Field Notes

Milwaukee to Open Montessori-IB High School

The world's first public Montessori-International Baccalaureate high school is scheduled to open this fall in Milwaukee with about 130 students.

It will be one of four "small schools" in John Marshall High School, which will be phasing out an older IB program. Phil Dosman, principal of nearby Craig Elementary and one of the planners of the program, will serve as principal of the Montessori IB.

Milwaukee has three other IB sites for high school students, but officials decided to open the additional site as part of a small high school initiative supported by a grant from the Gates Foundation.

With pressure increasing to expand Montessori elementary schools upward, the program is likely to serve as a national model.

The affiliation with the IB program, a sort of gold standard of academic curriculum with 1,782 schools in 122 countries, is a significant step.

The program was approved by the Milwaukee school board in June 2005. James Kroll, an IB counselor, worked with Dosman on planning.

"One of goals for the school, " Dosman said, "is to work on the high school drop-out rate."

The school will draw heavily this fall from graduates of the district's three public Montessori program that go through eighth grade, Dosman said.

"We'll have about Montessori 80 elementary graduates this year," he said. "We expect 40 to 50 to be part of the John Marshall program." Other slots will be filled by other students including 20 juniors and seniors who attended the IB program currently housed at Marshall.

Five IB teachers now at Marshall will comprise the core of the new program. Two new teachers will be added. Among the core teachers, Dosman said, all are IB-trained and all either have Montessori training or are slated to take it.

A good deal of work is going into writing curriculum, but there is much to build upon. "Montessori is a good fit with IB," Dosman said.

"We are trying to continue the Montessori philosophy through the program," he said. "We'll have uninterrupted work cycles. The staging idea is a continuation of the 'going-out' of the elementary and middle schools."

Dosman said the program will make extensive use of team teaching and curriculum integration. He said the school will offer classes that combine world literature with social studies, math with biology and drama with English.

Much of the curriculum is expected to resemble the NAMTA model, which advocates interdisciplinary curriculum and includes one day a week in a "staging area" working in occupations and community service. A business, such as a coffee shop, could be part of the program.

"We are trying to foster the notion of community service," Dosman said.

Teachers have participated in the summer Adolescent Colloquium Program offered by the North American Montessori Teachers' Association. NAMTA executive director David Kahn has been an advisor to the group.

"The teachers are a great team-smart, enthusiastic, hard-working people," Dosman said. "I can just sense the energy."

Each of the seven teachers will be assigned an advisory group of approximately 14 students, relationships that are expected to last as long as the students are enrolled.

He said the school is also discussing collaboration with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Parents are getting involved, helped with the staging sites.

"Montessori parents like the consistency," Dosman said. "Now they can say, 'Finally I don't have to worry about a school for my high schooler.'"

INFO: http://www2.milwaukee.k12.wi.us/mmib/index.html

Milwaukee Reflects NAMTA High School Model

David Kahn has outlined his vision of the Montessori high school.

Kahn, the executive director of the North American Montessori Teachers' Association and head of the NAMTA Center for Adolescent Studies and its Project 2012.

Kahn's model has roots in the Hershey Farm School that he helped found in northeast Ohio. It includes "a specialized Montessori version of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program,"an interdisciplinary curriculum and substantial work-based learning off-campus in sites Kahn's terms "staging areas," such as elementary schools, museums and neighborhoods.

The model program would also include links to an institution of higher education.

The model is described in an essay in the Winter, 2006, edition of the NAMTA Journal, a hefty 434-page collection of papers presented at last October's Adolescent Colloquium.

AMS, NCME Announce Transition Details

Plans to integrate the work of the American Montessori Society and the National Center for Montessori Education continue to take shape in preparation for a formal merger signing expected in June. Several initiatives, including the creation of a task force to study school accreditation, have been announced.

School accreditation issues will not be resolved before the merger. The processes of AMS and of the Montessori School Accreditation Council, (MSAC), an arm of NCME, remain in place, according to Karen Lecy, the outgoing executive director of NCME.

"School accreditation is an important initiative to both AMS and MSAC.," she said. "Both organizations have committed significant time and resources towards creating and maintaining accreditation processes that are recognized by national and international accrediting agencies as excellent models for school accreditation."

Rich Ungerer, AMS executive director, stressed common goals.

"We are poised to be open and reflective during the integration process of AMS and MSAC school accreditation," he said. "Our goal is to provide a single vehicle for school improvement and quality programs for children. We envision an all-encompassing Montessori accrediting system that establishes standards that are attainable by all quality schools, and an accreditation system that offers schools a choice of protocols. Our shared goal is to articulate processes in school accreditation that reflect decisions supported by best practices and current research."

AMS and MSAC will select an equal numbers of representatives to the task force, which is charged with recommending an accreditation system for Montessori schools.

"The resulting system ," Lecy said, "will encompass the best of MSAC and AMS accreditation already in place, together with new and current practices in the school accreditation field."

The task force has set its first meeting date for mid-July.

Other decisions:

NCME deadline-A deadline of June 30, 2008, was set for completion of work as part of NCME teacher education courses.

Conference-The annual spring conference in Southern California, an NCME staple for two decades, will not longer be held, Leaders continue to explore possibilities for a fall conference in Southern California in 2008.

Publication-NCME's magazine, The Montessori Reporter, will be discontinued

Leadership-Three NCME members-LoAnn Jundt, Muriel Owens and Lavonna Peterson-will serve on the AMS board of directors.

Gomes, Murray WinAMS Research Awards

Joan J. Mariani Gomes was named winner of the American Montessori Society's award for outstanding dissertation at the organization's annual meeting in Houston in April.

Her study was titled, "Using a Creativity Focused Science Program to Foster General Creativity in Young Children: A Teacher Action Research Study."

Angela Murray won the award for outstanding Master's thesis for "Identifying Challenges to the Future of Public Montessori Elementary Schools," which was partly previewed in Public School Montessorian.

INFO: amshq.org/society_thesis.htm#

NAMTA AnnouncesSyntopicon Project

Annette Haynes will lead a project to produce a set of essays exploring concepts developed by Maria Montessori.

Described in a recent publication of the North American Montessori Teachers' Association as a "syntopicon," in the tradition developed by Mortimer Adler and the Great Books series, the publication will include essays on topics such as normalization, observation and the work cycle.

According to the announcement, the syntopicon will be published as an edition of the NAMTA Journal before 2010.

BOOK SHELF

Two new books have been published by Parent-Child Press.

Child-Sized Masterpieces for Steps 6 & 7: Modern Schools of Art by Janine S. Wolf continues the popular series with works from Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, Cubists, Surrealists and the Abstract Art movement.

The Peace Rose, written and illustrated by Alicia Jewell, tells a simple story of children resolving conflicts. It includes a teacher's guide on how to use a peace rose as a conflict-resolution tool in the classroom.

INFO: Parent-Child Press, 866-727-3682 www.parentchildpress.com

A Tour of the Flowering Plants

by Priscilla Spears

This new work by a long-time consultant to Montessori educators is based on the Classification System of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group. It features more than 800 color photos of the flowering plants of North America. Written for readers of all levels of knowledge, it comes with a CD-ROM including all text and images.

INFO: Missouri Botanical Garden Press, P.O. Box 299, St. Louis, MO 63166-0299

www.mbgpress.info