Abstract/Notes: Even in my administrative positions, I remained connected with students, watching them, learning from them, and empowering them to make decisions for the school community. To this end, I have embarked on a listening and information-gathering tour that is connecting me firsthand with our teachers, teacher educators, adult learners, and school and program administrators. Another goal is to strengthen existing partnerships with organizations and groups of relevance, such as the Association Montessori Internationale, AMI/USA, the National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector, NAMTA, the Montessori Leaders Collaborative, and Montessori for Social Justice-and to develop new partnerships.

Language: English

ISSN: 1054-0040

Language: English

ISSN: 1054-0040

Language: English

Abstract/Notes: Montessorians in 2021 are demonstrating and responding to a mounting awareness of social justice as an urgent and elemental component of Cosmic education, Peace education, Grace and Courtesy, and social-emotional learning. Beyond the initial relief (computer systems held fast and the apocalypse failed to materialize), pundits of all description made, and continue to make, grand predictions about a range of global changes in the new age, on subjects varying from climate change to world population growth to the globalization of economies. The Industrial Age, it was generally agreed, was now a dinosaur lumbering toward extinction; the recently hatched term "Information Age" became the new framework for an era in which ideas and data offered more promising j ob prospects than assembly lines and production of consumer goods. To achieve the desired results, discrete strands of curriculum (20 minutes of math, 30 minutes of science, etc.) must now be thoughtfully interconnected; age-specific grade levels must become communities of learners; rote memorization must give way to the use of knowledge to solve real-world problems; competition for grades and prizes must shift to collaboration with classmates; learning must become student-centered and driven by inquiry rather than imposed by textbooks; and the role of the teacher must become that of skilled coach rather than central knower and dispenser of information.

Language: English

ISSN: 1054-0040

Abstract/Notes: Educational institutions change slowly, and sometimes superficially at best. Large public (and sometimes smaller private) systems can be highly resistant to deep change. Schools are notorious for rearranging the desk chairs for a while, then reverting back to something very close to the original design. Even the most well-intentioned of educational innovations can at times do more harm than good. Enter the new millennium and serious discussion among educators, corporate executives, government leaders, and entrepreneurs regarding the skills, knowledge, and expertise today's students will need in order to succeed in their future jobs and, indeed, in life. This complex set of competencies, now termed "21st-century skills," includes not only knowledge in core areas but also technological prowess, environmental literacy, cross-cultural communication skills, and the ability to solve complex problems, think creatively, and work collaboratively. Children, future citizens of the world, will need to think across disciplines, reach across cultures, and embrace new knowledge at every stage of their lives. If traditional schools wish to prepare children for their futures (rather than the lives their parents and grandparents faced), they will need to dramatically retool curricula and pedagogy and reframe priorities. To achieve the desired results, discrete strands of curricula (20 minutes of math, 30 minutes of science, etc.) must now be thoughtfully interconnected; age-specific grade levels must become communities of learners; rote memorization must give way to the use of knowledge to solve real-world problems; competition for grades and prizes must shift to collaboration with classmates; learning must become student-centered and driven by inquiry rather than imposed by textbooks; and the role of the teacher must become that of skilled coach rather than central knower and dispenser of information. The student, or child, becomes central to the process and an active co-constructor of knowledge rather than a passive vessel waiting to be filled. If this description of the new school reform movement is beginning to sound familiar to those who are knowledgeable about Montessori tenets, that is because many of these seemingly radical reforms accurately describe what has been going on in good Montessori classrooms for decades. In this article, the author suggests that this school reform is already a part of the contemporary educational scene in the form of Montessori education.

Language: English

ISSN: 1054-0040

Language: English

ISSN: 1054-0040

Language: English

ISSN: 1054-0040

Language: English

ISSN: 1054-0040

Language: English

ISSN: 1054-0040

Language: English

ISSN: 1054-0040