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Angie Johnson: What Is Possible with a Public Montessori Program
Angie Johnson is one of the founding members and now the principal of the Mountain West Montessori Academy in South Jordan, Utah, which has served Kindergarten through 9th grade students as a tuition-free public charter school since 2013. The school’s mission is founded on Montessori philosophy and is to facilitate student-centered learning and intellectual curiosity through an individualized and interdisciplinary curriculum, hands-on experience, and community involvement.
In this episode Angie shares what drew her to the Montessori philosophy and to offering a more equitable public Montessori program. She discusses the key ways the system of Montessori differs from the traditional approach to education, and what is possible with its mastery-based learning model and choices within limits. She describes how the teachers can be experts and artists in interpreting diagnostics and offering a differentiated curriculum based on the materials and resources in a Montessori classroom.
Angie addresses the challenges of balancing this educational method, which is founded on mixed-age classrooms and early childhood development, with the charter school random lottery system. She shares the rewards of seeing children grow and develop long-lasting habits through practicing executive function skills, learning to prioritize time and interests through choice, and practicing conflict resolution skills at different ages through the peace education program. Students in the middle school program complete a capstone project, an interest-based study, for an entire year, evidence of the groundwork of the previous years in keeping them engaged and developing self-efficacy.
Find out more about the Montessori method: https://www.mwmacademy.org/montessori_method
Check out Mountain West Montessori Academy’s podcast since 2019: Do you See? Topics include anxiety, interviews with students, gratitude, power struggles, conflict resolution, and many others!
https://www.mwmacademy.org/podcast
For more about the use of the Waseca Rainbow boxes Angie mentions in relation to literacy building:
https://mcguffeymontessori.com/spelling-with-the-rainbow-boxes-in-lower-elementary/
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By Ramira Alamilla
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Angie Johnson is one of the founding members and now the principal of the Mountain West Montessori Academy in South Jordan, Utah, which has served Kindergarten through 9th grade students as a tuition-free public charter school since 2013. The school’s mission is founded on Montessori philosophy and is to facilitate student-centered learning and intellectual curiosity through an individualized and interdisciplinary curriculum, hands-on experience, and community involvement.
In this episode Angie shares what drew her to the Montessori philosophy and to offering a more equitable public Montessori program. She discusses the key ways the system of Montessori differs from the traditional approach to education, and what is possible with its mastery-based learning model and choices within limits. She describes how the teachers can be experts and artists in interpreting diagnostics and offering a differentiated curriculum based on the materials and resources in a Montessori classroom.
Angie addresses the challenges of balancing this educational method, which is founded on mixed-age classrooms and early childhood development, with the charter school random lottery system. She shares the rewards of seeing children grow and develop long-lasting habits through practicing executive function skills, learning to prioritize time and interests through choice, and practicing conflict resolution skills at different ages through the peace education program. Students in the middle school program complete a capstone project, an interest-based study, for an entire year, evidence of the groundwork of the previous years in keeping them engaged and developing self-efficacy.
Find out more about the Montessori method: https://www.mwmacademy.org/montessori_method
Check out Mountain West Montessori Academy’s podcast since 2019: Do you See? Topics include anxiety, interviews with students, gratitude, power struggles, conflict resolution, and many others!
https://www.mwmacademy.org/podcast
For more about the use of the Waseca Rainbow boxes Angie mentions in relation to literacy building:
https://mcguffeymontessori.com/spelling-with-the-rainbow-boxes-in-lower-elementary/