Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Did anyone not have success with Montessori?

Thanks for this thread. It's very helpful. I'm putting this here because I need to vent.

I really loved the primary classes for both of my kids. They were able to work at their own speed and flew through math and geography and science. By the end of primary, both were doing math, geography and science at the 4th grade level. I'm less impressed with the reading program. DS1 taught himself to read before we started Montessori, so that hasn't been an issue. DS2 avoids reading and they don't push him at all. DS2 also treated his first three years of primary as a big party. I'm okay with that, (it's his personality), but he wasn't doing a lot of work. At the end of DS2's kindergarten year, he is reading at a kindergarten level. I think he could probably do more; he just doesn't want to and they don't push it. I'm not sorry that I sent both my kids to Montessori for preschool and kindergarten. The math, science and geography was worth it.

Our elementary experience has been mixed. DS1 is finishing Lower Elementary this year. He has been in that classroom for three years. It has 15 kids, a teacher and an assistant. He had a rough year during year 1, mostly due to behavior issues and a speech/language disorder. He had a good year in year 2, because we diagnosed his 2E issues and got him into speech/language therapy.

He has had a terrible year in year 3, mostly because of boredom. He is through most of the materials that they are making available to him in 3rd year. (He has literally read every book available in the reading boxes.) They aren't making more material available to him. I finally started broke down and started working with him at home to design projects and sent books and materials to school with him to work on. He refuses to do many group lessons because he is bored with the material. He does a lot of creative writing, but his teacher insists that he isn't working when he is doing this, and will tell me that he isn't working when he spent two hours writing a story. His teacher complains that he talks about video games and super-heroes "all of the time." Yes -- he's writing stories about them and writing and designing video games. His focus on creative work this year has really been driving the teacher crazy. She doesn't see it as valid work. (I do. I'd love to have a kid who grew up to write and design video games as a career.) He does do other work. He's read a ton of American history this year and many biographies. She gets annoyed because he reads multiple biographies on the same person. (I think he read 5 or 6 long-ish middle school age books on Martin Luther King and other people involved in the Civil Rights movement this year,and then he read several on Ghandi because MLK was inspired by Ghandi.) He does lots of math, but prefers worksheets and math books to working with manipulatives.

It's been a frustrating year for me because of the constant complaints that he isn't doing work.I didn't know it was possible to get outside of the box at a Montessori school, but he's outside of the box. He is doing work at school. He just isn't doing what his teacher wants him to do.

We're not going back next year. I'm not unhappy with his academic work. His Iowa Basic scores were very good, with high marks in everything. He knows what he needs to know at this grade level, and knows a lot of other stuff besides. I am very unhappy with the constant tension and complaining over what he is or isn't doing. They're unhappy with his refusal to toe the line. He gets yelled at a lot. He makes his teacher miserable, she makes him miserable, and they both make me miserable.