Grassroots Grit: Two Tales of Impassioned Parents and Citizens Who Are Making Montessori Education a Reality for Public School Students

Pittsburgh

Decline, Fall, Rebirth

The parents at Pittsburgh’s public Montessori school may not have had a deep knowledge of what a Montessori school should look like, but they did recognize distress.

Three buildings in four years. Seven administrators in six years, including one who was murdered by her husband. A staff, once made up entirely of certified Montessori teachers, operating with fewer than 25 percent of its teachers certified. Grade configurations that would make experienced Montessori educators cringe. The curriculum following district requirements: Harcourt reading and Everyday Math.

Some parents opted out, dropping enrollment in the preschool-grade 8 program close to 300. Others pressed district leaders to respond and created a template for public schools struggling with program integrity.

It involved at least three years of hard work and a bit of good luck, but this August Pittsburgh Montessori took a major step when the Center for Montessori Teacher Education—New York began a teacher education program that could bring the entire staff to full certification.

The turnaround began about two years ago with an emergency meeting of about 15 parents of second and third graders in the schools. According to Kathryn Sitter, one of the parents, they would learn the ropes of district politics and provide consistent pressure.

Initially, Sitter said, “We were told they could not hire someone to help us.”

The parent group kept the pressure on district administration in board meetings and private conversations.

"We didn’t all see eye to eye on everything," Sitter said, "but we stayed on the same page. We were consistent in saying that we are not a Montessori school unless we have certified teachers. We told them, ‘you are going to have wasted a lot energy in moving us if you don’t do something about it."

The parents argued that if the district wanted to stop the declining enrollment and win families back from private schools, this was an opportunity. It was appeal attuned to the concerns of district leadership.

“We were monster parents,” Sitter said. “We were dogged and had the tenacity to stick with it. We were relied on by teachers, administrators and others who couldn’t do it themselves.”

Supt. Mark Roosevelt and his top administrators listened.

They first agreed to fund a computer-based program, but without strong support from the teachers, it did not light the spark to turn the school around.

Then the district took advantage of an opportunity it had earlier ignored.

In 2004, Angela Minahan had moved to Pittsburgh from Charlotte, where she worked in a public Montessori program. She sought work at the school but was told that the district, in the process of furloughing nearly 100 teachers because of budget shortfalls, had no way to hire her.

Parents got wind that, in Sitter’s words, there was “some great person out there,” but did not meet her.
But by August 2006, officials had renewed interest in Minahan and, circumventing the teacher-contract limits on hiring new teachers, and hired her as a “curriculum coach.”

“Angela,” said Sitter, “was a Godsend.”

As Minahan describes it, she was hired to “help the Montessori.”

“I did not know exactly what that meant,” she said, “but I knew that I loved Montessori and that my colleagues in Charlotte had prepared me well."

“During my first few days at Pittsburgh Montessori, parents were eager to share their school’s history with me. Their concerns were valid. The parents were running out of energy.”

She came to understand how the program had unraveled.

“When the Montessori school first opened in Pittsburgh, the district required all teachers to be Montessori certified. As with many public schools with strong teacher unions, when there are displaced or furloughed teachers, the unions prevent the district from hiring from outside the current employee cohort. As one could imagine, after years of retiring Montessori teachers, Pittsburgh Montessori had only five credentialed Montessori teachers remaining out of twenty professional staff members. There was little Montessori practice at Pittsburgh Montessori.”

In the words of Amelia Gehron, Pittsburgh Montessori’s lower school instructional leader and union representative, “human resources forgot to remind teachers to take Montessori training.”

“I quickly found out,” Minahan said, “that many teachers had little understanding of the Montessori core principles and were not interested in learning them.”

She said an acting principal started holding teachers accountable, formalizing parent communication groups and gathering our Montessori family for daily morning meetings. “Thanks to the new principal, routines were established for the staff and students and I was able to begin my work.

“I created a bulletin board with a weekly grace and courtesy skill and provided all teachers with classroom agenda books and student work plans. I led weekly professional development sessions that included book discussions, lesson modeling and presentations on the Great Lessons. The five Montessori certified teachers were instrumental in team building throughout the year. We found furniture and shelves from other schools in the district and began to inventory the Montessori materials. Many of the materials in the elementary rooms had not been used for years and were in poor condition.

“Fortunately, the parent teacher organization and district were very supportive in purchasing replacement materials. In early December I started Montessori Mornings where teachers were encouraged to meet, have coffee and practice lessons or ask questions. These sessions were not required and most days I would have only two or three teachers. I also offered parent information sessions to reenergize their support. From my work with the students, staff and parents, I felt we were making progress.”

In May of 2007 she submitted a proposal to the district.

“The response from the district was to be patient. They needed to hire a permanent principal before they could move forward. “

Cynthia Wallace was hired as principal in July 2007 and quickly won the trust of parents.

“I had attended a Montessori school as a child,” she said. “I had not been a Montessori teacher or principal, but I had worked in a school focused on multiple intelligence, and there are a lot of similarities.”

Wallace worked with parents and teachers. “It was a year of building trust,” she said. “It was a year of working with the staff regarding the district’s commitment to Montessori.”

She recognized that the problems had developed over many years. “When I arrived, I met with teachers and asked where they were on the Montessori continuum. Numerous teachers said they were just sent here. It is not that they are not good teachers. It is just that Montessori does not fit their theory of education.”

Minahan began developing one and three-year plans addressing classroom configurations, teacher training and material purchases. The plan included creation of a model classroom and a protocol to correlate district curriculum with Montessori scope and sequence. It built upon Montessori philosophy and parent involvement.

Eventually the plan was to focus on training teachers, moving to multi-age groupings and gaining American Montessori Society certification.

"While the vision seemed clear," she said, “implementation was not so clear."

Months passed.

"The superintendent," Wallace said, “was looking at this as a major reform effort. He made clear his desire to support this program and the board backed him.”

“On Jan. 30, 2008,” Minahan said, “the district’s K-8 supervisor, assistant deputy superintendent and a representative from human resources met with staff, students and parents, assuring us the district would, within 60 days, have a plan to rebuild Montessori school with certified Montessori teachers.”

On March 27 the district announced a $247,500 grant from Heinz Endowments—$12,500 for consultants, $160,000 for teacher training and certification, and $75,000 for materials.

Parents celebrated. Local newspapers took note. Then the hard work began.

“After much planning,” Minahan said, “we hired the Center for Montessori Teacher Education-New York.”
Potential resistance from the teachers’ union never materialized.

“The union and human resources department agreed we could not require current staff members to travel to a Montessori training program,” Minahan said. “We needed to find another way.”

“Teachers knew it was coming,” said Gehron, the union representative. “We had talked about it for a long time before we brought it to the table last fall. The union tried to accommodate everybody. We did work together as a team. Teachers understood what we were trying to do—we were trying to make it an AMS public school.”

“Everyone was very collaborative,” Wallace said. “There were a lot of tradeoffs. In the end it was relatively painless. The union made a commitment that these teachers would be protected. If teachers did not want to take the training they could get an involuntary transfer, which gave them preferential status for interviewing for new jobs.

Wallace attended the CMTE leadership-training workshop this summer. And CMTE-NY began Elementary I training August 11th at the schoolº using a one-weekend-per month, two-year model.

According to Wallace, 15 students are taking the training. Eight classroom teachers will be replaced, five with internal candidates and three with new hires.

Wallace credits the parents.

“It was parent pressure,” she said. “There has always been a strong parent group. When Angela started the year before, it was through parent advocacy.”

Parent Sitter is among those taking training, paying her own way.

She says she is learning much about the approach for which she has been such a fierce advocate.

“I’m just starting to know what Montessori is,” she said. Many parents, she said, may have loved the school but did not really understand Montessori. “Montessori was a buzz word.”

But the potential of the change is sweet, and worth sharing.

“We can tell parents that this is not unlike the political landscape,” she said. “If the change wells up from the bottom and you have hope, it is going to come to fruition—if you persevere. It is a test of endurance.”

http://www.pps.k12.pa.us/pittsburghmontessori/