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When I first heard of the Montessori School while living in Wyoming, I was absolutely fascinated with the idea behind it.  Twenty years later, I am still fascinated at the idea of an educational environment which offers students the ability to reach their highest potential in a multitude of ways – spiritual, intellectual, emotional and physical.

But what is even more exciting is the fact that each student is able to be fostered as a member of a world community and of the Cosmos, a principle that was totally unique in its early developing days. The Montessori Method of not only educating children but raising them as human-beings require the ability for the child to see who they are inside, a unique method in a world where children kill children, children kill adults, or adults kill children – and everything else gets caught in the middle.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MONTESSORI SCHOOL

The Montessori Method is a scientific school principal which has been not only tested but has always been considered extremely practical by its originator -  Dr. Maria Montessori – a female physician who was born in the town of Chiaravalle in Italy on August 31, 1870.

"Whoever touches the life of the child touches the most sensitive point of the whole, which has roots in the most distant past and climbs toward the infinite future." ~ Dr. Maria Montessori

Dr. Montessori was the first Italian female physician who was chosen to represent Italy at two different women's conferences – Berlin in 1896 and London in 1900. But her desire to help children was so strong that she gave up her University chair and medical practice in 1906 to work in San Lorenzo, the district of Rome, with a group of 60 young children of working parents. At this point she founded on January 6, 1907, the "Children's House" – or the first Casa dei Bambini – which would eventually become the first steps of the Montessori Method of education for children.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE MONTESSORI SCHOOL

What we see today in the Montessori School originated through early practices of observing what children do naturally, which included their interest in manipulating materials around them – equipment, methods, exercise – unassisted by any surrounding adults. What this taught Dr. Maria Montessori was that children basically teach themselves. At this point, she developed a lifelong pursuit of educational reform of teaching, psychology, methodology and teacher training upon which she dedicated her entire life in the self-creating process of the child itself.

Dr. Montessori arrived in the United States in 1913, at a time when Alexander Graham Bell and his wife Mabel had developed the Montessori Educational Association at their home in Washington, D.C. with other individual supporters, such as Helen Keller and Thomas Edison. To advance her exposure of the Montessori School, on her second U.S. visit she conducted a teacher training course while also addressing the National Education Association and the International Kindergarten Union conventions. Over the years as she opened Montessori Schools on a global basis, Dr. Maria Montessori was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace prize—1949, 1950 and 1951—dying in Noordwijk, Holland on May 6, 1952.


Address: AMERICAN MONTESSORI SOCIETY
281 Park Avenue South
New York, NY 10010-6102
212-358-1250    F: 212-358-1256
Email: ams@amshq.org