Which schools, if any, excelled during the pandemic?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lee Montessori rocked DL and quickly came up with a plan.

I mean, no Montessori can rock DL but hey, you do you.

Sometimes I just think people have been Stockholm syndromed into thinking this year was great and fine.

Why wouldn’t a Montessori school be able to rock DL? Dr. Montessori herself said people completely missed the point with her philosophy on education by focusing on the materials.

Environment is essential for Montessori. It's not about the Montessori-approved materials (you could stock a Montessori classroom with stuff from a couple garage sales and a trip to Walmart if you needed to), but the environment does need to be set up in a specific way. And for a true Montessori education, you really need a classroom with multiple children in order to fully embrace the kind of child-led exploration the approach dictates. Plus the reason Montessori teachers generally have certifications is that the style of leading/teaching in Montessori requires a specific skill set (and honestly is not conducive to a limited amount of online instruction a few times a day).

So unless everyone at Lee just happens to have a very relaxed home life with enough space, and at least one parent with the time and skills to facilitate, then Lee failed at providing a Montessori education to their kids. I'm sure some kids had a good experience, but those are likely kids with a SAHP and means and consistent schedules who could homeschool and be fine. A lot of Lee kids don't have anything like that, and they barely got an education at all this year, much less one grounded in Montessori philosophy. Come on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lee Montessori rocked DL and quickly came up with a plan.

I mean, no Montessori can rock DL but hey, you do you.

Sometimes I just think people have been Stockholm syndromed into thinking this year was great and fine.

Why wouldn’t a Montessori school be able to rock DL? Dr. Montessori herself said people completely missed the point with her philosophy on education by focusing on the materials.

Environment is essential for Montessori. It's not about the Montessori-approved materials (you could stock a Montessori classroom with stuff from a couple garage sales and a trip to Walmart if you needed to), but the environment does need to be set up in a specific way. And for a true Montessori education, you really need a classroom with multiple children in order to fully embrace the kind of child-led exploration the approach dictates. Plus the reason Montessori teachers generally have certifications is that the style of leading/teaching in Montessori requires a specific skill set (and honestly is not conducive to a limited amount of online instruction a few times a day).

So unless everyone at Lee just happens to have a very relaxed home life with enough space, and at least one parent with the time and skills to facilitate, then Lee failed at providing a Montessori education to their kids. I'm sure some kids had a good experience, but those are likely kids with a SAHP and means and consistent schedules who could homeschool and be fine. A lot of Lee kids don't have anything like that, and they barely got an education at all this year, much less one grounded in Montessori philosophy. Come on.

Eh. I'm sure Maria Montessori wouldn't see things so inflexibly during a pandemic.
I bet the staff had a good sense of what essential aspects of Montessori needed to be implemented at home. Youtube videos show plenty of options for handwritten paper pieces instead of beautiful wooden blocks, for example. and yes, a peer group is super important in Montessori, but it is too in all models of education!
And a relaxed home with space and a parent with time are elements that helped kids thrive in distance learning in all models.

[Anonymous]

I know people elsewhere in the country whose kids have never missed a day of school because of coronavirus. Those kids' schools excelled. Our kids' schools, here in D.C., used the pandemic as an excuse to go on an extended vacation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know people elsewhere in the country whose kids have never missed a day of school because of coronavirus. Those kids' schools excelled. Our kids' schools, here in D.C., used the pandemic as an excuse to go on an extended vacation.

Nonsense. Our teachers worked tirelessly, with parents hovering in on every class just off-camera (I know I was, often), or with parents conducting important business on the phone while pacing in the background of their child's camera, causing huge distractions when their child unmuted. They showed patience, empathy, flexibility for every child and every parent like they never knew they could, because they knew this year they needed to.
Parents, too, did everything they could for their children and family to thrive. It just so happened that some of them believed their responsibility toward their kids was to try and obtain by force what wasn't possible. We couldn't pretend covid didn't exist and no angry demands and accusations to the schools could make the real constraints and unknowns of the pandemic go away.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lee Montessori rocked DL and quickly came up with a plan.

I mean, no Montessori can rock DL but hey, you do you.

Sometimes I just think people have been Stockholm syndromed into thinking this year was great and fine.

Why wouldn’t a Montessori school be able to rock DL? Dr. Montessori herself said people completely missed the point with her philosophy on education by focusing on the materials.

Environment is essential for Montessori. It's not about the Montessori-approved materials (you could stock a Montessori classroom with stuff from a couple garage sales and a trip to Walmart if you needed to), but the environment does need to be set up in a specific way. And for a true Montessori education, you really need a classroom with multiple children in order to fully embrace the kind of child-led exploration the approach dictates. Plus the reason Montessori teachers generally have certifications is that the style of leading/teaching in Montessori requires a specific skill set (and honestly is not conducive to a limited amount of online instruction a few times a day).

So unless everyone at Lee just happens to have a very relaxed home life with enough space, and at least one parent with the time and skills to facilitate, then Lee failed at providing a Montessori education to their kids. I'm sure some kids had a good experience, but those are likely kids with a SAHP and means and consistent schedules who could homeschool and be fine. A lot of Lee kids don't have anything like that, and they barely got an education at all this year, much less one grounded in Montessori philosophy. Come on.

Eh. I'm sure Maria Montessori wouldn't see things so inflexibly during a pandemic.
I bet the staff had a good sense of what essential aspects of Montessori needed to be implemented at home. Youtube videos show plenty of options for handwritten paper pieces instead of beautiful wooden blocks, for example. and yes, a peer group is super important in Montessori, but it is too in all models of education!
And a relaxed home with space and a parent with time are elements that helped kids thrive in distance learning in all models.

Honestly, this is an utterly absurd argument. There's no way any educator, much less a Montessori ECE educator, would ever claim with a straight face that DL works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know people elsewhere in the country whose kids have never missed a day of school because of coronavirus. Those kids' schools excelled. Our kids' schools, here in D.C., used the pandemic as an excuse to go on an extended vacation.

Nonsense. Our teachers worked tirelessly, with parents hovering in on every class just off-camera (I know I was, often), or with parents conducting important business on the phone while pacing in the background of their child's camera, causing huge distractions when their child unmuted. They showed patience, empathy, flexibility for every child and every parent like they never knew they could, because they knew this year they needed to.
Parents, too, did everything they could for their children and family to thrive. It just so happened that some of them believed their responsibility toward their kids was to try and obtain by force what wasn't possible. We couldn't pretend covid didn't exist and no angry demands and accusations to the schools could make the real constraints and unknowns of the pandemic go away.

this is ... an interesting rewriting of history.

do you think we somehow couldn't perceive that schools everywhere in the country, world, and even here in DC stayed open?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lee Montessori rocked DL and quickly came up with a plan.

I mean, no Montessori can rock DL but hey, you do you.

Sometimes I just think people have been Stockholm syndromed into thinking this year was great and fine.

Why wouldn’t a Montessori school be able to rock DL? Dr. Montessori herself said people completely missed the point with her philosophy on education by focusing on the materials.

Environment is essential for Montessori. It's not about the Montessori-approved materials (you could stock a Montessori classroom with stuff from a couple garage sales and a trip to Walmart if you needed to), but the environment does need to be set up in a specific way. And for a true Montessori education, you really need a classroom with multiple children in order to fully embrace the kind of child-led exploration the approach dictates. Plus the reason Montessori teachers generally have certifications is that the style of leading/teaching in Montessori requires a specific skill set (and honestly is not conducive to a limited amount of online instruction a few times a day).

So unless everyone at Lee just happens to have a very relaxed home life with enough space, and at least one parent with the time and skills to facilitate, then Lee failed at providing a Montessori education to their kids. I'm sure some kids had a good experience, but those are likely kids with a SAHP and means and consistent schedules who could homeschool and be fine. A lot of Lee kids don't have anything like that, and they barely got an education at all this year, much less one grounded in Montessori philosophy. Come on.

Eh. I'm sure Maria Montessori wouldn't see things so inflexibly during a pandemic.
I bet the staff had a good sense of what essential aspects of Montessori needed to be implemented at home. Youtube videos show plenty of options for handwritten paper pieces instead of beautiful wooden blocks, for example. and yes, a peer group is super important in Montessori, but it is too in all models of education!
And a relaxed home with space and a parent with time are elements that helped kids thrive in distance learning in all models.

Honestly, this is an utterly absurd argument. There's no way any educator, much less a Montessori ECE educator, would ever claim with a straight face that DL works.

What element of my little six line paragraph is one utterly absurd argument? I say a few things. You say none, other than angry pronouncements of failure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know people elsewhere in the country whose kids have never missed a day of school because of coronavirus. Those kids' schools excelled. Our kids' schools, here in D.C., used the pandemic as an excuse to go on an extended vacation.

Nonsense. Our teachers worked tirelessly, with parents hovering in on every class just off-camera (I know I was, often), or with parents conducting important business on the phone while pacing in the background of their child's camera, causing huge distractions when their child unmuted. They showed patience, empathy, flexibility for every child and every parent like they never knew they could, because they knew this year they needed to.
Parents, too, did everything they could for their children and family to thrive. It just so happened that some of them believed their responsibility toward their kids was to try and obtain by force what wasn't possible. We couldn't pretend covid didn't exist and no angry demands and accusations to the schools could make the real constraints and unknowns of the pandemic go away.

Oh, the drama. "By force"....yea, all those gun-toting liberals just marching teachers into schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lee Montessori rocked DL and quickly came up with a plan.

I mean, no Montessori can rock DL but hey, you do you.

Sometimes I just think people have been Stockholm syndromed into thinking this year was great and fine.

Why wouldn’t a Montessori school be able to rock DL? Dr. Montessori herself said people completely missed the point with her philosophy on education by focusing on the materials.

Environment is essential for Montessori. It's not about the Montessori-approved materials (you could stock a Montessori classroom with stuff from a couple garage sales and a trip to Walmart if you needed to), but the environment does need to be set up in a specific way. And for a true Montessori education, you really need a classroom with multiple children in order to fully embrace the kind of child-led exploration the approach dictates. Plus the reason Montessori teachers generally have certifications is that the style of leading/teaching in Montessori requires a specific skill set (and honestly is not conducive to a limited amount of online instruction a few times a day).

So unless everyone at Lee just happens to have a very relaxed home life with enough space, and at least one parent with the time and skills to facilitate, then Lee failed at providing a Montessori education to their kids. I'm sure some kids had a good experience, but those are likely kids with a SAHP and means and consistent schedules who could homeschool and be fine. A lot of Lee kids don't have anything like that, and they barely got an education at all this year, much less one grounded in Montessori philosophy. Come on.

Thanks for spelling this out. I was too tired to reply.

I’m just trying to say no Montessori “excelled” sorry Lee.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know people elsewhere in the country whose kids have never missed a day of school because of coronavirus. Those kids' schools excelled. Our kids' schools, here in D.C., used the pandemic as an excuse to go on an extended vacation.

Nonsense. Our teachers worked tirelessly, with parents hovering in on every class just off-camera (I know I was, often), or with parents conducting important business on the phone while pacing in the background of their child's camera, causing huge distractions when their child unmuted. They showed patience, empathy, flexibility for every child and every parent like they never knew they could, because they knew this year they needed to.
Parents, too, did everything they could for their children and family to thrive. It just so happened that some of them believed their responsibility toward their kids was to try and obtain by force what wasn't possible. We couldn't pretend covid didn't exist and no angry demands and accusations to the schools could make the real constraints and unknowns of the pandemic go away.

My hat is off to my kid’s teachers who were working under difficult conditions. But DCPS, the chancellor, the mayor and the union failed the kids. Utterly failed them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lee Montessori rocked DL and quickly came up with a plan.

I mean, no Montessori can rock DL but hey, you do you.

Sometimes I just think people have been Stockholm syndromed into thinking this year was great and fine.

Why wouldn’t a Montessori school be able to rock DL? Dr. Montessori herself said people completely missed the point with her philosophy on education by focusing on the materials.

Environment is essential for Montessori. It's not about the Montessori-approved materials (you could stock a Montessori classroom with stuff from a couple garage sales and a trip to Walmart if you needed to), but the environment does need to be set up in a specific way. And for a true Montessori education, you really need a classroom with multiple children in order to fully embrace the kind of child-led exploration the approach dictates. Plus the reason Montessori teachers generally have certifications is that the style of leading/teaching in Montessori requires a specific skill set (and honestly is not conducive to a limited amount of online instruction a few times a day).

So unless everyone at Lee just happens to have a very relaxed home life with enough space, and at least one parent with the time and skills to facilitate, then Lee failed at providing a Montessori education to their kids. I'm sure some kids had a good experience, but those are likely kids with a SAHP and means and consistent schedules who could homeschool and be fine. A lot of Lee kids don't have anything like that, and they barely got an education at all this year, much less one grounded in Montessori philosophy. Come on.

Eh. I'm sure Maria Montessori wouldn't see things so inflexibly during a pandemic.
I bet the staff had a good sense of what essential aspects of Montessori needed to be implemented at home. Youtube videos show plenty of options for handwritten paper pieces instead of beautiful wooden blocks, for example. and yes, a peer group is super important in Montessori, but it is too in all models of education!
And a relaxed home with space and a parent with time are elements that helped kids thrive in distance learning in all models.

Honestly, this is an utterly absurd argument. There's no way any educator, much less a Montessori ECE educator, would ever claim with a straight face that DL works.

What element of my little six line paragraph is one utterly absurd argument? I say a few things. You say none, other than angry pronouncements of failure.

the idea that Maria Montessori would think DL was anything but a travesty - she who devised her method to help teach SN and disadvantage kids, who emphasized the prepared environment to create autonomy, who emphasized hands-on learning and teaching ...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a weird question.

DC is an extreme, extreme outlier nationally in its slowness in getting kids back in the classroom. Maybe the only place in the U.S. that did worse than DC was San Francisco.

And we're asking who excelled?

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lee Montessori rocked DL and quickly came up with a plan.

I mean, no Montessori can rock DL but hey, you do you.

Sometimes I just think people have been Stockholm syndromed into thinking this year was great and fine.

Why wouldn’t a Montessori school be able to rock DL? Dr. Montessori herself said people completely missed the point with her philosophy on education by focusing on the materials.

Environment is essential for Montessori. It's not about the Montessori-approved materials (you could stock a Montessori classroom with stuff from a couple garage sales and a trip to Walmart if you needed to), but the environment does need to be set up in a specific way. And for a true Montessori education, you really need a classroom with multiple children in order to fully embrace the kind of child-led exploration the approach dictates. Plus the reason Montessori teachers generally have certifications is that the style of leading/teaching in Montessori requires a specific skill set (and honestly is not conducive to a limited amount of online instruction a few times a day).

So unless everyone at Lee just happens to have a very relaxed home life with enough space, and at least one parent with the time and skills to facilitate, then Lee failed at providing a Montessori education to their kids. I'm sure some kids had a good experience, but those are likely kids with a SAHP and means and consistent schedules who could homeschool and be fine. A lot of Lee kids don't have anything like that, and they barely got an education at all this year, much less one grounded in Montessori philosophy. Come on.

Eh. I'm sure Maria Montessori wouldn't see things so inflexibly during a pandemic.
I bet the staff had a good sense of what essential aspects of Montessori needed to be implemented at home. Youtube videos show plenty of options for handwritten paper pieces instead of beautiful wooden blocks, for example. and yes, a peer group is super important in Montessori, but it is too in all models of education!
And a relaxed home with space and a parent with time are elements that helped kids thrive in distance learning in all models.

Honestly, this is an utterly absurd argument. There's no way any educator, much less a Montessori ECE educator, would ever claim with a straight face that DL works.

What element of my little six line paragraph is one utterly absurd argument? I say a few things. You say none, other than angry pronouncements of failure.

the idea that Maria Montessori would think DL was anything but a travesty - she who devised her method to help teach SN and disadvantage kids, who emphasized the prepared environment to create autonomy, who emphasized hands-on learning and teaching ...

She devised something new, while using what was available to her to work with. Such a huge emphasis on the little everyday domestic tasks in the very early years. What better environment than a loving home? She created that environment for children much worse off than Lee Montessori students. DCPCS students by-and-large have at home what Maria Montessori had to recreate inside of a children's home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lee Montessori rocked DL and quickly came up with a plan.

I mean, no Montessori can rock DL but hey, you do you.

Sometimes I just think people have been Stockholm syndromed into thinking this year was great and fine.

Why wouldn’t a Montessori school be able to rock DL? Dr. Montessori herself said people completely missed the point with her philosophy on education by focusing on the materials.

Environment is essential for Montessori. It's not about the Montessori-approved materials (you could stock a Montessori classroom with stuff from a couple garage sales and a trip to Walmart if you needed to), but the environment does need to be set up in a specific way. And for a true Montessori education, you really need a classroom with multiple children in order to fully embrace the kind of child-led exploration the approach dictates. Plus the reason Montessori teachers generally have certifications is that the style of leading/teaching in Montessori requires a specific skill set (and honestly is not conducive to a limited amount of online instruction a few times a day).

So unless everyone at Lee just happens to have a very relaxed home life with enough space, and at least one parent with the time and skills to facilitate, then Lee failed at providing a Montessori education to their kids. I'm sure some kids had a good experience, but those are likely kids with a SAHP and means and consistent schedules who could homeschool and be fine. A lot of Lee kids don't have anything like that, and they barely got an education at all this year, much less one grounded in Montessori philosophy. Come on.

Eh. I'm sure Maria Montessori wouldn't see things so inflexibly during a pandemic.
I bet the staff had a good sense of what essential aspects of Montessori needed to be implemented at home. Youtube videos show plenty of options for handwritten paper pieces instead of beautiful wooden blocks, for example. and yes, a peer group is super important in Montessori, but it is too in all models of education!
And a relaxed home with space and a parent with time are elements that helped kids thrive in distance learning in all models.

Honestly, this is an utterly absurd argument. There's no way any educator, much less a Montessori ECE educator, would ever claim with a straight face that DL works.

What element of my little six line paragraph is one utterly absurd argument? I say a few things. You say none, other than angry pronouncements of failure.

the idea that Maria Montessori would think DL was anything but a travesty - she who devised her method to help teach SN and disadvantage kids, who emphasized the prepared environment to create autonomy, who emphasized hands-on learning and teaching ...

She devised something new, while using what was available to her to work with. Such a huge emphasis on the little everyday domestic tasks in the very early years. What better environment than a loving home? She created that environment for children much worse off than Lee Montessori students. DCPCS students by-and-large have at home what Maria Montessori had to recreate inside of a children's home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Basis was incredible. Maybe even better than in person. Certainly not at all worse. I could not have been more impressed.

+1

+2 and +3 (opining on both my kids’ grades)

+4!