Montessori schools have been sprouting up for a number of years now and they have become a popular option for many parents, particularly for their very young children.

With my wife being a certified Montessori teacher for more than a decade and our older daughter having gone through both Toddler and Casa programs, I thought I’d dedicate some space to helping parents evaluate if a Montessori education is right for their child.

First, a little background on the woman behind the philosophy: Dr. Maria Montessori was an Italian educator who originally developed the program for underprivileged children in Rome, in the early 1900’s. (ironic that in North America it has largely developed as a costly private school option).

The program is developed for children in specific age ranges: 0-3 (Infant/Toddler), 3-6 (Casa) and 6-12 (Elementary). Programs will vary by individual school. Many will only take children at 12 or 18 months and could end after Casa or carry on right through high-school. But by far the most popular program these days is Casa, for three to six-year-olds.

The Montessori method involves a “prepared environment” with specifically developed materials for children to learn teach-guided lessons in language, math, culture, sensorial and practical life.

Over the years, we’ve found that understanding of the Montessori program from those only vaguely familiar with it ranges from gimmicky to elitist. In reality, it is largely dependant on the individual school and how invested they are in the Montessori philosophy.

Some of the negative impressions are likely associated to the wide-ranging standards within each individual school. The term “Montessori” is actually within the public domain so anyone can slap the name on their school and claim to follow the philosophy. Which is why you’ll see private Montessori schools ranging from someone’s six-child basement daycare to grand buildings with 300+ students in pressed uniforms.

So how can you tell the good from the… well, not so good? The best way is to visit the school you have in mind, observe a class and ask a few simple questions.

“Are your teachers accredited Montessori teachers?”  “Is your school accredited?” “Do you use the specific materials designed for the program?” And I would second guess any schools that claim “Montessori-style” classrooms.

The accredited teachers and materials are probably the most important ones and should be your primary concern. Many schools will have a robust Montessori curriculum without an actual certification. To obtain that official stamp of approval for the school can often be a long, invasive and expensive exercise.

Many schools will also have “Demonstration Nights” a couple of times a year where teachers (and often students) will display work and outline the operation of the classroom and the materials. This is probably one of the best ways to get a quick crash course on the Montessori environment.

The final consideration of course is cost and that can range as dramatically as the types of schools themselves.

Another common question is how children will fare once they leave the Montessori school and enter the “regular” public or private system. Our daughter’s transition has been very smooth into public school Grade 1 and it’s rare feedback that a Montessori student has struggled with their transition. More often than not my wife will hear how well the student compares with his or her new peers.

In the end it’s not to say Montessori is any better than any other private, public or other type of school. It all depends on what parents feel is the best fit for their children.

We’ve been very happy with our first daughter’s experience and are looking forward to when our next daughter climbs in the back seat and drives to school with Mom for her first day in Casa.

Shawn is the founder/writer at thekidexperience.ca, a “dad blog” about the experiences of raising kids and offering ideas, insights and opinions to other parents and families on everything “kids”.

Think about all the things you have learned over the course of your life. Many of those skills have stuck with you because of how you felt about the person you learned them from. When a coworker or a friend asks for your professional opinion, they are asking you to be a mentor. They are asking for your advice because they respect you and feel as if you can help them succeed. You can think of it as an honor to be a mentor.

President Barack Obama proclaims January a mentoring month. In his address he said  “Every day, mentors help young Americans face the challenges of growing into adulthood.  By setting a positive example and sharing their time, knowledge, and experience, mentors play an essential role in preparing our Nation’s youth for a bright future.  During National Mentoring Month, we celebrate the contributions of all those who cultivate a supportive environment for the next generation, and we recommit to expanding mentorship opportunities across our country.”

Mentor is one of the most important influences in a young child’s life and no child is too young to have one. A mentor will help a child to believe in them self and to realize they do indeed belong and that they are important and should be heard.

Mentoring gives children an opportunity to see something they can aspire to, they are always looking for role models, lots of times the role models in media aren’t the real life role models they need so they need more down to earth people to look up to.

Once you become a mentor you will newer would go back. You would only wish you could have done this sooner.

Gil Duzanski is a software engineer from Waltham, Mass, interested in education and mentoring.  Gil is a CEO and founder of www.MyMentorLink.com, a startup that helps high school students explore careers and discover their interests and passions through job shadowing opportunities with local businesses.

Does spelling really matter?

Enjoy!

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porblem. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? Yaeh and I awlyas thuohgt slpeling was ipmorantt.

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Teachers can register for only $12 for a full year. That is the only fee. Teachers keep 100% of their hourly rate.

If you are a psychology teacher, I have additional resources I can share with you if you are interested. This is one of the introductory slides to my Power Point for the unit. I would love feedback on it.

The topic that they asked me to speak about was “Student Behavior Management.” I started to talk about bullying which is a significant part of behavior management today, and what an impact this horrible behavior can have on the school climate, individual classrooms, students, teachers, and even the community where the students live.

When I gave the group a break one of the teachers in the audience came up to me and said, “When we were kids, you and I were both bullied by Tommy.” I looked at him and realized that he was the cousin of two boys that I played with when I was in elementary school. One of those boys was Tommy, who had bullied me. As soon as he mentioned Tommy and the fact that I was bullied by this boy I automatically started to look around to see if Tommy was there, even though I knew he probably wasn’t.

This young teacher shared with me that even though Tommy was his cousin, Tommy had bullied him. He told me that his cousin used to hold him under water, push him, shove him, slap him, and to sum it all up, terrorize him. Both of us agreed that we were still scared to death of him, even though we were grown men.

We talked about how he had been much bigger than we were and used his size to intimidate and frighten us. The part of our conversation that concerned me the most was that even after more than 30 years we both still remembered every bullying thing Tommy had done to us; we still had the experience of being bullied tucked away somewhere in our minds.

It is no surprise to me that bullying has gotten worse over the years. Bullying has gotten so bad that the government has had to step in and make it mandatory that programs be created to stop bullying in our schools and in society. Not all people understand this behavior, and some people don’t even realize what bullying actually is. Many people don’t understand how they contribute to the continuation of the behavior, and in their own way make it worse.

What is bullying? Bullying among children is most commonly defined as intentional, repeated, hurtful acts, words, or other behavior such as name calling, threatening, and/or shunning committed by one or more children against another. These negative acts are not intentionally provoked by the victims, and to be defined as bullying, an imbalance in real or perceived power must exist between the bully and the victim.

Bullying may be physical, verbal, emotional, or relational. Bullying interferes with learning. In schools, acts of bullying usually occur away from the eyes of the teacher or responsible adults, consequently, if the bully goes unpunished, a climate of fear envelopes the victims.

A comprehensive approach to bullying is necessary. Many children and adults seriously underestimate the effects of bullying and the harm that it causes the victims. Educators, parents, and children concerned with violence prevention should be concerned with the phenomenon of bullying because it is linked to more violent behavior.

Jim Burns is best known for his presentations on Bullying, Motivating Disaffected Students, Defusing Power Struggles, Character Education, and Leadership. Jim has worked as a teacher and administrator since 1977. He is also an accomplished college instructor who teaches graduate level courses. He just completed writing and co-designing “The Bully Proof Classroom,” a graduate course that is now being offered at The College of New Jersey in partnership with The Regional Training Center.  He has recently published a new book titled The New 3Rs in Education: Respect, Responsibility, and Relationships.  This book is designed to create an awareness of the problems that teachers face today, and to give teachers the tools to create a classroom climate that is safe, secure, and conducive to learning. Please visit his website at www.bullyproofclassroom.com

When asked why I don’t have rows of set seats in my classroom, I ask ‘why do we need them, how do they help our students learn? Is being able to sit at the same desk for 6 hours a day an essential skill for an 8 year old child?’ In regards to behaviour management I have found that when given a choice as to their seat, students are also given responsibility over their decision and require fewer reminders to be in the right place, allowing me to focus on teaching.

Whilst I understand many teachers would not like to teach this way, I believe that asking ourselves why we do things the way we do is vital to improving our teaching practices. Our world has evolved so much, and with the integration of technology we are going to see drastic changes in the ways in which we participate in the global economy. Thus the skills the students we are teaching today will require are going to be different, and our teaching styles must evolve and change to meet these new needs.

As ‘digital natives’ our students are often going to exceed our knowledge of technology; even as a 3rd grade teacher I have students who can teach me something when using an Itouch, or assist to fix glitches with the SMART Board. I embrace this. With copious amounts of research dedicated to the benefits of collaborative learning, different learning styles, and deep understanding through hands on, in depth discovery, we must ask ourselves why we so often revert back to the model of the teacher as expert, standing in front of the class lecturing whilst students whisper or stare out the window tuning us out! When we allow students to take on the role of the expert, we teach them that their ideas are valid, that their learning has a purpose.

Just as we as adults like to know why we’re doing something, so to should students have a purpose for their work. Some ways we have done this in our class have been used for years – such as students publishing their narratives into book format to be displayed in the classroom, others have arisen through the new technology we have available – such as practicing our proof reading skills by editing the comments left by classmates on our class blog during literacy groups, for spelling, punctuation, and structure. Students were completing the same content, but because they had a purpose their engagement and learning far exceeded that of when asked to edit a paragraph of writing they had no relationship with. Technology is not used as a token addition, rather it is a tool used regularly to foster student engagement through provision of purpose for their learning.

Greater student engagement and genuine excitement about learning content has provided me with some hugely rewarding days as a teacher. I have yet to find a better feeling then hearing students lined up at the door excited to come to class!

The use of technology such as the SMART Board and Itouch’s in particular, has also led to a few interested parents wanting to know what their child is learning from ‘playing games all day’ and why there is less writing in their workbooks than usual. School has changed since we were there and this is a natural question. Having already asked myself why I do things the way I do I am able to explain how we learn through games, and show some of the great educational material out there. I also address these concerns through my class blog – uploading photos, videos, explanations, and student work samples, further inviting parents to share in our classroom activities.

Students also post and comment on the class blog. In a world being made increasingly smaller through the proliferation of technology it is vital that students learn the skills to communicate on a global platform in an effective manner. This began with our class blog, extended to commenting on other class blogs within our school, and will this year further expand through the use of ‘Quadblogging’ where we partner with three other schools across the world. As well as teaching writing content, students learn the skills to communicate online and are provided with a real glimpse into how other children around the world live.

Just as each student has a different learning style, each teacher has a different teaching style, however we must ask ourselves why we do things the way we do if we are to evolve with the changes and continue to meet student’s needs in this new technological era.

Amy Berrell is currently preparing to teach 3rd grade for the second year at a Christian School in New South Wales, Australia. She is passionate about incorporating innovative practices and technology into her classroom in a real and meaningful way. Throughout the year her class blog http://missberrell.blogspot.com/ will have pictures of her classroom and insights into the new practices being undertaken in her class

Children love sweet tastes, and that is completely natural.  You can’t fight it.  Sweetness itself isn’t bad.  We are programmed to seek out sweet things as good sources of nutrients, and many whole foods have a sweet taste, complete with fiber and vitamins—fruit, some veggies, maple syrup, and grain-based sweeteners.

It’s not even the sugar cane plant that’s the problem.  It’s what we’ve done to it.

Sugar has a whole-food form, although few people in the United States have probably ever seen it.

But sugar cane bears no resemblance to what most families keep in the sugar bowl, or what food manufacturers pump into their lab-formulated, processed products.  We’ve changed the nature of this perfectly innocent plant, until it doesn’t even remotely resemble its natural form.  Sugar cane goes through numerous processing steps to become the white crystals we know as sugar, and they are far from “natural.”

There are so many sweet treats out there that don’t contain white sugar or high fructose corn syrup.  Go to the store and explore.  Let your child help pick out treats, and show him how to read the labels to look for the poisons: high fructose corn syrup and sugar!

There are also a million different ways to make simple sweet treats at home.  Here are just a few to get you started:

• Slice a banana and drizzle with maple syrup and naturally sweetened or plain soy milk.
• Freeze very ripe bananas (peeled), then put them in the blender with a little cocoa powder, agave syrup, and any kind of milk (I like coconut milk).  Blend to make a delicious healthful milkshake or “ice cream.”
• Make a parfait of plain non-dairy yogurt with fresh berries and agave nectar drizzled between the layers.
• Sprinkle toast with cinnamon and “frost” with honey.
• Serve real maple syrup over wholegrain pancakes or waffles.  (Mix with regular “pancake syrup” to get your child used to the taste first.)
• Try almond butter toast with a light drizzle of agave nectar, maple syrup, or even molasses or sorghum, if your child is adventurous.

Spread natural (unsweetened) peanut butter in a stalk of celery and top with a line of raisins for the classic “ants on a log” snack.  Freeing your child from sugar’s sweet embrace can feel like an insurmountable challenge at first, but it really only takes a week or two to break sugar’s grip.  Soon, your child will actually be able to taste sweetness in so many other forms, from fruit to sweet potatoes to the natural sweetness in spices like cinnamon.  And remember, moderation is key. For some children, banning something for all eternity is likely to result in rebellion, or at least in resentment. Better to leave the real sugar out there in the world where your child will occasionally encounter it.  Let home be a largely sugar-free zone, and reap the health, weight, and behavior benefits.  They are significant.

Guest post by Barbara Rodriguez, the organic celebrity nanny.  Her new book, The Organic Nanny’s Guide to Raising Healthy Kids: Reclaim a Natural Diet and Lifestyle for Your Child, is going to be released soon.  You can find out more great organic parenting tips and sign up for her newsletter on the website- The Organic Nanny.

During the week, please learn to identify this letter, the sound, and formation. At home please make a list of words that begin with this letter.

Also identify the high frequency words “but” and “it.”

R Activities

1. Draw a rainbow for someone you know.
2. Count all the red toys in your room.
3. Listen to the radio.
4. Hop like a rabbit.
5. Draw five red ballons.
6. Ring your doorbell.
7. Have fun rhyming words.
8. Read your favorite nursery rhymes.
9. Crow like a rooster.
10. Roar like a lion.
11. Run in your back yard or park.

Activity: Play this game. Say, “I am going to say a word, listen carefully to it. If it starts with the R r sound, give me a thumbs up! If it doesn’t start with the I i sound, give me a thumbs down.”

Word List: rail, roadrunner, elephant, rest, run, girl, really, ring, rope, big, rain, boy, cold, road, rabbit

This lesson was taken directly from the homework assignments of a Massachusetts kindergarten teacher.

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During the week, please learn to identify this letter, the sound, and formation. As home please make a list of words that begin with this letter.

Also identify the high frequency words “but” and “it.”

H Activities

1. Tell Mom what makes you happy.
2. How many pennies make ten cents?
3. Draw your house. Practice your address with someone.
4. Hop ten times on one foot.
5. Cut out a square and then a triangle. Put them together to make a house.
6. Gallop like a horse.
7. Hoot like an owl.
8. How many stars are there in the sky?
9. Pretend it is Halloween. What costume will you wear?
10. Hug a friend.

Activity: Play this game. Say, “I am going to say a word, listen carefully to it. If it starts with the I i sound, give me a thumbs up! If it doesn’t start with the H h sound, give me a thumbs down.”

Word List: happy, heavy, elephant, horn, house, girl, helicopter, hop, hug, big, hippo, boy, help, hot, cold, hungry, hundred

This lesson was taken directly from the homework assignments of a Massachusetts kindergarten teacher.

My Town Tutors connects parents with teachers who tutor. It is FREE for parents to search for a teacher in their area.

No matter what grade a child is in, it is imperative to begin the second half of the school year with renewed motivation and a positive attitude. It is not fair, however, to expect students to be able to do this without proper structure and support from the parent(s). Below are examples on how you can help your child improve grades for the last half of the school year.

1.     It’s time for a NOTEBOOK OVERHAUL- Be prepared to have your eyes pop out of your head when you see what the inside of a student backpack or notebook truly reveals. You will witness crumpled paper, torn sheets, and disorganized worksheets without dates, student names, or subjects indicated. This is one of the greatest reasons that students have trouble being organized and effective in school. THEY CAN’T FIND THEIR WORK! Whenever possible, try to have loose-leaf binders available with no more than two or three subjects per binder. (Some teachers only want spiral notebooks so you must adhere to their rules) Divider labels are needed in the following possible categories. Class Work, Homework, Tests and Quizzes. If all work is dated, then your child will now be able to find work chronologically and study properly. Also, children should have a hole puncher available for ALL worksheets given so teacher handouts can be placed in the appropriate section. (Purchase reinforcements as well).

2.     Parent / Teacher Communication is Essential-In a perfect world, teachers would be able to call each and every parent often to discuss ways for children to improve their grades, Unfortunately, teachers have many students and this will never be achieved consistently. You must email, phone, or visit your child’s teacher(s) and determine what was done the first semester and what the teachers’ expectations are for your child to succeed the rest of the year. Keep notes and make sure you ask what you can do to support your child in his or her success in school. This method creates what I like to call the TRIANGLE of Educational Success. We need the School, the Parent, and the Student all involved together in order for children to reach their full potential.

3.     Time can be the enemy, or the HERO-Adults have difficulty with time management so just imagine what student challenges exist with soccer, cheerleading, band, and the SUPERVILLIANS …..PLAYSTATION AND X-Box! Fun and breaks from work are a must but you need to set aside time when children will do their school work. A break is needed when they first arrive home from school. They should NEVER work for more than twenty minutes at a time. Even a sponge needs to be wrung out once in a while. I suggest twenty minutes of studying and then a five minute break AWAY from the study area. Then, upon return to work, MAKE SURE CHILDREN REVIEW the first twenty minutes of studying and THEN move on to new work or new material. Learning does NOT take place during the initial studying process….it takes place during REVIEW. Hopefully these strategies will place your child on the path to a successful 2012!

Marc Hoberman is the Owner / Director of Grade Success, Inc. Tutoring and Educational Consulting. His One Minute Educator Videos help students, parents, and teachers reach their full potential. Marc is available for Private or Group Educational Consulting via webcam or phone. Visit www.gradesuccessinc.com for more information.

We have one simple belief “Teachers are great tutors!”

Last fall we tested My Town Tutors on the South Shore of Massachusetts. The response was incredible! Teachers, parents, students, and guidance counselors loved it. Our goal now is provide the same great service to school communities in every state.

To celebrate our expansion and to encourage teachers from all over the country to register, we are offering a 2-year membership for only $12. That is the only cost to the teacher. 50 cents a month! (A very low cost for the opportunity to make several thousand dollars a year.)

There are no tricks. No other gimmicks.

In order to be the best, we need to recruit the best teachers. So we came up with our special promotion of $12 for a two year membership. We want to give teachers a raise, by allowing them to keep 100% of their tutoring fees.

The more teachers who sign-up for our service, the more valuable we are to parents. If you are a teacher, please share this post with other teachers.

If you have any questions, please email mark@mytowntutors.com. I would love feedback!