Education: International Montessori, Associates in Applied Science in Office Administration
Certification: North American Montessori Center Certification
Years teaching: 7
Years at St. Joseph: 7
Reason for being at St. Joseph: St. Joseph's provides me an opporutnity to work in an environmnet that puts God at the core. The family-first atmosphere allows me to be a part of molding young minds by incorporating our Catholic Faith.
WELCOME!
Montessori Philosophy- Dr. Maria Montessori
Scientific observation has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment. The task of the teacher becomes that of preparing a series of motives of cultural activity, spread over a specially prepared environment, and then refraining from obtrusive interference. Human teachers can only help the great work that is being done, as servants help the master. Doing so, they will be witnesses to the unfolding of the human soul and to the rising of a New Man who will not be a victim of events, but will have the clarity of vision to direct and shape the future of human society. - Maria Montessori,
Education for a New World
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The basic Montessori concepts are pretty well known by now (Montessori in Perspective, 1966). 1 - The teacher must pay attention to the child, rather than the child paying attention to the teacher. 2 - The child proceeds at his own pace in an environment controlled to provide means of learning. 3 - Imaginative teaching materials are the heart of the process. 4 - Each of them is self-correcting, thus enabling the child to proceed at his own pace and see his own mistakes. If you were to look inside a Montessori classroom, you would get the impression of "controlled chaos" because each child would be quietly working at his private encounter with whatever learning task he or she chose (Montessori in Perspective, 1966). Montessori often reminded teachers in her course, "When you have solved the problem of controlling the attention of the child, you have solved the entire problem of education." (Kramer, 1976, p. 217). Maria's theories of the sensitive periods in the development of a child were new to people at this time, however, now they seem to correspond with what we consider to be the "needs" of a child at different stages of their development.