Part II—The Decision

Traditional Elementary or Montessori Elementary Education?

In our recent article entitled, “Part I—The Choice: Traditional Elementary or Montessori Elementary Education?”, we detailed the differences between traditional elementary schools and private Montessori elementary schools.

These differences center on how Montessori schools differ from traditional schools, such as:

• Freedom that grants students the right to make independent choices every day
• A customized, individualized academic education that differs for each student
• A methodology that allows students to study at their own pace, speed & interest level 
• A focus towards academic progress and mastery before promotion to the next level
• Engaging older, age-range peers to serve as mentors and colleagues to younger students, thereby building cooperation, collaboration and emulation
• A conceptual teaching approach based on learning how and why things work rather than rote memorization and a ‘that’s just the way it is’ teaching method
• The right to make mistakes as a learning tool towards success without being penalized.

What’s Wrong with This Picture?

In a traditional elementary school, students may not necessarily present collaborative work. Instead, individuals may present generally the same work. Picture a teacher admonishing young students before test time to ‘Keep your eyes on your own paper!’ Where’s the challenge in that?

This approach is fundamentally different from a Montessori classroom where group learning, interpersonal skills, communication and collaboration are welcomed. Students work in teams. Internally, they share their collective knowledge describing different parts of the same topic with that team. Then, each team member presents his or her own portion of the whole.

Which learning style works best for your child? In which environment will your child thrive and truly learn the subject matter?

How Today’s Techniques Will Shape Tomorrow’s Incoming Workers

Today’s students will face far different personal and workplace choices than we currently do.  

During the past two decades, we’ve seen shifts in thinking about how to maximize internal corporate communication. Employers want a more collaborative and cooperative mindset rather than the ‘me-first’ mindset that Baby Boomers were taught.

Employers want more than what public schools only offer peripherally—social and emotional learning. 

These two puzzle pieces look at all people as comrades. Other persons may look different or have different backgrounds but every person carries equally valid points of view.

Routines, STEAM, Reading and The Arts

Montessori Elementary parents have provided the following reasons why they’ve chosen to continue Montessori methodology after Kindergarten graduation:

• Elementary school teachers continue the daily routines and activities your child learned and applied throughout the three year Montessori Toddler, Primary and Kindergarten process
• The child’s Montessori curriculum is based on his or her individual personality and core desires of what to learn; so, they can focus on STEAM-based curriculum—Science, Technology, Art, Engineering & Math 
• Conceptual learning requires intensified reading; Wikipedia and other ‘summary only’ online sources provide shortcut answers only

These families have shared how the Arts programs have been instrumental in building their children’s self-confidence and desire to learn more.

When children play an instrument; practice ballet or dance; get involved with acting; singing; or drawing, painting and sculpting, their creative activity increases brain functions. Specifically, artists connect with people in the purest of social and emotional ways.

Sadly, these types of art classes are now very rare to come by in San Diego County’s traditional schools. Lifetime Montessori Elementary School, however, sees the arts as the academic, social, and emotional tools that connect all people via this learning triangle.

Building a lifelong learner requires more reading to enhance ever-deeper complex and conceptual thinking. As a result, our kids use the library to conduct their research instead of taking the easier route by looking online!  

Online research tools like Wacky-pedia sometimes are just ‘text needs attribution’ summaries.

But Montessorians insist that children learn about topics in-depth because they may get interested in a peripheral element surrounding the main subject and become passionate about it in the balance. The more exposure children have to new topics and activities, the more choices and opportunities will be available to them.

What Do We Want For Our Child—And Ourselves? 

If you think academics are all the same anywhere you go, you may be right. 

In California, traditional and private elementary schools must teach the same curricula. Lifetime Montessori School follows this state mandate to the letter. 

So, then, what is different? 

The way things are taught and the time frame when topics are taught are different. 

Do Age-Range Mentors Cut Bullying?

Montessori teachers conduct constant age-range mentoring as a collaborative bridge between older and younger students. When an eight year-old discusses lessons with a five year-old, leadership happens! 

The older student becomes a link in an emotional and social process that builds his self-confidence and self-satisfaction. At the same time, the younger student may show immediate schoolwork gains and strive for greater cooperation with his classmates. 

This Montessori peer process builds progress in terms of lesson retention, heightened collaboration and friendship between the two children. In other words, social and emotional growth!

Traditional schools do not put third graders in groups with first graders. There are few interactions between age groups in traditional elementary school and fewer positive interactions at that. Is this a reason why bullying is common in public schools?

Your Choice, Decision and Potential Outcomes: Will Education Carry Clear Rewards In Gen Next?

In 20 years, San Diego County will have further enhanced its reputation as a ‘reward’ city for highly educated, high-wage earners. Our Southern California climate and quality of life may be tested but San Diego should still outclass other nearby regions.

By 2035, it is estimated that fully 40% of our workers will have earned at least a bachelor’s degree with 20% possessing a master’s degree or higher. 

One projected outcome of that future is a deeper class division. America will continue to need a highly educated workforce and will pay big-time talent big money. But the under-educated will remain the service class to the educated. Then, they'll face a new competitor in a lifelong battle for these semi-skilled jobs: droids, robots, computers, and artificial intelligence. This education/money schism may well define who becomes a homeowner and who may always remain a renter in our region.

Additionally, San Diego’s future workplaces will focus on applications of today’s discoveries in such forward fields as:

• Telecommunications
• Life sciences
• Computer technology
• Medical, genetic and research-oriented healthcare, and 
• Subsequent and burgeoning entrepreneurship.

Here Are Questions to Ask Oneself:

• Who will get these plum jobs? Your child or someone else’s child?
• Who will know how to think—not just know facts?
• Who can dance or act or write or play piano or violin? 
• Who has spent the last year playing video games and watching TV?
• Who will read, write and speak both English and Spanish languages, beginning with immersive classes at age three and continuing throughout elementary school?
• Who will be able to walk from the Executive offices to the manufacturing assembly line—listening to and talking with other employees? Whose child will be building bonds via language while using culture, food, family, and empathy to inspire positive attitudes? 
• Whose kid will only speak English in an America with millions of other ethnicities?
• Who is going to take on the mantle of entrepreneurship currently held by Montessori grads like Jeff Bezos, Sergy Brin, Jeff Page, Yo Yo Ma, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, George Clooney and others? 
• Whose children are going to have the opportunity to learn art, drama, dance and music?

Is Montessori Elementary School An Annuity for Your Future?

Will a Montessori elementary school education make your child’s teen years easier—theirs and yours? 

Studies say ‘yes.’ 

Why? 

If your children are private school attendees, they will learn additional skill sets that may help upgrade their social and emotional quotients.

Who will my teen be?

• The conceptual learner who will think before doing
• The child who won’t be influenced by goofball classmates
• The thinker who holds a distinct conceptual grasp starting with an academic advantage; 
• The child we hope will make a REAL DIFFERENCE for the good going forward?
• Or the 19 year old delivering pizza to former classmates?

Welcome to a nine-year journey that begins with potty learning and ends with your twelve year-old’s commanding social and emotional situations in two languages. 

The Private School Investment 

Research shows that college grads will earn millions more during their careers than high school grads.

What can I choose and decide to do today to give my child that big-time opportunity? Start by teaching them how to think.

Here are some questions to ponder:

• What financial investments are you able to make?
• What is the value of your child’s future to you?
• What are the potential outcomes of our child’s schooling? 
• What type of environment can help your child excel?
• What type of opportunities will benefit your child the most?
• And when will this financial investment pay off? 

The Decision? Retain Montessori Now!

All of these questions stoke the fire of what we call the Lifetime Montessori Elementary School Difference. 

Montessori contains educational theories centered within a 120 year-old philosophy and methodology and honed with 120 years of successful operational results.

It is a common-sense way for children towards understanding the self—myself! My world! My passions! My skills! My way forward by listening, learning, assimilating and ultimately leading my domain. 

Tomorrow’s jobs will be in categories we’ve not yet invented. They will go to our best, well-rounded, and upbeat grads whose total package of brains, empathy, attitude and personality will propel them forward the way you hoped the day they were born. 

It’s time to make the decision on the right path for your child to either go with a traditional or  Montessori Elementary Education.  Retain Lifetime Montessori Elementary School…Building Children for a Lifetime.