Montessori Academy Can Help Your Child Get Years Ahead At An Early Age By Lauren Saslow Photos by Frank Edmondson In San Lorenzo, Italy, in 1907, Dr. Maria Montessori — the first female medical doctor in Italy — opened a small school targeting the developmental needs of children through the implementation of concrete learning experiences. After conducting her own scientific studies on how children learn, Dr. Montessori found that children don’t actually become educated by another person, as much as through their own hands-on experiences and selfmotivation. She also found that children had a tremendous need to move as they learned, which today is called kinesthetic learning (also known as tactile learning). Dr. Montessori also found that for most children, learning takes place by the student carrying out a physical activity, rather than listening to a lecture or watching a demonstration. She soon began Montessori Teacher Training, drawing upon the experience of teachers from around the globe, and when those teachers returned to their respective countries, they began opening Montessori schools across the world. When Dr. Montessori passed away in 1952, her son Mario worked with other trained teachers to develop the Association Montessori International (AMI), an umbrella training organization for teachers who want to use this “Montessori Method.” Sonia A. Johnson, who is originally from Colombia, although she earned a B.A. in Education from Northwestern University in Chicago, IL, Sonia is a Montessori-certified Johnson teacher and the founder and director of five Montessori Schools — four of which are in the Tampa Bay area and one is in Ocala, FL (the Ocala school is for ages 12 months-5 years). The first of her local schools opened in 1970, and although that one no longer is operating, Johnson’s four local campuses now include: • Montessori Preparatory School
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(MPS), which opened in Temple Terrace in 1998, and which serves children from age 4 (Pre-Kindergarten, or “PreK”) - 5th grade; • Montessori Academy of Tampa Bay (located on W. Waters Ave. in Tampa) for ages 12 months - 6th grade; • Montessori Academy of Temple Terrace (MATT), for ages 12 months-4 years old; and • Montessori Academy of New Tampa (located at 4001 N. Skipper Rd., just off Bruce B. Downs {BBD} Blvd., south of Tampa Palms), also for ages 12 months–4 years. All of Johnson’s Montessori schools are open year-round on weekdays, with monthly tuition rates starting at just $710 for Pre-K through kindergarten students. Co-directors Luney Parr and Piedad Alvarez and assistant director Lori Chehav also are Montessori-certified teachers who are responsible for leading 30 faculty and staff members at the MPS location, which doubles as Johnson’s main office. All teachers and staff at these schools must submit to a background check and fingerprinting, as they fall under the regulations of the Florida Dept. of Children & Families. As an added security measure, all rooms in each facility are video-monitored and the front door requires a staff member to “buzz in” the parents and visitors. Alvarez says that although they are located a few miles southeast of our area, both the MPS and MATT sites in Temple Terrace are popular choices for New Tampa residents, even though the Montessori Academy of New Tampa may be closer to where they live. “Most of our students live in the New Tampa area,” Alvarez explains, “but their parents may work at Temple Terrace- and University-area businesses and healthcare centers like Moffitt Cancer Center or Florida Hospital Tampa.”
Creating A Professional & Diverse Environment
Johnson’s five Montessori schools are Associate Member schools of the American Montessori Society, the National Center for Montessori Education
and the Montessori Institute of America. The MPS site also is an “Internship School,” at which new teachers are able to work with the students under the guidance of Montessori-certified teachers. While there always is at least one Montessori-certified teacher in each classroom — who is trained in educating students in arts, science, math, music, movement and reading — each school strives to incorporate each teacher’s talents and background into the offerings at Any of the five Montessori Academies & Prep Schools each school, in order to expose owned by Sheila Johnson can have your child years the children to different lanahead of their peers before even entering kindergrten. guages, cultures and disciplines. The Curriculum Therefore, the extra-curricular activities While children may enter a Monand languages offered at each site vary. tessori school as late as the third grade, “We have a diverse range of students from many cultures,” says Chehav. Johnson and her staff recommend “Parents love it because they get to see enrollment as early as 12 months of students from all over the world.” age, the only prerequisite being that On average, there typically are the child has to be walking. In contrast, between 150-200 students at each of many early childhood programs will Johnson’s five Montessori locations, not accept children who aren’t already although the main MPS site serves toilet-trained, which can be frustrating more than 200 students. Johnson says for parents trying to offer their child a the schools maintain a teacher-student head start on his or her education. ratio of 1 to 15 for most classes, with From an early age, children in smaller teacher-student ratios for the these Montessori schools are allowed younger students. Some classes even to work at their own pace in individual offer co-teachers, and the kindergarten and group learning environments that students switch classrooms during the address their unique auditory, visual and day in order to provide varied teaching kinesthetic learning styles. For example, environments and educators. when preschool children are learning Chehav says that teachers at the their letters, they say each letter’s sound local Montessori schools also come from as they punch them out from paper, a number of countries, including, “Coand most of the puzzles and manipulalombia, India, Bulgaria, China, Ecuador, tives throughout the highly organized and Peru.” She adds that most teachers classrooms are color-coded and have opt to, “stay here more than ten years.” different textures. The hallways of the MPS location Because students in the local are lined with framed black-and-white Montessori schools complete standardphotographs of Johnson and her young ized testing annually, they must be as students from when her first school prepared as their public school counopened in 1970. There also are framed terparts — and usually end up being color photos of the increasingly diverse more prepared than their public school student body sporting their mandatory counterparts, according to Johnson. For dress code requirements of red or navy blue polo shirts (bearing the Montessori example, the math program incorporates Montessori Math, Sunshine Math (comlogo), navy blue or khaki pants, shorts bining critical thinking and problem or skirts and sneakers.
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