• Create companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook
• Invent a job, not just find a job
• Be recruited for their innovation skills, rather than their entertainment, athletic or manual skills?

If yes, then shouldn’t our schools be places where

• Questions are just as important as answers
• Failure is a promising beginning, not a distressing end
• Learning is a labor of love, not just labor.

What schools are like that?

Montessori schools.

Isn’t Montessori for rich kids?

NO! There are over 300 public Montessori schools in the USA that children can attend absolutely free and that number is growing.

The Milwaukee NAACP noted in a July 2011 report:

“Prospects for educational achievement are brightest for Milwaukee Public School students who are enrolled in Montessori Schools.”

In Dallas, East Dallas Community Schools use the Montessori method with these results:

“In a neighborhood where the high school graduation rate is less than 50% (and the majority of families are low-income), 94% of our third-grade alumni have graduated from high school; 88% of those have gone on to college.”

Alief Montessori Community School was recently ranked by the Houston Chronicle 7^th out of 1000 Houston public elementary schools while having one of the lowest per-pupil spending amounts in Houston.

Anne Williams-Isom, the COO of Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone (Canada was prominently featured in the documentary “Waiting for Superman”) states:

“Somehow Maria Montessori understood differential learning long before it became a fancy term. …I agree that the Montessori Method could have many positive implications for the education of children who grow up in economically disadvantaged families and underserved communities…there are also countless benefits to having a calm and peaceful environment [that Montessori provides] – especially for children who live in stressful situations. For those children who may to be growing up in chaotic circumstances, calm and order can actually have a profound and healing effect.”

Superwoman Was Already Here and her name was Dr. Maria Montessori.

But since I was lucky enough to be spared the unfathomable grief and horror of losing someone close and dear to me, today is not the day to tell that story.

Today is for remembering and cherishing the lives of the victims of that awful and tragic day.

And for saluting and honoring the thousands of individuals, uniformed and civilian, well-known and anonymous, who performed extraordinary acts of courage and strength in the face of unspeakable death and destruction.

Two of the most famous sayings of the ancient Jewish sages from two millennia ago are

“Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world.”

“Whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”

When I reflect on that day, I recall these words of wisdom which echo the belief that each human being is of infinite worth and value, created in the image of G-d.

And I think about the Hebrew terms,

Kiddush Hashem, a sanctification of G-d’s name

and

Hilul Hashem, a desecration of G-d’s name.

There have been few days in my life where each of these phenomena were so powerfully present in a single time and space.

Over the years, there have been countless articles, stories, reports, images and videos that movingly capture the events and emotions of September 11, 2001.

For me, however, the item that continues to resonate and remain lodged in my brain is ironically from the satirical newspaper The Onion, which ran an article shortly after that day entitled, God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule. The article concludes,

“Upon completing His outburst, God fell silent, standing quietly at the podium for several moments. Then, witnesses reported, God’s shoulders began to shake, and He wept.”

G-d Bless.

As I watched this amazing video, I thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we could do an animation like this to promote Montessori?”  After a year of periodic, half-hearted and futile searches for a creative partner that could pull this off, I stumbled upon 321 FastDraw via FaceBook. (I was a reluctant, extremely late adopter to FB, signing up only last winter. I believed I did not need or have time for another Internet distraction. I confess that I should have joined the party a lot sooner. For better or worse, not being on FB is like not having a cell phone at this point. But I digress.)

321 FastDraw has been a dream to work with and I am extremely grateful for all the hard work and enthusiasm of Diane, Ricky, Sal, Ken and the rest of the 321 FastDraw team.

When I asked my fellow Montessori caped crusader Trevor Eissler about being a sponsor for my project, he instantly, in classic Montessori style, turned the question back on me and asked if he should do a FastDraw of his own based on his excellent book, Montessori Madness: A Parent to Parent Argument for Montessori Education. I thought this was a great idea and today, tens of thousands of views later, Trevor’s video is circling the globe and has been translated into multiple languages.

Many thanks to Trevor and each of my other terrific sponsors who saw the power of this technique immediately and have been deeply supportive from my initial pitch to the final release of the video.

Please spread the word, spread the love, spread the video…Superwoman Was Already Here!

A google search of the term “Pedro Noguera Montessori” led me to this great blog called “Ground Control Parenting (GCP).” Run by two amazing African-American Moms, Lisa E. Davis and Carol Sutton Lewis, it is a vital forum for “information and resources on what works to spark the love of learning for our boys, keep them engaged in school from nursery through high school and ensure that they excel.  We also want to support and inspire parents, as we all go about the challenging business of guiding our sons through these school years.”

Since I of course believe that Montessori is an amazing way to address these critical issues raised by GCP, I immediately wrote to them and sent them my article, “Superwoman Was Already Here.”

I received a very generous and gracious response from Lisa and Carol and I am honored that they featured my article and some more great info about Montessori recently on their blog.

Many thanks to Lisa and Carol for this recognition. I highly recommend GCP to anyone who wants to obtain a valuable perspective on American education from two great moms.

“Our job is not to prepare our children for the 21st century. Our job is to prepare our children to transform the 21st century.” –Dr. Howard Fuller.

Montessori is a great educational method to give children the skills and mindsets to transform the 21st century.

MASSIVE thanks and shout out to Montessorian Sara Cotner for this quote.  Check out Sara’s writings here.

Remember the name Sara Cotner, it is one you will be hearing again and again and not just here.

Here is a nice article that excerpts the book:

“Whether in art, science, technology, or social activism, when there is failure, we often perceive it as a failure of talent, strategy, planning, financial resources, or even execution. But those are not really the reasons most efforts fail. Most failures are failures of imagination.”

Most Failures Are Failures of Imagination.

For most education reformers, it is a failure of imagination that you need things like tests, homework and grades or cool educational video games in order to get kids to learn.

Montessorians know otherwise, we see it happen every day in thousands of classrooms.

Did you know that the National Football League (league itself not the teams) is treated as a non-profit under the Internal Revenue Code? As Malcolm Gladwell recently noted, “Big genial Roger Goodell, he of the almost $4 billion in television contracts, makes like he’s the United Way.”

I am a HUGE sports fan, I have been suffering from Sportscenter withdrawal for years since I simply don’t have the time, even with TIVO, as the father of three young children to watch it anymore. When I travel for work and have a half hour to unwind in the hotel, I click on ESPN and say, “Boy, I miss sportscenter, it is just fun and funny.

But this NFL thing is beyond the pale. There are, alas, thousands of examples of things we are doing wrong as a nation, but I learned this fact a few weeks ago and said, “Wow, that about says it all to me.”

But someone long ago had the imagination to say “let’s make a rule in the tax code for this.”

A more positive example:

Nancy Brinker started the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer fund with $200 in a shoe box in 1982 and a list of friends. When she started out, journalists were trying to figure out how to write stories about her without using the words “Breast Cancer” because they could not print that term in family newspapers.

Today, of course, macho pro male athletes wear pink on their cleats and wrist bands during NFL and MLB games. See this nice and informative profile of Brinker in Hadassah magazine.

Nancy Brinker imagined a different future for consideration and discussion of breast cancer.

Millions more children can reap the extraordinary benefits of Montessori education. It is just a failure of imagination on the part of me, you, and anyone else that cares about education in this country that less than 5% of American children learn in Montessori schools today.

Let’s put this blog post to bed with one final quote from another book in the “would love to find time to read category” called Rework.

“The real world isn’t a place, it’s an excuse. It’s a justification for not trying. It has nothing to do with you.”

On the CMI blog, Laura recently discussed the vital question , Why Hasn’t the Montessori Movement Made More Progress in the U.S.?

I will be writing more about this in the future, but to add to this important discussion I begin with the sound advice of Woody Allen, “80% of life is showing up.”

As my previous blog post regarding Duke Professor Cathy Davidson demonstrates, the internet has given us an incredibly powerful tool to advance the cause of Montessori. All you need to do is use it. In other words, heed Woody Allen’s advice and show up electronically in the discussion when people are talking about education.

When someone writes an education article about this or that new program or laments the state of education, don’t yell at the screen or the TV or the newspaper, write to the author or reporter or TV figure and tell them a great personal montessori story about how it does not have to be that way and that Montessori is a great and transformative model.

There is so much passion for Montessori that I encounter every day. Change will happen when  thousands of those passionate Montessori voices are writing letters, e-mailing people and posting comments on articles that claim we still don’t have good answers for education.

My 5 year old daughter and I just watched for the third time the movie version of “Horton Hears a Who” and the climactic scene really comes to life on film in a way that only movies can. The thousands of residents of whoville yelling “We Are Here! We Are Here! We are Here!” which finally breaks through to the larger world and helps save them from the cynics who believe that there cannot possibly be life on that little speck.

When Montessorians pull together like the residents of whoville, American education will never be the same.

A new book that came out a few weeks ago that is getting a lot of buzz and press called Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn. The author , Cathy Davidson, is a professor at Duke and I recently commented on this blog post where she tweeted some ideas for education reform, ideas that Montessori has effectively done for decades.

Professor Davidson was kind enough in a private e-mail to note my comment and it appears that she was persuaded by my claims since a few days later in an interview with Salon she noted in reply to a question about changing education, Dr. Davidson replied,

“First I’d get rid of end-of-grade tests. They demotivate learning, in boys especially.  Establish more challenge-based problem-solving kinds of education.  This is hardly revolutionary.  Montessori schools do this.”

Here is my comment to the original blog post:

Cathy,

Hoping to meet you in a few weeks in NYC.  Everything you list has been happening in good Montessori schools for decades.

See my article “Superwoman Was Already Here”.

To your tweets:

1. End standardized EOG tests–they demotivate learning and good teaching

–Montessori only gives these tests to meet state requirements. They spend little time prepping students and kids do fine.

2. Test in challenging way, use tough game mechanics w real-time feedback and new challenges

–Stamp game, snake game, board games, my kids come home each week and talk about a new game they played in their Montessori school.

3. ABCD grading is 19th c factory standard, meat packers: need nuance, subtle, real, honest assessment

–Montessori schools do not give grades.  Periodic progress reports on skills, mastery and areas yet to master. 4th grade and up, student leads parent-teacher conferences.

4. Make learning real, relevant, tied to communities, real experience, accomplishment, worth

–4th graders learned about physics and then went to Six Flags to see how motion, resistance and friction let them enjoy roller coaster and log flume. This is typical in a Montessori school and happens all the time.

5. Omit industrial age “two cultures” binary (stem v art, human, soc). Really? in the Information age?

–Teacher dresses up like Pythogoras, explains why his theorem is needed to build the pyramids.

6. Teach kids to think through, with, about, for–and create–new, interactive digital global communication

–Montessori kids create and upload videos all the time during school.

7. Nourish ability, stop diagnosing, labelling, stygmatizing, medicating disability

–Good Montessori schools often have wide range of kids that in others schools described as special needs. Montessorians have been doing differentiated instruction successfully for decades.

8. Restore arts, music, shop, PE: soulstirring learning that lets kids move, make, sing, dream

–A Montessori student, especially in grades 6-12, can show up any morning of the week and if they want to spend two hours composing a song, writing a play, drawing a painting, they are free to do so. Core of Montessori is self-directed learning. Balance of freedom and structure.

9. stop making college implicit standard for all edu, back to preschool. Many worthy careers don’t need higher ed

–Montessori teaches kids that you come here to learn, grow and thrive, to love learning, not that school is a series of tasks to get you into college.

10. Involve parents, guardians, friends, grandparents as teacher’s aids tosubsidize healthy bfast and lunches

–Montessori schools generally have kitchens and teach kids to cook different meals. My 2nd grader (in a typical Montessori, multi-age 1st-3rd grade class) studied Africa for a year and regularly made foods that they eat in Africa. Nutrition and cultural study, all in one.

My kids are teaching me things I never heard of and I have two ivy league degrees.

As my article and video attest, I believe that the Montessori method is an extraordinary approach to teaching and learning for all kinds of children. Education has been a lifelong fascination for me and I hope through this website and blog to illuminate the Montessori method in ways that are easy and entertaining for parents and inspires them to check out Montessori for their families.

As we all drink from the firehose of information available on the internet, I also hope to comment on various trends and topics of contemporary life, especially in the realm of education, and show how Montessori and Montessori education can inform and be a possible solution to some of the challenges we face today in contemporary society.

Thank you for reading this far. I hope you visit often and I welcome your feedback on any part of this blog and website as we embark on this journey together.