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[quote=Anonymous]We have a sixth grader there and chose Truth over Deal. Montessori is working well for our kid who newly loves learning again, after years of not particularly liking her very good/rigorous DCPS elementary and has made deep friendships these past few months. The kid loves the power of having more of a say in learning. Curriculum seems pretty good so far, i.e, I know they learned ratios just like friends at Deal. But they also began with the looking into the Chinese & Egyptian numerals. The quarterly projects seem manageable, they get a ton of class time to work on them. Our kid loves the small STEM lessons so much we have had to warn them they really need to spend more time doing their humanities/writing project.

Other highlights: basically no homework if they are keeping up with in-school check lists. Full hour for lunch and recess, and sometimes they get chances at extra recess depending on group work progress. Small learning groups, which allows for differentiation for both advanced or behind kids. (Ours has benefited from both sides of this!) Lots of field trips and hands-on learning and entrepreneurial opportunities. A good number of clubs and some sports, which seem decent for a new charter school.

It’s a great little community of kids and families. There’s this contingent who went to Montessori elementary schools. There’s a fair number of kids with 504s & IEPs, as it attracts a lot of high-energy kids and/or kids with learning challenges who may not be a great fit for traditional classrooms. It also just seems to attract families who seem to really want to be there for one reason or another. Like we got into a cool conversation with a dad from SE who is an engineer and has helped his kid build some incredible things in their free time and was looking for a middle school that would welcome/cultivate what he called “nerdy interests.”

That said, there are some new school issues and growing pains. Some groups have more behavioral issues than others, which can be distracting for learning. The communication about what’s going on in the classroom isn’t great, and seems dependent on how communicative your kid is. I mention because I know several parents who feel like they don’t know/understand what’s going on, especially those more accustomed to traditional schools/homework, and are questioning the school’s rigor. This may also reflect the PP point that a lot of families are new to Montessori, as it is very different. But I think the school could do a better job at managing this unfamiliarity with stronger communication. And the Montessori culture has come into to conflict with more traditional public school culture when it comes to disciplining kids, meaning I’ve heard about incidents of communal classroom punishment and/or teachers shouting at a class of kids to behave far more than I would like for a Montessori school that touts the importance of respecting kids. That’s not to say it happens a lot, I just think it should never happen.

But overall our kid is pretty happy. Seems a lovely, very humane way to spend the difficult middle school years.[/quote]

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