The vision was a school focused on a classical educational philosophy, embracing the traditional liberal arts, within a Catholic religious worldview that would be both joyful and affordable.

What began as a tiny school with only 10 students now enrolls more than 150 high schoolers. That flagship school is one of more than 70 independently operated high schools within the fast-growing , educating more than 2,000 students.

Wildflower Montessori Microschools

Joy and access were two of the guiding principles that spurred Veronica Vital into teaching. Growing up in Mexico, Vital had seen teachers hit their students in class and employ other harsh practices. She decided early on that she wanted to be a teacher who would respect and honor children with kindness. After college, Vital moved to the United States and began working as a teaching assistant in a Montessori preschool where she fell in love with the Montessori philosophy and its child-centered approach to education. She became certified in Montessori education, teaching in both private and public charter Montessori schools in Minneapolis, but she kept feeling the tug toward education entrepreneurship.

“I always wanted to have my own school,” Vital told me. She got that opportunity in 2018 when she launched , a bilingual preschool and elementary public charter school in South Minneapolis. Cosmos is part of the national  microschool network that began in 2014 to support smaller, community-embedded, more accessible Montessori schools. Wildflower helps teacher-entrepreneurs like Vital who want to launch their own schools. The network now has more than 60 microschools across the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Most are private schools, but Wildflower public charter schools operate in Colorado, Minneapolis, New York City and Washington, D.C. Today, Vital is leading another Wildflower microschool, , also in South Minneapolis.

Skola Microschool

Just outside of the city, in Roseville, another longtime educator, Kristin Fink, launched  in 2022. A classroom teacher in a conventional private school for 16 years, Fink was growing increasingly frustrated by the standardization and rigidity of traditional schooling. When Covid hit in the spring of 2020 and her school went remote, Fink, like so many parents across the U.S., created an informal “pandemic pod” for her two young children and a couple of neighbors.

“That sparked everything I knew to be true,” said Fink about the learning pod. “Kids want to learn, and if you fuel their fire, they’ll go much further than you could ever take them.” When she returned to in-person teaching in the fall of 2021, Fink was hopeful that there could be meaningful changes in how schooling was done. She was disappointed.

“Everyone was just trying to get back to the way it was,” said Fink, understanding the eagerness for a return to normalcy. “But I thought that this was our chance to build something new. I felt so philosophically alone in my workplace. Why would anyone ever want to go back to the way it was?”

The next fall, Fink and her longtime colleague Ginger Montezon, opened Skola as a faith-based K-8 microschool. All students are recognized homeschoolers who attend the program up to five days a week at an annual cost of $6,250. With about 25 mixed-aged learners, Skola is as big as Fink wants it to get. “I want to be kid-facing not admin-facing,” said Fink, explaining that if she grew bigger or scaled to new locations she may lose the time to teach, which is her driving passion.

Retaining the intentionally small, individualized atmosphere of Skola is a key priority, but Fink is supporting the growth of more schools like hers in other ways. “We’ve hosted 12 current educators in our space and four of them have launched or are planning to launch their own microschools,” she said, adding that she will be welcoming five public school teachers from southern Minnesota later this month who are also interested in opening their own school.

Homeschooling Collaboratives

Fink’s full-time microschool for homeschoolers is representative of many of today’s emerging educational models. Parents and teachers alike crave more educational autonomy and flexibility and are seeking and starting alternatives to conventional schooling.

This is particularly true for parents of children with special learning needs. In Stillwater, Amy Marotz launched a full-time homeschooling collaborative, , to serve the distinct needs of gifted and neurodiverse learners. After earning an education degree and teaching at a Minneapolis charter school early in her career, Marotz began homeschooling her own children and saw a need for a dedicated program to address neurodiversity within a holistic, nurturing environment. She now runs the program from her home with about a dozen learners and, like Fink, is helping other aspiring founders to create their own microschools, homeschooling collaboratives, and similar learning models.

Veteran homeschooling parents have known for years how homeschooling and its various iterations can support customized, creative education. Some of them, such as Rebecca Hope, are helping a new generation of parents navigate alternative education options. After homeschooling her five children through high school, Hope launched  in 2020 as a twice-weekly, faith-based homeschooling program offering a la carte classes to local middle school and high school homeschooled students. Located in Roseville, Hope’s program now serves more than 200 homeschoolers and continues to grow.

This small sampling of innovative schools and spaces in and around the Twin Cities demonstrates the variety and breadth of emerging learning models I am seeing across the U.S. From faith-based programs to secular options, Montessori models to classical, home-based and storefront, school, homeschool or something in between—entrepreneurial parents and teachers are creating a medley of more personalized, low-cost learning options for families.

As Awakening Spirit’s Marotz told me: “When I started in 2017, no one had heard of a microschool. Now, there are so many options. That is what we need.”

The Montessori method arose across the Atlantic and more than a century ago. How is it rising to the challenges set in motion by the global pandemic and national reckoning over racism? A new generation of Montessori leaders is infusing the approach with a heavier dose of equity.

Since this can be a slippery concept, for our purposes, let’s use this : “To approach education through the lens of equity is to acknowledge the disenfranchisement and discrimination faced by children, families and teachers, and to create schools and systems that eradicate barriers to success, empower children and families, and inspire a more just society.”

Here are some insights from Montessori experts and practitioners Early Learning Nation interviewed about equity.

Montessori Originated During a Social Crisis

Major disruptions have a way of compelling societies to seek new answers. The cause of educating the masses took on added urgency at the end of the 19th century after Italian anarchists assassinated King Umberto I of Italy, Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo and Empress Elisabeth of Austria — in separate incidents but in rapid succession.

Newspapers demanded, “What are we teaching in our schools? Are we educating killers?” Maria Montessori gave a speech to the National Congress of Italian Educators and, as educator Larry Schaefer writes, “transformed a national disaster into a civic opportunity that inspired the nation.”

Perhaps this history lesson says something about our own time. Trust for Learning’s Ellen Roche points out that the and the similarly sprung from social crisis.

Maria Montessori’s Example Continues to Inspire Today’s Leaders

Casa dei Bambini, the very first Montessori school, welcomed children living in tenement housing in Rome and embraced a new approach that built upon the work of Édouard Séguin and others who studied ways of teaching those with intellectual disabilities. According to Ayize Sabater, executive director of and cofounder of the  (BMEF), “Montessori used her medical background, particularly observation and experimentation, to design materials and methods that would enable those children to advance in their human development.”

More important than her credentials, however, were her ideals. Sabater cites her advocacy for women’s rights and the rights of the child, especially evident in her fiery :

“Remember that people do not start at the age of 20, at 10 or at 6, but at birth. In your efforts at solving problems, do not forget that children and young people make up a vast population, a population without rights which is being crucified on school benches everywhere, which—for all that we talk about democracy, freedom and human rights—is enslaved by a school order, by intellectual rules which we impose on it.”

“She was shouting from the rooftops!” Sabater says. “She verbally dragged these people over hot coals for not upholding the rights of the child! For me, applying these ideals today to racial justice seems like a natural extension of that speech.”

Montessori is in the Same Boat as the Rest of the Field

As with most other sectors of our economy, early education in the United States has undergone one shock after another in the past three years. Montessori early-learning practitioners face the same challenges that other educators face: insufficient funding, inequitable distribution of assets, families in crisis and an overburdened, underpaid workforce.

Robust public investment can help, says recent Charlotte Petty. “Montessori pedagogy in the U.S.,” she elaborates, “has become a mostly privatized experience available to highly resourced families, which is far from its original vision and population.” She cites the work of Yale University’s , and in St. Louis as demonstrations of “the power and reach that Montessori can have when accessibility and racial justice are woven into the fabric of how the method is carried out.”

Montessori’s Relationship with Black Educators Goes Back Several Decades

“In the Black community,” says Sabater, “educators had an eye toward Montessori early on,” adding that admired Montessori and her philosophy. He’s continuing this tradition with BMEF, which aims to get more Black people engaged as Montessori teachers, more Black Montessori schools started and more Black children in Montessori settings, as well as supporting research into the Black Montessori experience.

Montessori Thrives in a Range of Settings

Montessori education exists in private centers, public and charter schools—even homes. Sabater is a founding group member for , a public charter school in Washington, D.C. and says the public sector is a critical area of focus for Montessori’s growth, particularly if the approach hopes to serve children from all backgrounds.

Roche concurs: “Organizations like and are working to overcome policy barriers and to expand Montessori’s presence in publicly funded programs.”

Marion Geiger, cofounder with Séverine B. Meunier of in Cambridge, Mass., credits the (formerly Birth to 3rd Grade Partnership) for its flexible funding structure. Her school belongs to the , founded in 2014 by Sep Kamvar, a professor at MIT’s Media Lab.

According to Geiger, Montessori teachers start every Wildflower school. “They’re purposefully small micro-schools,” she explains, “so that we can manage doing the administrative piece as well as serve families and children.”

“What’s really beautiful about it,” she continues, “is that every community is different, and every community’s needs are going to be different.

Montessori’s Insights Anticipated Contemporary Brain Science

Education researchers continue to find parallels to Montessori’s vision in today’s classrooms. According to , for example, “Her work is even more relevant today in the context of adversity and trauma research, and that her methods, principles and approaches may be harnessed and used in ways that promote trauma-informed practice in contemporary education settings.”

Geiger grew up in Brazil, where her mother currently trains Montessori teachers. “I didn’t always think I’d follow in her footsteps,” she reflects, “but the more I learned, the more I realized it was what I was looking for.” During her Saul Zaentz fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, she found that while the program was not necessarily promoting the method, the research confirmed its validity. Geiger notes that when Montessori is done right, it encompasses such best practices as responsive relationships, sensory exploration of your environment, scientific observation of the child, mastery-based progression, and developing autonomy and executive function skills. Earlier this year, came to the same conclusion: Montessori is based on key principles of ideal early learning environments for young children.”

Geiger says her perspective on adapting Montessori for the present moment is:
“If you are going to make a change, be thoughtful about it. Everything Maria Montessori created was in response to observations. And so I don’t think, if she were here today, she would say, ‘Don’t change anything.’ She’d say, ‘The world has changed, and we need to be responsive to the community that we’re serving’.”

This story is the third part of a 3-part series. Check out and .

Montessori Myths

Founded in the early 20th century by the Italian physician and education iconoclast Maria Montessori, the teaching method that bears her name has taken root all over the United States and around the world. The history of its proliferation and multi-pronged institutional dissemination has fostered a degree of confusion and myths about the founder’s intentions and how the method is practiced. “People use the word Montessori without knowing what they mean,” says , professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and author of .

Lynne Lawrence, Executive Director of , adds, “The reason there are so many myths is that the real answer always lies somewhere in the middle, in the nuance. And because there are so many nuances, it’s very easy for people to go in one direction or another.”

Here are six Montessori myths — and the reality, as set forth by experts.

1. Myth: The Montessori Method Is Rigid (or, alternatively, Montessori is Anarchy). When parents gather on the playground or on a listserv, two of the most common opinions that arise are, curiously, in direct opposition to one another.

First, Montessori is so strict that it will crush young spirits. Yet according to Charlotte Petty, a young educator recently interviewed for , “The most effective Montessori classrooms I’ve worked in and observed are those that bustle with language and movement and the exchange of ideas between children.”

She adds: “When children know what to expect in their learning environments, they feel safe to explore and make their own choices. The structure and routine in the Montessori classroom is in service of the child’s freedom of choice and movement.”

Second, Montessori classrooms are sheer anarchy, with no structure or guidance. Lawrence explains, “We say the child is free to make their way through our framework in the best possible way, but they are limited by what is good for everybody.” This balance—what Lawrence calls “the nuance between absolute allowance and rigid denial”— speaks to the most persistent misunderstanding about Montessori: the supposed ban on imagination.

2. Myth: Montessori Forbids Imagination. As with a lot of myths, this one has a grain of truth to it. In , Maria Montessori writes,

The true basis of the imagination is reality, and its perception is related to exactness of observation, it is necessary to prepare children to perceive the things in their environment exactly, in order to secure for them the material required by the imagination… The fancy which exaggerates and invents coarsely does not put the child on the right road.

As Rita Kramer adds in : “She does not mean to banish fantasy — the symbols of poetry, the imaginative flights of the fairy tale—from the child’s life, but only from school, where, as she has defined the function of the school, it has no business.” Lawrence notes, “Children don’t just live in our schools, right? They have homes with laptop computers and phones.”

Even in the classroom, however, imagination that feeds creativity is encouraged and valid; it’s just when children get carried away in fantasy (what Montessori called ‘fancy’), they might need to be gently brought back to reality. “Would we do it punitively?” asks Lawrence. “No, of course not. We would say, ‘I can see how this block looks like a train. Can I show you something else that we can do with it?’” She further clarifies, “If a child is taking what they’ve learned and producing their own thoughts and ideas, that’s creative. Essentially, the children’s imaginations take off from having building blocks.”

In her research, Lillard has found that most children tend to prefer using real cooking utensils to make real food over make-believe meal preparation, and in that sense, “Montessori is kind of the first manifestation of playful learning.” She adds that Montessori-trained educators learn to pay close attention to children’s fantasy play, saying, “When children are engaging in a lot of fantasy, they may be expressing a need or some unfulfilled desire.”

3. Myth: Montessori is too expensive. Even if it does work in some settings, argue some of Montessori’s detractors, it can’t work at scale because it costs too much money per pupil. In fact, over 500 public Montessori schools in the United States show that it can be executed with a standard public school budget.

Petty argues, “It’s a myth that in order to ‘do Montessori right’ you need branded materials from expensive catalogs or subscription services.” By debunking this myth, she says, the field can better center the core principles of Montessori. The international Montessori efforts implemented by show that these principles can work in even the most inhospitable circumstances.

Ellen Roche, chief media & philanthropy officer with , adds, “It’s ironic that most people think of Montessori as something that private school children have access to, when the entire philosophy was guided by observation and work with very poor children in Italy.” At the same time, Petty contends, “As it exists today, Montessori is often out of reach for those who cannot afford high tuition costs.” Part III of this series will address efforts to make the method more accessible.

4. Myth: Montessori doesn’t do sports. While traditional competitive sports are de-emphasized, Lawrence maintains that health and movement have always been vital aspects of the model. “It’s not about winning at all costs or people yelling at you from the sidelines.”

The object, she says, should be to develop children’s talents and to work in teams—not to win a game. “From our point of view,” she says, “if you’re good with your left foot [in soccer], then just think if you practice with your right. And if you are really a great player, then why don’t you take the role of the referee for a while?”

5. Myth: There’s no evidence that Montessori works. Lillard points to a large and growing body of research that supports the Montessori model for all ages and across populations. “The data speak,” she says, “I go with whatever the data tell us.

A few studies worth noting:

• (Frontiers in Psychology) “Montessori children fared better on measures of academic achievement, social understanding and mastery orientation, and they also reported relatively more liking of scholastic tasks. They also scored higher on executive function when they were 4.”
• (Journal of Montessori Research) “We find that public Montessori education demonstrates strengths in racial diversity, mixed results in student outcomes and promising potential in early childhood, special education and cultural responsiveness.”
• (AMS Research Committee White Paper) “Evidence of the benefits of mixed aged classrooms can be organized into the following categories: its impact on children’s cognitive development, its impact on their social development and the pedagogical advantages it affords teachers.”
• (Child Development) “Cross-sectional analyses in kindergarten and longitudinal analyses over the three years of preschool showed that the adapted Montessori curriculum was associated with outcomes comparable to the conventional curriculum on math, executive functions and social skills. However, disadvantaged kindergarteners from Montessori classrooms outperformed their peers on reading.”

The research continues, within and beyond the Montessori universe.

6. Myth: Everything is Montessori now. Given the sheer number of Montessori schools, on top of those that profess to offer a Montessori-inspired curriculum, it’s tempting to think the Montessori revolution is complete.

Lillard disagrees, saying, “Our whole model of education in this country is still based on this Cartesian input output model, which we know now is not how the brain works. There are so many things about education today that don’t correspond to how we know children learn and how we know the brain works. Montessori is an alternative that actually does correspond to brain science.”

Unless and until young learners are allowed to and encouraged to direct their own education, experts say, the Montessori revolution remains incomplete.

This story is the second part of a 3-part series. Check out  and .

Part I: From Italy to the World

Maria Montessori (1870-1952) might not be quite as famous as her near contemporaries Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Albert Einstein (1879-1955), but she has arguably had just as sizable an impact on the course of human civilization. Well into the 21st century, Montessori continues to influence how young children are taught, and biographers and scholars continue to study the education pioneer and her thinking. As with Freud and Einstein, debates continue about her relevance, her value and whether or not she has been properly understood.

Origins of a Revolutionary and Visionary

The educator and physician was born just as Italy came into its own as a single country. Biographer Rita Kramer as “self-confident, strong-willed, a little smug. She has the sense of duty that sometimes makes for intolerance of others. In short, a born social reformer.”

These traits helped her to overcome 19th-century prejudices about women, becoming one of the first female medical students in Italy. “Eventually,” she declared, “the woman of the future will have equal rights as well as equal duties. She will have a new self-awareness and will find her true strength in an emancipated maternity. Family life as we know it may change, but it is absurd to think that feminism will destroy maternal feelings.”

In 1907, Montessori founded the Casa dei Bambini for 3- to 6-year-olds in the slums of Rome’s San Lorenzo quarter. A of calls Montessori’s approach “prophetic in ways that remain uncanny,” citing her decision to do away with reward and punishment, and her emphasis on self-regulation.

Influences on these breakthroughs included:

• (1712-1778), author of the treatise “Emile, or On Education,” which states, “The child… wants to touch and handle everything; do not check these movements which teach him invaluable lessons.”
• (1782-1852), considered to be the father of kindergarten as we know it; he introduced “gifts” into the classroom—circles, spheres and other toys designed to stimulate learning through play.
• (1812-1880), who specialized in children with intellectual disabilities; his credo was “Respect for individuality is the first test of a teacher.”

Observation also shaped Montessori’s thought. She often described the epiphany she had while watching a waif in the street playing with a small piece of colored paper, completely absorbed in the scrap. This absorption (a favorite word of hers) she compared favorably to classrooms where the children are “like butterflies mounted on pins, are fastened each to his place, the desk, spreading the useless wings of barren and meaningless knowledge which they have acquired.”

In a throwback to the one-room schoolhouse of yore, a critical aspect of Montessori’s vision was that children of different ages belong in the same classroom. “To segregate by age,” she insisted, “is one of the cruelest and most inhumane things one can do, and this is equally true for children.” (A Montessori “primary” classroom, or Children’s House, typically groups 2.5-6-year-olds together.) Students gained by learning from those older than them and by teaching those younger than them.

Lynne Lawrence, Executive Director of  (AMI), summarizes: “Children’s capacity to learn is multiplied because they are learning mostly from the other children. So the teacher is released into observing and then showing key things to the children, in line with what they think their interests are.”

Spreading the Word

Montessori’s educational outlook arose in a period of intellectual ferment, alongside numerous competing philosophies, some of which survive to this day, including those devised by:

• John Dewey (1859-1952), who advocated for in which learning was an active rather than passive pursuit; the he founded remains active, and his ideas gave rise to
• Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), whose shaped the formation of the Waldorf Schools (named for a cigarette mogul)
• Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934), who emphasized ; this approach forms the basis of the curriculum

, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and author of , emphasizes the social context in which Montessori operated—and how it explains one of the most misunderstood aspects of her approach. “People used fantasy to manipulate children,” she says, citing “the whole idea that Santa Claus would give you coal in your stocking or the Sandman would come and hurt you. Montessori was against manipulating children with threats and lies. She thought you need to be honest with children and respect them.” ()

The Montessori approach grew in popularity during the early 20th century, and its influence spread to the United States with the help of magazine publisher S. S. McClure, who saw her as the savior of American education. (“People do sometimes seem to have kind of a religious worship about her,” says Lillard, “and that’s not to the benefit of anybody.”) Quotable pronouncements boosted her fame:

“Education must begin at birth.”
“The hand is the instrument of intelligence.”
“The child who concentrates is immensely happy.”
“It is necessary that the child teach himself.”
“Education is the best weapon for peace.”

Montessori continued to refine and redefine her ideas on education, lecturing and traveling extensively as well as quarreling with rivals and disciples alike — among them and . “She was a genius,” says Lillard, “and geniuses can be prickly.”

Starting in late 1939, she spent seven years in India, having become involved with a spiritual movement known as theosophy. (Other prominent adherents included Lewis Carroll of Alice in Wonderland fame, the Irish poet W. B. Yeats and Wizard of Oz creator L. Frank Baum.) She died at age 81, having taken steps to secure the legacy of the educational theories and techniques that bore her name.

Institutional Legacies

Her son Mario and granddaughter Renilde were also instrumental in helping spread her ideas and keeping them focused. The establishment of namesake institutions suggests both the range of her influence as well as the somewhat circuitous paths her legacy has taken.

Based in Amsterdam, AMI administers training and certification for Montessori teachers all over the world. Its division (see sidebar) helps to spread her methods globally. ���ѱ�’s U.S. affiliate is , led by Ayize Sabater (cofounder of the ). A separate organization, the (AMS), also has international members, despite its name.

Lillard says AMI is committed to keeping the pedagogy similar to what Montessori created and “changing it only where it really seems to make sense,” whereas AMS was founded on the idea of spreading it quickly. “If it weren’t for AMS,” she says, “We might not even have Montessori anymore.”

For Lawrence, the central question is How do we go to scale without losing quality? “We’ve taken hold in over 147 countries,” she says. “That speaks for itself; it’s like a dandelion scattering seeds.”

Today’s schools with Montessori in their name offer varying degrees of fidelity to Maria Montessori’s original vision. Still others offer “Montessori-inspired” curricula. , a project of National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector, collects up-to-date data on public and private Montessori schools around the world as well as the dozens of national and regional associations dedicated to carrying on this rich and complex legacy.

This story is the first part of a 3-part series. Check out  and .