Montessori High School?

[Paisley Hedgehog]

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[wapiti]

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[Orthodox6]

The original Montessori philosophies and techniques were designed for young children. (My eldest two attended an outstanding Montessori school.) Best thing we could have done for them!

 

I never have understood attempts to "make it work" for older students. I would be quite interested to learn if the principles really can be applied for higher grades, or if only vestigial elements remain and "Montessori" is just a marketing ploy. (That is my current suspicion.)

[Nan in Mass]

The school where a relative teaches does Montessori up through 6th grade and then uses 7th and 8th to transition to a regular school format. After 8th, the students go off to various public and private high schools. I can ask about high school if you like.

[mcconnellboys]

Our local university has started one on their campus this year and I'm watching with great interest. I know of a couple of homeschoolers who have entered, so I'll be talking to them as the year progresses.... Others have tried to start Montessori high schools here in past, but none of them have panned out....

[Paisley Hedgehog]

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[mom&nana]

Well as I understand it, Maria Montessori never wrote a curriculum for high schoolers. She had a vision in mind though.. it was called ErdKinder. Here's some information about it.

[wapiti]

There's some more information here about some secondary programs. It includes discussion about the course of study at one school (a jr high, basically, but you might find it interesting), and a sample daily schedule from another middle school. It is quite a long article, and it might give you some ideas.

[mcconnellboys]

As I understand it, some classes in our school are being taught by university professors and the kids are supposed to have opportunities to do research work at the university throughout the year, too....

[ElizaG]

The original Montessori philosophies and techniques were designed for young children.

Well, sort of. Her original work was with 3-6 year olds, because that's the situation she found herself in. Then she developed the elementary method for ages 6-12. This, along with setting up teacher training programs, pretty much took up the rest of her life. She believed that her approach to education could and should be applied to middle and high schoolers (and adults), and wrote a fair bit along these lines, but never had the chance to put it into practice.

 

Her theories of human development cover ages 0 to 24:

 

Planes of development (Wikipedia)

 

So, while there's no specific "Montessori high school method" per se, there are quite a few schools that are attempting to follow these principles. I don't know how successful they are.

 

Erdkinder is for 12-15 year olds. I'd call it more of a middle school curriculum. She believed this was a major time of transition -- almost like being an infant and toddler all over again -- and advised backing way off on academics during this time. The students are ideally supposed to live on a farm, get lots of sleep and nourishing food, and learn from real-life situations (such as selling their produce).