that Montessori isn’t a trademarked term, nor a franchised system, not even a national brand you can trust. Unfortunately, it’s not true that every Montessori preschool delivers on the promise that Montessori offers. As education-journalist Peg Tyre correctly states:

A school can call itself a Montessori program, and many do, without knowing a single thing about the educational philosophy developed by Dr. Maria Montessori.

Peg Tyre

In many major metropolitan areas (think Orange County, LA, or San Diego), you have many Montessori preschools to choose from. (The last time we counted, there were over two dozen Montessori preschools in our home market of Orange County alone, and we probably missed some!) If you’ve done your research and agree that the Montessori method is right for your child, the next step is choosing one of those preschools.

So what do you look for when you tour different Montessori preschools? What differentiates an authentic preschool program that takes the methodology seriously, from one that may be more interested in utilizing the Montessori name as a means of attracting parents, but does not really strive to apply the method in the classroom and preschool community?

Or, put from our perspective, why do we think you should choose one of LePort’s Montessori preschools?

A few years ago, I was in your shoes: when my daughter was about 2 years old, I toured a handful of Montessori preschools in Oakland, CA, where I lived at the time, and enrolled her in what I thought was a good program, conveniently located near our home. Unfortunately, as I educated myself about Montessori and joined the LePort leadership team, I discovered that while the school was a nice, friendly preschool, they were not serious about applying Maria Montessori’s educational principles. (They also fell woefully short on customer service to me, a working parent.) After more research, and much soul-searching, we moved her to another, better Montessori preschool, where my daughter and son experienced a good bilingual Montessori education. (We later moved to Orange County, where both of my children now attend our LePort Montessori elementary school program.)

Now, when friends ask me for a cheat-sheet for touring Montessori preschools, here’s what I tell them to look for:

montessori preschool daycare palos verdes

    1. Head teachers who have completed a year-long, intensive Montessori training program, preferably from an AMI training center. At LePort Montessori, our preschool head teachers typically have a Bachelor’s degree, and a credential from AMI, the Association Montessori Internationale, which is the original training organization founded over 60 years ago by Dr. Maria Montessori. While there are other good training programs we occasionally hire from (most are MACTE accredited), we have found that AMI consistently selects highly-motivated and skilled candidates, and provides them with the most rigorous training possible. Be aware that some schools conduct quick “in-house-trainings”, sometimes lasting only a few weeks, and that some teachers at other schools have learned their skills from books or online-only self-study curricula. Also ask about teacher experience and training: ideally, teachers new to Montessori have experienced mentors to work with and learn from, before taking over their own classrooms!
    2. montessori preschool daycare palos verdesMixed-age preschool classrooms, which combine 3- to 6-year-olds into a family-like community. Many so-called Montessori preschools have succumbed to the traditional preschool approach of splitting children into the “Twos”, “Threes” and so on, or are separating out Kindergarten-aged children into separate groups. A mixed age group is essential to a real Montessori preschool program: it allows children to learn at their own pace, to learn from older peers and become mentors in turn, and to build a strong bond with a teacher, who gets to know a child closely over the three years she’s in her preschool class, and can guide her as an individual. The final year–the Kindergarten year that the child starts when he has turned five–is a critical, cashing-in year, and allowing children to complete the full three-year-cycle in one classroom community is critical to reap the tremendous benefits from Kindergarten in Montessori. 
    3. Extended, uninterrupted, child-led work periods, preferably 2-3 hours in length, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. Montessori is about enabling the child to follow his own interests, to learn at his own pace and on his own schedule. A good Montessori classroom offers him plenty of space and time to explore what interests him, in contrast to the adult-led, group-focused programs common in typical preschools.
    4. A high-quality, clean, bright, peaceful preschool classroom environment, equipped with a full range of Montessori materials.montessori preschool daycare palos verdesIt should go without saying that a child’s preschool environment should be clean, bright and beautiful, but unfortunately, we’ve seen a lot of clutter and messiness at some preschools we’ve visited. Equipping a school with a full set of Montessori materials is not cheap (we budget about $20,000 for materials for each preschool room, and regularly invest in improving our programs, such as buying thousands of dollars in new books for our phonetic reading program!), but it is essential to ensuring the children get the most out of their Montessori preschool experience.
    5. A mature school organization, with well-honed hiring and teacher-training programs, and a strong leadership team. Finding great teachers is a learned skill, as is training them. Our schools have many head-teachers who have been with us for years. When we hire new teachers, we typically give them the opportunity to co-teach with an expert for several months to a year or two, so they can give your child the best instruction when they take over his classroom. Several part-time and full-time Montessori experts at all levels–from infants to middle school–and a full-time Head of School at each school, help us ensure that every classroom consistently delivers the highest quality experience for our students. Plus, they enable us to put on a lot of Parent Information Events and social get-togethers, which help you to be a part of making your child’s education the best it can be, and finding a community of like-minded parents, thus creating your own chosen village for raising your child.

montessori preschool daycare palos verdes

  1. A professional administration that understands how important convenience and customer service are to you as a busy parent. While your primary concern should rightly be your child’s experience, a good preschool also looks out for you as a parent. Nothing is more annoying than holiday schedules that leave you scrambling to find alternate child care, or not knowing what your child does at preschool day-to-day, or not being able to reach your teacher or the preschool staff when you have an urgent question. We take pride in running LePort to high standards in customer service, and always welcome parent feedback that helps us improve.

We hope that you are making progress in your preschool research, and we’d be thrilled if after careful consideration, you chose LePort Montessori as the preschool for your child.