Elizabeth G. Slade - Montessori in Action: Building Resilient Montessori Schools

1. Chapter 5
2. Chapter 7
3. Chapter 8
4. Chapter 9
5. Chapter 10
6. Part V
7. Chapter 11

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 3
3. Chapter 4
4. Chapter 6
5. Part III
6. Chapter 7
7. Chapter 8
8. Chapter 9

ELIZABETH G. SLADE

Copyright 2021 by Elizabeth G. Slade. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.

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ISBN 9781119763123 (paperback)
ISBN 9781119764953 (ePDF)
ISBN 9781119763130 (ePub)

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For Bella

Who prompts me daily toward the work of finding and making meaning.

This work was born out of the experience of working with many amazing people in my time as a schoolbased Montessorian, and I am grateful for their commitment and drive. There are three school leaders during that time who offered me a chance to bring my full self to the work: Alan Feldman, Analida Munera, and John Freeman. You shaped my thinking about bringing the work of Montessori to the whole school, and I learned a great deal from each of you. Alan, thank you for sharing One School, Honest Talk, and Systems to support what we do as a frame for how we all might create something sturdier together. Analida, thank you for the opportunity to explore the yet unnamed parts of a whole school Montessori method. John, thank you for your partnership in implementing visions and for taking many big leaps together.

There were also three extraordinary Montessorians who walked alongside me during that time: Sandra Wyner Andrew, Gretchen Courage, and Uma Ramani. You were collaborators in developing this work, as you each brought the long arc of your experience and love of the method into the public sector. Thank you for the coaching you offered me regularly and for holding such a clear vision even in times of chaos.

I am humbled by the hard work done daily by public Montessori teachers and grateful for the trust of those I worked with over the years. Thank you for continuing to return to the essence of our calling: to serve the child.

In addition, there were many learners along the way who showed me what was needed and some who patiently coached me, including Jaquan, Maria, Edgar, Osvaldo, Mya, Dreshaun, and Kayla. Your willingness to engage in honest talk supported my learning and led to the big idea of sharing it widely.

I want to acknowledge the great impact working for the National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector (NCMPS) for six important years had on me. Thank you to Jackie Cossentino and Keith Whitescarver for giving me the opportunity to take these ideas to a national scale, offering them to school leaders and public Montessori schools of various means and in various settings. Thank you to the team at NCMPS, who engaged in ongoing conversations about the work with strong beliefs, lightly held.

There have been many school collaborators along the way but three whose ears perked up and who boldly implemented these ideas from the start and thus further developed them. Thank you to these three original school collaborators who listened, trusted, questioned, refined, and made better almost everything in this book: Michelle Boyle, Megan Hubbard, and Hannah Richardson. We worked closely together for five years, enjoying annual summer retreats to reflect and improve upon what had been implemented the year before. I learned an enormous amount through our work together, and these ideas would have remained just that without your determination and hard work.

Katie Rucker, Peggy Johnson, and Kisha Young and the full staff at Moore Montessori are also collaborators who started their school based on the whole school Montessori method and continue to forward the work each day with children, staff, and families. Thank you for your big hearts and strong push to reach every child, reflect, regroup, shore each other up, and go back to make it stronger so that everyone might thrive.

My great gratitude goes out to the original think tank that resulted in the development of the system of justness Genevieve D'Cruz, Bobby Johnson, and Allison Jones as well as the practitioners I worked alongside in schools Gail Ameral, Marla Dakin, and Luis Lumpris. Your quiet, consistent, and ongoing work to create equitable education through your daily work with key children was inspiring and the work grew from your gifts and insights.

The words and pages became a book with help from Christine O'Connor, Tom Dinse, Kristi Bennett, Mackenzie Thompson, Riley Harding, and the whole team at JosseyBass/Wiley. In addition, Katie Brown supported the ongoing research needed to make the work more robust.

I was fortunate to have some generous readers who spent time with this book as it was forming. Thank you to Michelle Boyle, Natalie Celeste, Teresa Chan, Alan Feldman, Allison Jones, Jacqui Miller, Jana Morgan Herman, Isaac PriceSlade, Hannah Richardson, and Sandra Wyner Andrew for your thoughtful review of these pages and for your suggestions to strengthen and improve them.

I'd also like to acknowledge the love and faith of my family as I gave precious minutes of our family time to various elements of the work over the course of my children's younger years. You spent summer hours scootering in empty schools, salvaged materials from dumpsters, cut laminated materials, and generously shared me with the work. May I return the favor as you find your life's work and turn your energy toward it.