The world of infants and toddlers is a world of unflagging curiosity and discovery. They are compelled to go, with boundless energy, after the skills that they need for the future. When they are allowed to accumulate as rich and as multifaceted a bundle of formative experiences as possible, teachers expand the material that they have to construct…

The author knew she would be picky about where her child started his schooling. After calling over 30 public and private schools within a 50-mile radius of her home, and then visiting more than 15 of them, the author chose Lexington Montessori School (LMS). However, when she tells friends and acquaintances about her son's fantastic school, she…

Montessori's theories, developed more than 100 years ago, certainly resonate with current psychological research on improving education. Autonomy, interest, competence, and relatedness form the foundation for three contemporary efforts to organize the vast literature on motivation into a parsimonious theory. These four elements also comprise…

In this article, the author narrates her experience of meeting a Montessori kid for the first time and shares the characteristics she observed in Montessori students. The author was working as director of academic resources in university housing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and met Jason, a pre-med sophomore who was the resident…

As educators in the public sector confront the challenge of guiding all students toward academic success, policies and practices associated with prevention, early screening, and identification of learning needs have moved to the center of the enterprise of schooling. This article is about the lessons that accompany that challenge, and their…

"The way you make your bed is the way your day will go." The way in which people gather is an extension of the making-the-bed analogy: "The way we gather is the way our school days go." The mindfulness people bring to the little ways they behave with one another sets the tone for the entire organization. When Montessori speaks of allowing the…

In this millennium, educators are faced with a number of issues that Dr. Maria Montessori could not have predicted. Today, students are different from the children Dr. Montessori observed in her "Casa dei Bambini." They are influenced by technology in all its forms. Some suffer from medical problems such as complex food allergies, which wreak…

In this article, the author relates her experience working with World Neighbors, a non-governmental organization (NGO) based in the United States, and spending most of her time working with women's groups in rural Kenya. She contends that her greatest desire is to help those less fortunate and make the world a better place.

This article focuses on a teaching method developed by Maria Montessori, starting with activities in the primary classroom, which are continued through the elementary years. The author discusses a few child-centered techniques in preparing children for their work within a larger community--the whole human family. In the Montessori environment, the…

This article focuses on role of music education. If the society has changed how it values music, it is certainly worthwhile to reevaluate the role music should play in the education and development of a child. Children are not predisposed to be able to understand one style of music over another. Rather they learn traits of the style of their…