Can Montessori shift save Milwaukee Public Schools?

Alan Borsuk:

So what's so cool about Montessori schools?

"I was a slow convert," Meagan Holman answers. It took until she saw her 6-year-old son bloom in first grade at Fernwood Montessori School in Bay View for her to be convinced about the distinctive Montessori approach, built on a child's choices to pursue learning in a classroom without conventional grades and textbooks.

"They get them where they need to be," she said of Montessori programs, which, among other things, emphasize hands-on projects for learning and classrooms where students range across three ages (6- to 9-year-olds, for example), with students staying with the same teacher for three years.

Now, Holman, who represents the southeast side on the Milwaukee School Board, has become a key figure in a drive to increase Montessori offerings in the city - and, in her view, improve the prospects for Milwaukee Public Schools to rebound from the buffeting it has taken for years.

The prospects for a Montessori surge were underscored when a School Board committee voted Thursday to support opening a new program on the south side in September. Isn't this MPS, where the wheels grind slowly? Not in this case.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at June 18, 2012 1:25 AM
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