We Have Moved – And We Want You to Come Along!

Beyond Montessori Followers! First and foremost we want to thank you for following our blog and keeping apprised of our comings and goings. We’ve loved the dialogue and feedback.

We are moving the blog component to our website, and would love to have you follow us there. All our old posts have been imported over as well!

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE NEW BLOG!

Hope to see you there!

What’s New at Beyond Montessori?

Beyond Montessori St CatharinesDon’t freak out! This is a real update, the blog has not slipped into eternal dormancy.

We’re still here, and the school has all sorts of new, exciting bits of information to send your way.

Like, for instance, how our new website is up and running now and can be checked out here: http://www.beyondmontessori.com/

The reason the posts haven’t been going up as frequently is due to working out a few kinks on our new site. We have a blog feature there, and we’re trying to import all our old posts and bring the party over to one location.

So please bear with us while we have a crack at it. Check out the site, give us feedback, and we look forward to having things up and running very shortly.

Thanks so much for your support!

Beyond Montessori Testimonial – Parents Speak

Duane, Jen, and JaxenI suppose a little horn-tooting needs to occur every now and then. We are so very proud of our little school, the students and parents involved, and the hard-working teachers.

In a sense we are a community within a community – and it means a lot to us when parents step forward to speak about their child’s transformation.

This week, we have Jen and Duane Swartz talking about their experiences with their daughter Jaxen:

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Revisiting Technology in Schools – The Other Side of the Coin

Technology in SchoolsAbout a year ago, we posted on a New York Times article covering The Debate Over Technology in the ClassroomIn a nutshell, the article outlined the difficulties of trying to make a definitive positive or negative claim

Technology has been proven to provide certain advantages in classrooms (the rate at which information is available), but has also offered some serious problems (distraction and short attention spans). In the end, we determined how technology was used in the classroom mattered most.

This week, we’ve found another article called Our Kids Glorious New Age of DistractionIn the Salon article, Thomas Rogers interviews Cathy N. Davidson about her new book: Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the way we Live, Work, and Learn (long title, I know)Continue reading

2013 First Week of School – Beyond Montessori Style

Beyond Montessori School 2013Week one of 2013 is complete and everyone heads home for the weekend. What a great start!

You could quite literally feel the energy when the kids entered their classrooms for the first time since the holidays. Continue reading

The Necessity of Community in Times of Grief

MAN PLAYS A VIOLIN ALONG CHURCH HILL ROAD IN NEWTOWN, CONNECTICUTWhen I first read the heart-crushing accounts of the shootings at Sally Hook Elementary in Newtown Connecticut, there was very little else to do but lament.

The sorrow felt for the children and adults who died, for the mentally imbalanced young man who thought it necessary to commit such an act, for the families left with the impossibly profound distress felt when a loved one is taken from them – all too overwhelming and real.

It takes very little imagination to posit your own child in that scenario, and imagine the devastation felt. And yet such horrors are commonplace around the world – the stories numerous and equal in tragedy. We read about killings in the Congo, and Syria, Pakistan, Rwanda, and Somalia.

Now tragedy occurs 6 hours from our home, and we have no choice but to stop and pay heed and cry for such terrible loss.  Continue reading

Changing Education Paradigms – A RSA Animation

Learning Through ArtWhoa Nelly, we’ve found an excellent animation about the nature of public education and why it needs to change.

Educational reform is happening all over the world, and there are HUGELY IMPORTANT reasons why.

In part, as we’ve mentioned before, Education needs to promote a child’s “inner fire” when it comes to discovery and learning. But there’s also the importance of creativity and aesthetic experience.

Please, keep reading and watch this video. It’s a game-changer.

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