Early one Sunday morning, I awoke to a flurry of emails, all sending me a New York Times article about the successful educational practice of “looping,” keeping a child in the same classroom for more than one year.
It is easy to imagine how excited Maria Montessori would have been to see the power of computer technology – and how clearly she would have understood how to encourage freedom within limits.
Grandparents and Special Friends Day last Friday was a day of pure joy and deep connection. It was so inspiring to watch hundreds of adults — many of whom had never been on our campus — discover WMS through the children’s eyes.
Maria Montessori has some guidance for us in answering this question. In The Child, Society and the World she writes: “As we observe children, we see the vitality of their spirit, the maximum effort put forth in all they do, the intuition, attention and focus they bring to all life’s events, and the sheer joy they experience in living.”
While Maria Montessori’s method is over 100 years old, the approach she pioneered is a tradition of innovation. The more frequently we connect to the tenets of that method, the more our school reaches today’s children.
In a Montessori classroom, educators maintain a careful and thoughtful balance between individuals and the group as a whole. Rather than privileging one over the other, we create a space where the collective experience is heightened and strengthened by the individual contribution and identity of each child.
As a new Head of School, I want to shout to the rooftops how much I appreciate WMS and what we do for children. Recently, I got to do just that with an article in Litchfield Magazine that focuses on our Middle School, which I believe to be one of the most substantive and exciting programs for young adolescents anywhere.
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