A Community of Children
Montessori del Mar Learning Center, Fort Bragg

Story by Debbie L. Holmer

Education is a natural process carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words, but by experiences in the environment. —Dr. Maria Montessori

Every year, thousands of young children begin their education in Montessori schools around the world, including our very own Fort Bragg. What is this thing called Montessori?

‘A Children’s House’
Over one hundred years ago, an Italian physician inspired the birth of a worldwide educational movement. Maria Montessori was born in the town of Chiaravalle, Italy in 1870. As a young girl, she was considered to be self-confident, optimistic and greatly interested in change. She developed an interest in the diseases of children and in the needs of those said to be “uneducable.”

Her early work centered on women’s rights and social reform and evolved to encompass a totally innovative approach to education. Her success in Italy led to international recognition, and for over forty years she traveled all over the world, lecturing, writing and establishing training programs. Maria Montessori died in the Netherlands in 1952, after a lifetime devoted to the study of child development.

It was in 1907 that Dr. Maria Montessori, the first woman in Italy to qualify as a physician, founded the first Montessori school in San Lorenzo, called “A Children’s House.” Its overall purpose was to give four- to seven-year-old children from low-income families a full-day educational program.

The idea quickly developed and grew in popularity and thus more Montessori schools were formed in Europe and India. It did not take long for the school method to cross over to the United States, creating great interest in the 1920s and 1930s. Unfortunately, however, Montessori’s methods were largely forgotten in the U.S. until the late 1950s, when a second Montessori movement started in America. This time, the main focus was on a set of private schools that served an almost entirely middle-class population.

The Montessori educational system struggled with its own success when it started having trouble finding enough teachers. In fact, it took that teacher shortage to start the creation of free-standing private Montessori teacher training centers where the Montessori teaching methods were taught to aspiring educators.

In the late 1960s, some parents started to call for the public schools in their local areas to offer the Montessori education model for their elementary school children who had graduated from private Montessori preschools.

The public’s rush of support was given a boost by government funds being made available for new Montessori programs starting up in public school areas. Today, Dr. Montessori’s visionary ideas flourish as the cornerstone of a thriving educational practice.

Montessori’s influence can be seen not only in the number of schools that bear her name, but throughout the fields of child care, education and child development. Many of her ideas are now part of our common knowledge, language and thinking about children. She was an innovator in the field of education and ideas that were once met with great resistance in her day now seem natural as accepted aspects of childhood.

Montessori students have demonstrated a consistently high level of reading compression and academic performance. There are many Montessori schools in the U.S. including hundreds of programs in public and charter schools, where the interest in enrollment often results in long waiting lists.

What is the Montessori Method of Education?
In a brief definition, this system of education is both a philosophy of child development and a rationale for guiding such growth, based on two important developmental needs of children—the need for freedom within limits, and a carefully prepared environment which guarantees exposure to materials and experiences.

The main premises of Montessori education are:
• Children are to be respected as different from adults and as individuals who differ from each other.
• Children possess an unusual sensitivity and intellectual ability to absorb and learn from their environments that are unlike those of the adult both in quality and capacity.
• The most important years of children’s growth are the first six years of life when unconscious learning is gradually brought to the conscious level.

The Whole Child approach—the primary goal of a Montessori program is to help each child reach their full potential in all areas of life. The holistic curriculum allows the child to experience the joy of learning, the time to enjoy the process and ensures the development of self esteem. It provides the experiences from which children create their knowledge.

The prepared environment—in order for self-directed learning to take place, the whole learning environment—classroom, materials and social setting/atmosphere—must be supportive of the child.

The Montessori materials—Dr. Montessori’s observations of the kinds of things which children enjoy and go back to repeatedly, led her to design a number of multi-sensory, sequential and self-correcting materials to facilitate learning.

The teacher—Originally called a “directress,” the Montessori teacher (also known as a “guide”) functions as a designer of the environment, resource person, role model, demonstrator, record-keeper and meticulous observer of each child’s behavior and growth, facilitating learning.

For more information on the Montessori Method of Education, go to American Montessori Society at www.amshq.org.

Goals of a Montessori School
Developing a positive attitude toward school
Helping each child develop self confidence
Assisting each child in building a habit of concentration
Fostering an abiding curiosity
Developing habits of initiative and persistence
Fostering inner security and sense of order in the child

Montessori del Mar, Fort Bragg
Montessori del Mar is a free, public charter learning center for kindergarten, first- and second-grade students. They are an extension of Mattole Valley Charter School of the Mattole Valley Unified School District in Humboldt County, and are pleased to offer the families of the Mendocino Coast an alternative, child-center approach to early education. The learning center is located in Fort Bragg and is also the location of Sprouts Montessori Children’s House, a large family childcare facility serving twelve children ages two to five years old. Both the Children’s House and the learning center’s environment are planned thoughtfully for the ease and enjoyment of young children. Guided by the Montessori approach, they have prepared an aesthetically pleasing, home-like educational environment where specially designed learning tools are available for students to follow their interests in math, geography, music, physical science, botany, art, zoology, geometry, history, language, and much more.

The staff
Sharon Richardson is the classroom educational specialist at the learning center. She received her B.A. in child psychology from Boston University in 1991 and her primary Montessori certificate and California multiple subjects teaching credential from Saint Mary’s College of California in 1997. She is a member of the American Montessori Society and the North American Montessori Teachers Association. Sharon has also received training in positive discipline, non-violent communication, preventative health techniques, food handling, pediatric CPR and first aid, as well as in assisting and advising parents of young children.

Jessica Drayer is a Montessori guide for Sprouts Montessori Children’s House and an educational specialist with the learning center available to provide support for home-schooling students. She is native to the Mendocino Coast, and returned in 2007 to resettle here after working as a Montessori guide in Santa Cruz and Livermore. She holds a master’s degree in education, a California multiple subjects teaching credential, and is certified as a Montessori primary and elementary guide.

Anaswara Jannone is the site supervisor for the learning center. She assists Sharon in the classroom during the morning work period, and helps with the overall administration of the program. She began training with the Montessori World Educational Institute in 2008.

Mark Bagguley is the owner and operator of the Sprouts Montessori Children’s House and is Sharon’s husband. He is a classroom assistant to Jessica, and began training with the Montessori World Educational Institute in 2008.

For more information on the North American Montessori Teachers Association go to
www.montessori-namta.org/NAMTA/index.html. For more information on the Montessori World Educational Institute go to www.montessoriworld.org.

Friends of Montessori del Mar
The Friends of Montessori del Mar is a vibrant body of committed community members whose mission is to support the learning center. This parent-led group just recently received news that they are now a 501(c)(3) non-profit. They have a seven-member board of directors, along with two general director seats. This organization augments the learning center’s state budget allocation, while also providing support to the teachers and families. They are supported by membership dues, public donations and community fund-raising. They just recently had a successful fund-raiser at Caspar Community Center.

“We envision a Montessori learning center where the active participation of family members supports the growing child’s awareness of his place in the world,” says Sharon Richardson, founder and director of the center. “The Friends organization will help us to achieve this by drawing on the knowledge of the diverse group of parents and by raising much needed funds that will provide supplies, field trips and the like. This spring, we broke ground outside the center, creating a vibrant working garden for the children to experience the wonders of nature. We also built a fantastic playground that provides a fun outdoor space for the children to be together. This would not have been possible without the dedicated group of parents and children we have in our center.”

Sharon Richardson goes on to say, “The state budget cuts in education have severely impacted our learning center. It is the cohesion, dedication, and creativity of our parent nonprofit group, The Friends of Montessori del Mar, as well as the generous support of our local community that empowers us to continue to offer a Montessori prepared environment to our elementary aged home-schooling children.”

Parent volunteer commitment
Families of Montessori del Mar students are encouraged to be active in the learning center community. Families are requested to commit to forty parent participation hours annually, along with chaperoning field trips or outings, sharing a skill with the children at the learning center, gardening or donating seedlings, donating classroom consumables, and assisting in many other ways.

An interview with the founder
I had the pleasure of visiting Fort Bragg’s Montessori del Mar learning center twice while working on this article. Founded by Sharon Richardson in 2007, the learning center currently has fifteen children enrolled in kindergarten through third grade.

I chatted with Sharon, site supervisor Anaswara Jannone and Friends of Montessori del Mar president Susana Jung (Susana’s mom, Lilia Parrish, helps out three mornings a week at the learning center and Susana’s daughter was the first student at the Montessori learning center).

Founder Sharon Richardson has an extensive teaching background. She worked in the Tenderloin area of San Francisco, spent two years in Indonesia, where she and her husband Mark set up the first Montessori school in all of Sumatra. She’s taught elementary school in San Francisco and in Santa Cruz.

Sharon and Mark have two children, Shyne, age six and Wing Song, age three and three-quarters. After the birth of their second child, they went to Thailand, living at a home and school for orphaned hill tribe children. They built and set up a Montessori school and trained teachers. They lived there for six months until their daughter became ill and they had to come back to the states. Sharon said, “It was a wonderful experience.”

How did she get to Fort Bragg? Sharon saw an ad in an obscure Montessori online journal for someone to start a Montessori school on the Mendocino Coast (there hadn’t been one here for over thirty years). She answered that ad, moved here with her family and set up and opened the Children’s House in January of 2007 with five students. “We received lots of support, and gradually enrollment moved up to twelve students.”

In September of 2007, Sharon and Mark opened up the learning center, “starting with a lot of faith, no furniture, and no books.” It was a collaborative effort, “parents were so motivated to provide something wonderful for their children; they are willing to ‘assist’ always.” The day I was there the children were rehearsing for their recording of a CD of all their songs of peace.

I found the Montessori del Mar learning center to be a wonderful environment. Folks, grace and courtesy are taught here! They have a classroom bill of rights. Sharon and her staff emphasize education for peace. They teach about kindness, compassionate, respect for yourself and for others and how to “be with other people.” The Montessori children feel comfortable and safe. It’s a “family” environment. They support each other and work easily together.

Sharon says their curriculum is based on science—“history of the natural world. To have a peaceful world, you need to have peace in your heart and understand the natural world.”

Their first Great Lesson, as they are called, is the “Big Bang,” where children “get a sense of wonder about the formation of the earth.” The “Time Line of Life” is another Great Lesson, where they learn about the five kingdoms of life. When I visited the school, the children were just beginning to study the local Native American culture. Other Great Lessons include topics such as “History of Language” and “History of Math.”

Every four weeks the children in the learning center host a presentation where they serve their parents tea and share their work with them. They have a lesson in art/painting every week. They go to the library often. Sharon says, “Our children get a real sense of satisfaction out of their work.”

There are no textbooks involved in the Montessori method. It’s an oral tradition where the “guides” tell stories and the children perform their research from those stories. “All of our children are avid readers and they inspire each other. They become very fluent readers from having the freedom to read for pleasure.”

Sharon goes on to say that “Math is one of the most exciting areas of the classroom—from concrete to abstract—starting with beads to using little stamps printed with numbers. Our children end up with a solid knowledge of math. The children know what is expected of them each day. They get the work out themselves—it’s all sequenced on the shelves. There might be six different types of math going on in one room at the same time,” says Sharon. “The children support each other, helping each other with transitions.”

The Montessori children have a real work ethic about what they are doing. “Work is valued here,” says Sharon. The children have “job time” at the end of each day. Their chores change each week. The children also learn about nutrition.

Parent Katrina Ashenbrenner started a garden, and so “we are hoping to grow our own food for the children’s lunches.” They have lots of field trips. “Our parents are very hands-on and this is encouraged. Our ‘guides’ and parents are a team. I get so energized when dealing with these children. I feel blessed to be around their loving energy and their eagerness.”

As an educator, Sharon stays connected to the local community. “I’m joyful. My work is my joy and I see that in my children also.”

Children of Montessori del Mar
The children of the Montessori del Mar learning center are: Arhum Ahmad (kindergarten, age five), Shyne Bagguley (grade one, age six), Tiago Beck (kindergarten, age five), Jazmine Fiedler (grade two, age seven), Malia Jannone (kindergarten, age five), Lily Jung (grade one, age six), Kai Kidd (kindergarten, age five), Chandra Lotus (grade two, age eight), William Loughton (kindergarten, age six), Aniyah Marcello (grade one, age seven), Giuseppe McKerny (grade one, age seven), Nikolas McKerny (kindergarten, age five), Meadow Snyder (kindergarten, age five), Shyli Snyder (grade three, age nine), and Tinan Trudell (grade two, age eight).

Montessori del Mar, Fort Bragg is a dedicated community of educators and families on the Mendocino Coast who agree with Dr. Maria Montessori that each generation of children has the opportunity to create a united and peaceful world.

For more information, follow their happenings at friendsofmontessoridelmar.blogspot.com, or call Sharon Richardson at 964-7311 or e-mail at montessoridelmar@att.net.

Whoever touches the life of the child touches the most sensitive point of a whole, which has roots in the most distant past and climbs toward the infinite future. —Dr. Maria Montessori