Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Is Montessori the answer to gifted education?

hey all
i also LOVE the idea of montessori, read about it for years, have materials in my home, etc.. However both local montessori schools we tried were failures in different ways, in my opinion,.. some of the things that i concluded were that:
- some of the teachers weren't really that committed to the method, and would rather be teaching elsewhere.
- most of the parents weren't really taht into the method, and didn't understand much about it when they enrolled their kids.

So what ended up happening was that the montessori method was watered down so much due to parents who wanted things they expected out of typical school and teachers who didn't care that much to fight them on it. So we ended up with a lot of anti-montessori stuff going on. Such as making the kids do academics in the morning, and practical life only in the afternoon.. Lots of contingencies like "you can have snack if you do a challenging work". etc etc. Not a lot of "follow the child".

but i do agree in theory it is wonderful and if you can get a committed, strong teacher than it is great (1 out of 4 teachers we had fit that bill)

irene

My son is at a public Montessori school. The teachers there seem really wonderful but since the school is public they have to follow lots of state rules and curriculum requirements that make it not truly Montessori. I've talked to his teacher about it and I think that most of the people that work there aren't too happy about the un-Montessori things they have to do.

I think that at a truly Montessori school my son would do great and he's doing better here so far than he was at his normal school last year. I'm sure it depends on the teachers and the child though.

It is funny that I was just talking to dh if we should send dd4 to a public Montessori school next year. I have my doubt about Montessori even though this method sounds really good. Our public program uses Right Start Math and they also mention Singapore Math as supplement. I just don't see how these 2 curriculums can be part of the Montessori program.

This is very interesting to find out how Montessori program may not be a good fit for gifted kids after all.

With public Montessori schools I would be very careful to do your homework - as the last few posters have put it...the Montessori method ends up getting watered down because they HAVE to meet the requirements set by the state/county education system...so what ends up happening is that the Montessori lessons are kind of an after thought when the "main" public school based lessons are done for the day. Some of the public schools here in Florida in our county are "montessori" and I was really upset to hear that they are calling themselves Montessori but when I went in to tour the room there was the bare bones minimum of Montessori materials on shelves - most didn't have any bead chains/math manipulatives. When I asked how they did the curriculum many stated that they did traditional lessons in the morning and then after lunch the children were allowed to make Montessori lesson choices...one school actually said that they only did Montessori lessons 2 days out of the week while the rest of the week was traditional. Montessori just does NOT fit second with a traditional education...it is completely opposite to what Maria Montessori wanted out of her system. So if you do some research on what a true Montessori program should look like and what you should see in a classic montessori classroom, take your knowledge and then tour the schools to see how they mesh in and then the fun part of also seeing how your gifted child's needs will be met :-)

It depends a lot on the individual Montessori school. They can be very rigid, but not all are. We were lucky enough to find a school that met they child where he was. The head teacher (it was a very small school with only 3 teachers and a max of 23 students) told me after they first month there that he wanted to see how much ds could learn. I was okay with that, as he was a very good teacher and had already built a good relationship with ds. Ds was 2-almost-3 when he started the pre k program and went through pre k, k, and half of 1st grade in 2 years. Then they decided to retire and abandoned us. Now we homeschool, because public school wanted to put ds back in pre k due to his age.

All that was just to emphasize the point that it depends on the school.

Hi everyone-

My experience was very similar to Kriston's post- at least the first part. It didn't work for our girl and she was there for 2 years. I think it was okay until she reached 3.5 and then needed more guidance, support and challenge. Although they have a beautiful model of listening to the child, we missed a lot of what I would call "readiness windows" and without this support our DD starting giving up quickly not to mention all the behavioral issues that emerged then. After all the ignoring stuff, even after testing etc, we did decide to move her. It was really depressing for me because I had been committed to Montessori education since she was 18 months and was deeply invested in the philosophies behind it, but I realized my DD needed to learn in a different way.

Well, so far there hasn't been a resounding support of Montessori education for gifties! : (

That's too bad because in theory it could work so well if students were allowed to move at their own pace and bypass areas that are repetetive and unnecessary.

I guess I can't knock Montessori though; it's a great system in its own right, probably just not a great fit for our little ones.

We homeschool using many montessori methods at home for DD 2.5, but I don't think a montessori school would work well, she does not like th step by step, she usally just grasps it all at once, and if something is easy, she wont complete it more then one time, and usually even that frst time she does it halfway through, then stops because she could master it. But she loves the materials. I think it can be very good for gifted kids, but it can't be as rigid step by step as it is in most true montessori schools. They have a step by step, introduce each material in an order way, DD skipped rght through many things, that in a school they would have not let her.

As others have said, check out the credentials of the Montessori school and the teachers. The regulating agencies are not consistent. There are many "Montessori" schools which are only Montessori on the surface. We did not get into our public Montessori school (lottery) but it was a great fit for many gifted kids - but they were NEVER held back by the curriculum that I am aware of. Also, because the classes are 1-3 and 4-6 grades, there is not pres-school stuff in the building. My understanding of Maria Montessori's philosophy was that children should not be limited by the confines of the grade or the teachers' expectations.

I've heard parents who've had kids in Montessori pre-schools say things like, "that's great for pre-school but wouldn't work in elementary." These are kids who have been in schools that I believe are not truly Montessori in philosophy. There is one Montessori pre-school in town that is excellent and a friend with a daughter who just turned 4 showed me the writing that she had done at school. It was cool to look at because it looked sort of what an 8 year old might write, but then you could hear the four year old "voice" and the spelling was more 4 than 8. This program will let her go as far as she wants to before Kindergarten.

All that said, I think the philosophy and approach of the individual teacher is the key.

I am reading a book called "The Element" and there is a line in there: Great schools are filled with great teachers, but there are a lot of mediocre schools filled with curriculum and assessment. (paraphrase)

A bit of reassurance about the social fit at the private school:

We have had good luck matching DS8 with MG kids who are 1-3 years older than he is. It can be hard to find kids his own age who connect with an HG+ child, but a slightly older MG child is more common and seems a good fit.

So it may not matter if the kids are a couple years older. It might actually be a better fit that way.