Montessori education begins with a profound respect for children as individuals. It sees each child as a unique being with his or her own strengths and weaknesses, interests, passions, desires, personality, and purpose. Through an individualized educational experience, children develop at their own pace, moving ahead when they have demonstrated mastery of concepts and information. The three-year spiraling curriculum integrates areas of study and introduces skills repeatedly, increasing levels of complexity and abstraction as students master skills and internalize content. The Montessori classroom strives to foster the individual child while at the same time placing great emphasis on community, collaboration, peacefulness, and helping children to see their distinctive role in the world around them. Along with providing children with an unmatched academic experience, the Montessori classroom focuses on social and emotional growth through a curriculum which focuses on developing character and a strong sense of independence, kindness, individual purpose, and positive self-esteem.
Children who have had the benefit of a Montessori education are leaders; they are confident, inquisitive, creative, responsible, and motivated with a unique internal sense of purpose. Maria Montessori envisioned a learning environment which was an “education for life”, one which addresses the needs of the complete child ~ academic, emotional, and social ~ and which assists each child in fulfilling his or her own individual human potential.
“And so we discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. It is not acquired by listening to words, but in virtue of experiences in which the child acts on his environment.” – Dr. Maria Montessori