Sustainable Parenting

98. Understanding the Benefits of Montessori Elementary Education

• Flora McCormick, LCPC, Parenting Coach

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Have you ever considered how different educational environments shape our children’s futures? In this episode, we chat with Kristina McKinney, a dedicated Montessori educator at Bozeman Montessori, who unveils the transformative power of the Montessori approach to learning. With a focus on nurturing independence, curiosity, and social skills, Montessori education stands out as a tailored alternative to traditional schooling. 

We explore the depths of Montessori philosophy, where each child's unique learning style is celebrated and catered to. Kristina shares how this method provides a responsive atmosphere that fosters engagement, creativity, and critical thinking in children. You'll gain insights into who benefits most from Montessori programs, especially those with neurodivergent needs, and how the method shapes well-rounded individuals prepared to thrive in various settings.

Lastly, Kristina paints a picture of daily life in a Montessori classroom, illustrating how projects and interests guide learning. This organic discovery process invites us to rethink conventional methods and embrace education that aligns with children's natural curiosities. If you're contemplating educational choices for your child or simply interested in learning more about innovative teaching methods, this episode provides food for thought.

Join us for a fresh perspective on education that encourages every child's unique voice and potential! 

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Flora McCormick, LCPC:

You're listening to the Sustainable Parenting Podcast and today I have a special guest, christina McKinney, and we are talking with her. As an elementary Montessori educator, and this is a topic that I've had lots of clients asking me for school alternatives. Whether a child is neurodivergent or just has different learning styles, highly intelligent or twice exceptional, there can be various reasons that considering options besides public schooling can be valuable to consider, so thanks for being with us today.

Kristina McKinney:

Thanks, thanks for having me?

Flora McCormick, LCPC:

Yeah, I'd love to dive in more and understand what do you you know? Who would you say are good candidates for the Montessori environment? Who are not good candidates, if any, and what are your reasons about why this is especially important with where we're at in history, technology or otherwise?

Kristina McKinney:

technology or or otherwise. Yeah, I mean it's we. What we like to do in Montessori education is sort of be able to customize an academic path for any child that is at any place in their development, in their education, and be able to just meet them where they are and take them where they need to go or where they want to go. So it's kind of like it's a different, a different approach, because you can go to normal, like traditional public school. You see a lot of kind of everybody doing the same thing at the same time and that's people are finding that that's not how it works for everybody. Some children do just fine in that setting and some children really need something else setting and some children really need something else.

Flora McCormick, LCPC:

Yeah, the uniform, you know. Requirement of teachers to try to serve 30 students or more in a classroom at one time, with maybe one assistant, maybe not, I think you know, to their credit makes it challenging to even for the best public school teachers that want to address the individualized needs of every student. It can be really hard logistically. So I know I'll just like play devil's advocate, because I myself don't really understand elementary Montessori education, understand elementary Montessori education. Sometimes the thought would be are they going to be able, though, to succeed in the future in a school environment, like when they get to junior, high and high school or beyond in college, if they're being asked to sit in a lecture room? What are your thoughts about that, and how do you make sure to still meet, all of the same, I guess, kind of educational goals that are laid out? Um, or do you? Maybe you have a different focus?

Kristina McKinney:

um, what, what? The research has shown, what the you know, what your your typical path going forward. If you go from a Montessori setting into a public school setting, most of the time you find that children that have started in a Montessori foundation do really really well transitioning into public school because they've already had, they've done a lot of the things that were thought to be too advanced for them at an earlier age. So they have a bunch of the really like the groundwork of what they need many years later is already there and so they find usually find public school really really easy, sometimes too easy and not challenging enough. They typically have much more developed social skills because we do so much in story education to support how children communicate with each other, how they interact, what's you know, what's appropriate, what's not appropriate, you know conversation wise or what's a good way to resolve conflict, that type of thing.

Kristina McKinney:

You see a lot less of that like social. And now there's the buzzword bullying. A lot of people overuse that word but for lack of a better term, you see a lot less of that. They have a much more like conscientious, compassionate approach to other children. So both socially, academically, they're set up for success and they typically just hit the ground running. My own children are in public school now they've gone. They went to Montessori school up to about first grade and now they're in public school and they just they thrive. They do really, really well.

Flora McCormick, LCPC:

That's awesome kind of look at what's going on. But you know, handling this moment of an adult being involved in something else very maturely and I would say more so than I would, I see with a lot of other families with kids that age.

Kristina McKinney:

They have a lot of independence, you know, like their curiosity is heightened, so they will come and check something out. But then they also are kind of like oh, I was doing something else over there and they'll go back to what they were doing.

Flora McCormick, LCPC:

Yeah, that's been patterned into their rhythm that it's not an unusual thing for an adult to be doing something else and then being expected to manage their own needs, whether that's snack or bathroom or learning it's. The system is set up for them to do a lot more independently.

Kristina McKinney:

Yeah, though we don't. We don't typically have technology, you know just kind of like front and center in the classroom. That is that's probably why they were like, whoa, what is she doing? Cause they almost never see me with a screen anywhere near me. So they're like, oh, what is Christina doing? That's worth knowing. They went back to what they were doing.

Flora McCormick, LCPC:

So I'm curious about that. Yeah, because I know my husband and I have been frustrated to see how much technology is constantly being used in the public school of kindergarten and starting as early as kindergarten, with them having tablets, them having tablets. And again, I know that this is partly in response to trying to meet the needs of so many kids in one classroom and, just like families thinking sometimes at home, they need to use technology in order for the adult to give attention specifically to one child, I think classrooms are leaning into that too. So zero, um, so zero technology, or very limited what. What's your, what are the values around that?

Kristina McKinney:

Well, I mean, I didn't grow up with screens everywhere. You know, like a lot of us didn't grow up with screens everywhere. I don't think I even had a cell phone until I was 27, 28, let alone a smartphone, um, but we live in a world that is just completely filled with screens and technology and just stimulation. You know when, when Maria Montessori was developing her educational system 100 years ago, children were understimulated. They didn't have enough to do. And we live in a world where children are ridiculously overstimulated. They're just being bombarded with information of all kinds of, you know, sensory and otherwise, just constantly just coming at them like a freight train, and they can't make sense of it all. There's no way that the developing brain can sort that all out. So that's why we have like a pretty, pretty strict, like no screens type policy. Outside of what we use to check children in and out, you know, with their parents, that we have screens completely, completely away from us, not even our phones. We're supposed to keep our phones like completely out of sight.

Flora McCormick, LCPC:

Yeah, completely out of sight. Yeah, such a goal for all of us. Are there any kids you would say? Montessori elementary is not really for like a one thought that I have is maybe I've suggested it sometimes to families where the child is having difficulty behavior wise, social, emotional, wise in the large classroom, unable to regulate as easily. Or, um, yeah, regulation is a big piece of it. Um, but would that fit well with the Montessori environment or not?

Kristina McKinney:

Um, it really it depends on each individual child, because I've seen children completely change coming into Montessori environment from public school with those kinds of issues, challenges. But I've seen it also go the other direction, where they think like people were like, oh well, we'll just, we'll just put them in Montessori school and they'll be fine. And it's not always the case. A lot of times they still need additional outside supports, just depending on what exactly is going on, because there's just such a huge range of things that could be happening and they may be neurological or they may be behavioral, there may be something going on at home. There's so many things to consider. But I think by and large it benefits any child. Any child can benefit from any time spent in a Montessori environment because of our, you know, kind of holistic approach. We do no testing, we do assessment, but it's not put on the child to perform. We assess, okay, do they? Do they know this particular thing, Do they know that particular thing? And we look at the state standards. They know this particular thing, Do they know that particular thing? And we look at the state standards. We do, you know, try to try to follow um, in elementary especially, we try to try to follow what the state standards are, Um, but we approach it in a different way because the children in an elementary Montessori program.

Kristina McKinney:

They have a three year cycle to do all of their work, so they don't have to do only first grade work their first year, only second grade work their second year. They could be doing third grade math in their first year and they could be doing first grade reading in their third year. It's just completely wherever they are, and so they have that three-year cycle to do all of those things. So we do, we try to uphold the same standards. We just approach it in a very different, more customized, individualized way.

Kristina McKinney:

And that's what I think really helps the neurodivergent child or the child that has certain challenges dyslexia or dysgraphia or whatever it is that's causing them to struggle. We're able to work around it, help them get through it, instead of you know like, oh well, you can't be in this class, you have to go over to this other place. It's not like that at all. Have to go over to this other place, it's not like that at all. So we're able to support those, those differences, because what we're finding, you know, the research is showing every brain is so different and every brain learns a different way.

Kristina McKinney:

There's so many learning styles and there's just so many things that that can affect it one way or another. And there's, there's I'm starting to see this more and more that Children who, like we, started talking about twice exceptional, and I'm really really liking that, that turn of phrase these days, because some, to help them get where they need to go without trying to put them in, you know, try to try to fit the mold, as it were, because we're breaking the mold. The mold needs to go away. That's where I'm at with it.

Flora McCormick, LCPC:

Totally so I guess like maybe just one final thing to give listeners a real picture, could you give like a day in the life of a Montessori school day?

Kristina McKinney:

Well, one of the cool things about about our classroom is we have a clock that on every hour has a bird call, and so the hours of the clock all have a picture of that particular species of bird. So throughout the day when the hour changes, it's kind of distracting. At first we're, like you know it, kind of startled you. You're like what Sounds like there's a bird in the room, but over time you get used to which bird is on which hour, and so at noon is a red-tailed hawk, and so they know that at noon they hear the hawk. It must be lunchtime. What that turned into was sort of a little you know, imaginative, creative play game for them. While they were at the lunch table. They would, you know, sort of to pretend that the hawk was going to come eat their lunch. So I decided to kind of run with that. Okay, well, we're obviously interested in the bird call, so why don't we start a giant hawk research project? Yes, I went downstairs to our school library and found all the bird books, and so we started doing research on hawks and did this huge, you know, like poster of what you know what is. How big is a hawk? What's the wingspan? You know, like what is its habitat? You know that, that type of the type of thing. So just turn into a research project. So now we have information on every single bird on the clock and what their you know, what their size is, what their habitat is. And now we're starting to recognize the bird calls. We're like, oh yeah, that one, that's the um, you know the stellar's j or what have you? Just little things like that. Just turn into big projects and you just, sometimes you just inspiration just finds you and we have the ability to just run with it. Yeah, and some children get really into it and they do this for three weeks and some look at the picture of the bird in the book and move on to something else. They're like, oh, I want to go back to doing crossword puzzles on jupiter, uh, the the type of stuff so they have.

Kristina McKinney:

The children can absolutely choose whatever they want to do for the day. And I have some children that love to make. You know, make booklets, and so we have booklets of all the biomes of the world, and so they've gone through the entire. You know all the continents and all the biomes of the world, and so they've gone through the entire. You know all the continents and all the biomes of the continents and done maps and they've looked at the, the creatures from from that, from the biomes of that continent, like just just booklet after booklet of you know botany or parts of the seed or parts of the cell, that kind of thing.

Kristina McKinney:

Um, and it's interesting to see the, the different learning styles, how some children like I, just I want to, I just want to make booklets all day, like absolutely go to town. There's something like don't want to write anything, and so you kind of have to be like we have to find, find a reason to make them practice those movements without it seeming like I'm making you do writing yeah, maybe if it's there the motivations can be very different even from the same child from day to day.

Flora McCormick, LCPC:

Sure, and the way the classroom's set up and how you function as a guide or educator is conducive to responding to that.

Kristina McKinney:

Yeah.

Flora McCormick, LCPC:

That's so wonderful. Thanks for sharing with us more about what the Montessori world can offer to kids. And, yeah, thank you so much for your time.

Kristina McKinney:

Thanks so much for having me.