Kahn Model High School to Open

New Cleveland School Will Provide Showcase for Vision of NAMTA’s Leader

By Holly Hilgenberg

David Kahn is moving to the next stage in developing his vision for the burgeoning Montessori adolescent movement.

This fall, in Cleveland the executive director of the North American Montessori Teachers’ Association will see his passion of the last several years come together when the doors of The Montessori High School at University Circle open for 40 students.

The school, Kahn said, will do more than provide a continuation opportunity for graduates of Cleveland area Montessori middle school programs. It will, he said, “consolidate Montessori adolescent design nationally and define an authentic Montessori model.”

Kahn sees the lack of what he refers to as “a standard Montessori curriculum for adolescents,” as hurting the Montessori high school movement. He envisions the high school as providing a set of standards for other Montessori high schools.

“There is no cookie cutter approach,” he said, “but the principles will eventually move people to common ground.”

The formation of a national Montessori high school model is coming at a key time, according to Kahn, who said Montessori elementary and middle schools are “mushrooming,” with a high percentage increase in the public sector. Interest in providing adolescents with a “safe and secure” school environment, Kahn said, is also lending to the popularity of Montessori high schools.

The Cleveland high school will build on a range of work and a set of relationships that have evolved over the past several years, including creation of the Hershey Farm School, summer Adolescent Colloquia and the creation of Project 2012.

Funded in part by the Dekko Foundation, the Lillard family, the Oppenheimer family and the Hershey Foundation, the high school has raised $3.6 million.

Communications is central to the vision.

Chris Kjaer, who Kahn hired to help develop curriculum, had worked at the public Montessori high school in Grand Rapids, MI. He called that program “a really good attempt at implementing Montessori with its resources.”

The Montessori high school program during his time at Grand Rapids, he said, was isolated. Kjaer said, “there is tremendous value in sharing resources.”

Those working on the school have been cooperating with local and national Montessori programs, including Marshall Montessori International Baccalaureate High School in Milwaukee and Cleveland-area middle schools such as Ruffing Montessori School East, Ruffing Montessori School West, Hershey Montessori School, The Montessori School at Holy Rosary, The Lillian and Betty Ratner School and The Hudson Montessori School. Oak Farm Montessori School, in Avilla, IN, is also a collaborator.

The high school, Kahn said, “allows us to interpret other people’s experiences, but it’s not just being the model. Our goal is to create a design which has components that people can implement in different ways.”

The high school, which will incorporate an International Baccalaureate curriculum, will be located in the University Circle district, which holds 41 institutions of culture and learning. The high school will have collaborative relationships with many, including the Botanical Gardens, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the Western Reserve Historical Society, the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Classrooms will be located in several buildings, with additional learning taking place at the partnered institutions, where students will work with specialists on projects. A dormitory will make it possible for students from outside of the Cleveland area to attend.

The school will open with 40 students in grades 9-11, adding 12th grade in 2009 and eventually grow to about 120 students.

To help develop the curriculum, Kahn has brought in Kjaer and James Moudry. Kjaer is the research director and working on developing a math and science curriculum. Moudry is operations director and is working on the history and humanities curriculum.

The curriculum will have a humanities focus.

The big question, Moudry said, is “What does the Montessori student look like going of to college? How are they different than the 10 year old and how is our approach to the humanities different? How are we sympathetic to the needs of the 15-18 year old?”

Kjaer said the mathematics curriculum incorporates the history of math, to show students how the field was explored and the logic behind it.

The curriculum will also address global challenges. “There is a challenge for us, “ Moudry said, “ working with adolescents to say, ‘you are going to have a positive role to play.’”

Kahn is also committed to addressing a common problem in Montessori programs at all levels: succession planning after founders depart.

“When these charismatic founding teachers leave the program or die, the school has no common base of information and [the teachers] have to start all over. But if we build a collective intelligence, a collective culture then we can go back to, we don’t lose progress. There is always going to be a disseminating body of information that will continue to support the high school,” Kahn said.

He said he plans to stay with the school for about five years and is working with others, including Kjaer and Moudry, to build future leadership for the school.

After that?

Kahn is looking at extending the project to the college level. He recently met with administrators at Lake Area College in Cleveland to discuss developing a Montessori program in their school as well. With a new dean at the college and a possible source of funding, Kahn says “I am challenging [the college] to establish a liberal arts program which gives a general education that looks at the educational thinking from the classical world to the present.”

For a review of the The Whole-School Montessori Handbook for Teachers and Administrators: Supplement 2007by David Kahn and D. Renee Pendleton, please see Field Notes.