Montessori day
My wife and I went to a meeting at Chesterfield Montessori today. Afterwards we toured the school. It was a very nice place, flooded with natural light. It was remarkably quiet too even though no teachers hovered over their charges with ruler in hand. The campus is very nice with a pool, a tennis court, a garden, some nice play equipment, and a lot of green space. All in all it was definitely a place where I'd be comfortable sending my child.
They sent us a packet of information containing the usual brochures. They also included at my request a study that was published comparing the long term effects of Montessori education on a group of 10th graders, some of whom had graduated from Montessori after 6th grade. With controls in place to control for gender, SES, and minority status, the Montessori graduates performed markedly better in science and math and almost statistically better in overall GPA. They didn't show marked improvement in language.
There are a lot of things that I like about sending my children to Montessori schools. Among them is the idea of fluid transitions. When a child shows that they are ready to move up, the teachers will allow them to flow into the next classroom. This is especially appealing to me as I have been grumping about being a year in school behind some of his cousin who is three months older. I accept that no matter how the age range sliced in a traditional educational setting, someone gets left behind. It may be that he would be bigger and more emotionally and intellectually ready when his time would come, but if he has my experience, he may just be bored. Montessori would help that as he could move up a section when he is ready move up, and not just when September rolls around again.
They sent us a packet of information containing the usual brochures. They also included at my request a study that was published comparing the long term effects of Montessori education on a group of 10th graders, some of whom had graduated from Montessori after 6th grade. With controls in place to control for gender, SES, and minority status, the Montessori graduates performed markedly better in science and math and almost statistically better in overall GPA. They didn't show marked improvement in language.
There are a lot of things that I like about sending my children to Montessori schools. Among them is the idea of fluid transitions. When a child shows that they are ready to move up, the teachers will allow them to flow into the next classroom. This is especially appealing to me as I have been grumping about being a year in school behind some of his cousin who is three months older. I accept that no matter how the age range sliced in a traditional educational setting, someone gets left behind. It may be that he would be bigger and more emotionally and intellectually ready when his time would come, but if he has my experience, he may just be bored. Montessori would help that as he could move up a section when he is ready move up, and not just when September rolls around again.
posted by mypetrock at 11:01 PM
1 Comments:
I understand your worries about Oliver being bored! It's actually kind of nice to hear another parent besides us voice that worry--whenever I mention looking at starting Char "early" in kindergarden (i.e. the year she turns 5! in August!), I get a laundry list of reasons to hold kids back (so they won't be the smallest, so they'll be more mature, so they'll "do better")...and after my own experiences (and my husbands), I don't agree that it's best for our kid. Besides, we'd have to hold Charlotte back for 2 or 3 years before she stops looking small compared to the other kids--in our family, small size is just something you have to learn to live with :)
I looked briefly at the Montessori thing too--I think there's another one a little farther east than Chesterfield (somewhere in the Creve Coeur/Laude-ish area), though that Chesterfield one sounds lovely. We're leaning towards a local Catholic school at the moment, though I am somewhat concerned about how they handle potentially bright/gifted students in such a small class structure. Our local public school district has very good (and exceedingly well funded) gifted education programs, but we have to get a year of Kindergarden in elsewhere first if we go that route.
Good luck in your school search!
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