Montessori planning expansion
By DANA DUGAN
Express Staff Writer
The Pioneer Montessori School in Ketchum
plans to expand.
The school’s pre-elementary program has
proved so popular that parents last year began a push to get elementary
grades established there as well.
Many parents of children attending the
small school on Second Avenue asked each other, "What do you think?
Can we get a Montessori Elementary going?" said parent and activist
Jenny Morrissey.
Board members Kelly Feldman, Susan Cooper,
Chris Miller and Claudia Allum had a business plan written up (by Allum’s
husband), which was presented to the rest of the board and approved at a
meeting last month.
The plan calls for the inclusion of first
through third grades by this fall.
There are openings for four new teachers
with training on-site, and the board is currently accepting resumes for
assistants, as well.
New teachers would train five weeks in the
summer, intern for three hours a day during the next school year and work
full time for four weeks the following summer, in order to receive a
certificate to teach the Montessori Method to elementary students.
Multi-age students are put together in
three-year spans in one classroom.
With a current student body of 50 in the
school, between the ages of 3 to 6, the school will need to enlarge
physically. However, there is no more space on the current property, so
the board of directors is seeking a location for the elementary school.
"We can always use a church Sunday
school room in the meantime," Morrissey said.
"The next step is to continue doing
what we’re doing," said Claudia Allum. That includes fundraising
from donors, businesses, and grants.
Ultimately, the plan is for the school to
grow a grade every year until sixth grade.
***
The Montessori Method of schooling is based
upon principles laid out by Dr. Maria Montessori in Italy.
She was born in 1870, and was the first
woman in Italy to receive a medical degree, after which she worked in the
fields of psychiatry, education and anthropology.
Montessori believed that each child is born
with a unique potential rather than as a "blank slate" waiting
to be written upon.
Her method involves the following:
-
Preparing the most natural and
life-supporting environment for the child.
-
Observing the child living freely in
that environment.
-
Continually adapting the environment in
order that the child may fulfill his greatest potential--physically,
mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
Montessori approached the child’s world
scientifically and practically, to bring forth the very best in young
human beings.
She taught teachers to respect a child’s
individual differences, and to emphasize social interaction and the
education of the whole personality rather than the teaching of a specific
body of knowledge.
It’s become a well established style of
teaching that has been imitated over the years in many different schools
and has been the genesis of other newer methods of teaching.
