J650 Independent Study

 As I begin to wind down from my own school year and prepare for observing in a Montessori classroom/summer camp in a few weeks, I decided to begin reading Montessori: A Modern Approach to obtain an overview of ideas and workflows that I might observe.  As it has been a few years since I have studied Maria Montessori on a more in-depth level, I chose to read this book first as I thought it might give me some good insight into who Maria Montessori was as a person and what lead her to choose her methodologies.  I was surprised to learn that Montessori employed many of her methods first with children who seemed to have neurodivergent needs.  When Montessori first worked with children who had varying needs, she was astounded that once the children completed the task using the materials they were given, they returned to repeat the task several times afterwards and found complete joy in doing so.  This immediately caused me to think about several of my neurodivergent ...

 I have been working on my Ed. D for the last 2 years and as I come to the end of my journey, I am working to decide what is next for me.  My goal is to be the director of our new Early Learning Center, helping to increase the capacity from 2 community preschool classrooms and 3 special education preschool classrooms to a total of 8-10 classrooms.  As I have been learning more about STEM and Montessori principles in my course work, the idea of incorporating STEM and Montessori into the Early Learning Center is appealing to me for two reasons.  The first being that young children are capable of learning through STEM and Montessori methods and can use those skills to prepare them as they enter elementary classrooms. Second, as we service many low income families in our district, a STEM and Montessori center would allow access to those ways of thinking and learning that are not typically available in lower income areas.  During June and July, I will be observing in...