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Mawrtyr2008's picture

Continuing these thoughts

Submitted by Mawrtyr2008 on Mon, 02/18/2008 - 1:47pm.
Hi,
I'm glad to hear a first person account of a Montessori classroom experience.  I'd just like to provide another observation to add to your own and those of your relative who teaches 4th grade.  My mother is a 6th grade English teacher in a very rule-driven private school.  I think she would agree with your relative that the Montessori kids are able to approach writing tasks in entirely different ways than the other kids, but she also frequently finds that they have difficulty with many of the rules that are expected in the typical classroom.  These rules might include, expected attention duration for a given assignment, following a schedule instead of designing an interest-based personalized schedule, and not collaborating with others on assignments.  I think it's important to note (and I forgot to mention this in my post! your post made me remember it!) that the successes and challenges Montessori kids may encounter when entering a fundamentally different learning environment can expose some problems with the educational system itself.

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