Pondering Montessori

I had the great privilege of spending much of the day yesterday visiting classrooms in a local Montessori elementary school. There’s so much about the Montessori philosophy that I like. And especially this time of year, when there’s so much emphasis and stress related to “test prep” (a phrase that I would love to see eliminated from our educational vocabularies), it was fantastic to spend time in truly student-centered classrooms, with portfolios instead of grades and multi-age, ever-changing small groups with assignment options instead of everybody-does-the-same-worksheet-at-the-same-time.