The importance of program leadership in public Montessori education

My remarks, as writ­ten, were pre­sented  as a pub­lic com­ment made to the Grand Rapids Pub­lic Schools Board of Edu­ca­tion, Edu­ca­tion Sub­com­mit­tee, April 20, 2011:

Hello, I am Matthew Patul­ski, a GRPS Montes­sori par­ent and a mem­ber the GRPS Montes­sori Taskforce.

On behalf of the task-force par­ents, we want thank the dis­trict for exe­cut­ing the Montes­sori mar­ket­ing sur­vey. With­out scoop­ing the details, I just want to say it val­i­dates what we have known for along time: there is inter­est in Grand Rapids for a high per­form­ing, pub­lic Montes­sori High School. This inter­est tran­scends, income, race and region as long as there are Montes­sori trained staff teach­ing Montes­sori curriculum.

To do this, we must start at the top: Hire a ded­i­cated Montes­sori Prin­ci­pal or Pro­gram Direc­tor. We first iden­ti­fied this mat­ter in our orig­i­nal report in June 2009. The 2011 Englefried/Moudry con­sul­tant report makes the same rec­om­men­da­tion, as do the lead­ing Montes­sori pro­fes­sional orga­ni­za­tions AMI, AMS and NAMTA.

From there, if the GRPS Montes­sori Com­mu­nity is pro­vided tan­gi­ble pro­gram descrip­tions, a trained staff, with prac­ti­cal options of where they can help, orga­nized around con­sis­tent mile­stones, our par­ents and the larger com­mu­nity will join in and it will work.

I can say this because, every per­son I have spo­ken with: GRPS par­ents, NPO lead­ers, busi­ness lead­ers, elected offi­cials, pri­vate cit­i­zens; all think this is a no-brainer; they say ‘this is what Grand Rapids needs as an edu­ca­tion option, now.’

They may not fully under­stand the Montes­sori method but they are inspired by prac­ti­cal descrip­tions of Erd­kinder and Micro-economies and their out­comes: envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness, sus­tain­abil­ity, ser­vice learn­ing, soft skills devel­op­ment, exec­u­tive deci­sion mak­ing, project based learn­ing, com­mu­nity build­ing, intern­ships, entre­pre­neur­ship, etc.

This inspi­ra­tion will fill those gaps where GRPS’ time and funds are short. We have per­sons in the wings who would love to help us design grow­ing pro­grams, part­ner on ser­vice learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, dis­cuss arts, music options in the core city, or act as ambas­sadors to our Latino and African-American communities.

I could go on, but none of what I have described is pos­si­ble with­out clearly defined school-level lead­er­ship invested in Montes­sori edu­ca­tion, in short, a Montes­sori principal.