Multilingual Montessori

Laura, Megan and Rachel are three trained Montessori guides and new mothers who host the Montessori Moms in the Wild Podcast. Between the three of them, they are trained in Montessori education for ages birth through twelve years old. Their podcast aims to serve caregivers who want to learn more about the Montessori philosophy but also want a bit of lightheartedness and realness when it comes to the ups and downs of parenting.

In this conversation, we talk about how Laura, Megan and Rachel all got their start as Montessori educators, how they met each other, and how they decided to start the Montessori Moms in the Wild podcast. We discuss how having their own children changed their approach to Montessori in their own families, parenting with partners who are learning about Montessori, and of course, their biggest takeaways from their first year as podcasters.

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Sylvia Arotin is the founder and CEO of Guide & Grow. She runs My Montessori school in Sydney, Australia and is an international speaker and trainer for educators and parents, specializing in communication and guiding children's behavior. Sylvia holds an International Montessori 0-3 diploma, 3-6 assistants’ certificate, International Communications degree and a Masters in Teaching specializing in early childhood.

Sylvia created Guide & Grow from a desire to help raise tomorrow’s children and to create a movement towards supporting caregivers on their path to raise future generations. With its roots in Montessori, positive communication, positive discipline and building children’s emotional intelligence, Guide & Grow takes a holistic approach to guiding parents and educators so they can help their children to grow and build lifelong skills.

In this conversation, Sylvia shares her path to Montessori and her experiences with multilingualism, both as a child and now as an adult. We also talk about her work doing Montessori with the elderly, and she shares her best advice for parents when it comes to navigating the toddler years!

Watch Gabrielle and Sylvia's conversation about Supporting the Multilingual Child on YouTube

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Viorica Marian is a Psycholinguist, Cognitive Scientist, Psychologist, and writer known for her research on language, bilingualism, and multilingualism. She is the Ralph and Jean Sundin Endowed Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders and Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University, and is the Principal Investigator of the Northwestern Bilingualism and Psycholinguistics Research Laboratory. She received her PhD in Psychology from Cornell University, Master's degrees from Emory University and from Cornell University, and a Bachelor's degree from the University of Alaska. 

Her new book, The Power of Language, which was released in April 2023, is a revolutionary book that goes beyond any recent book on language to dissect how language operates in our minds and how to harness its virtually limitless power.

In this book, Dr. Marian reviews research showing that learning a new language:

·       Enhances executive function

·    Results in higher scores on creative-thinking tasks.

·    Develops critical reasoning skills.

·    Delays Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia by four to six years.

·    Improves decisions made under emotional duress.

·    and changes what we see, pay attention to, and recall.

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Marikay McCabe and Mirka Vlčková are two of the co-founders of The Bilingual Montessori Project.

Marikay McCabe founded Madrid Montessori School in 2006 and was its Director until 2017. In 2018 she established Learning Ecologies to continue supporting Montessori educators as a school consultant and by offering seminars on bilingualism and school organization & leadership.  In 2020 she co-founded the Bilingual Montessori initiative in order to offer a virtual home for educators working in bilingual and multilingual schools. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University and completed school management and leadership training from NAMTA and the Whole School Leadership Institute. She has also taken AMI training at the Elementary and Adolescent levels.  

Mirka Vlčková is a mother of four children for whom she founded a Montessori Primary and Elementary School in the Czech Republic. She also founded and runs Montessori Institute Prague, an AMI teacher training center in the heart of Europe. Mirka is passionate about helping enthusiastic and inspired people bring Montessori to children in their communities. Recently she started her own podcast called Montessori Institute Prague Podcast. 

In our conversation, Marikay and Mirka share a wealth of experiences including raising bilingual children, founding bilingual Montessori schools in Europe, and running an AMI Montessori teacher training center. They also share the goals of the Bilingual Montessori Project and ways that educators, parents, and school administrators can get involved with the project.

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Today's Frequently Asked Question is: What are the stages of second language acquisition?

If you have a question about anything related to Montessori and multilingualism that you’d like me to answer on one of these episodes, you can send me a message on Instagram or email me.

Nasma Alkhafif is an Early Childhood Consultant and bilingual mom living in Columbus, Ohio. Born and raised in Cairo, Egypt, she holds a Master's in Education and a Bachelor's in Psychology. Nasma is also a certified AMI 3-6 Guide and Positive Discipline Parent Educator. As a parenting coach and consultant, Nasma  is passionate about providing children with the best environment and resources needed to reach their full potential. In addition to her professional work, Nasma is a mother of two bilingual children, and implements Montessori-inspired parenting in her home.

In our conversation, Nasma and I discuss how she discovered Montessori, and what bilingualism looked like for her growing up in Cairo versus  what it looks like in her life now in the US. She shares how one of the greatest dilemmas for her and her husband in raising their children with the Arabic language is how to find the balance between their two dialects of Arabic - standard Arabic, which is used for reading and writing, and Egyptian Arabic, which Nasma and her husband use for conversations. She also shares about when she decided to speak in Arabic to her children, and what that linguistic and emotional shift was like for her.

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Harvard-educated doctora of education Vero Benavides has spent her career exploring and advocating for the intersection of identity, language, and learning.

Throughout her career in education—as a high school and middle school teacher, a Fulbright scholar, a leadership coach, and the Executive Director of a leading early childhood educational research and training center—she's always sought to create strengths-based environments where all people and children thrive.

Now, as founder and CEO of The Language Preservation Project, Dr. Benavides works to support the reclamation and flourishing of heritage languages across global contexts. Through learning resources and cohort-based programs for educators and families, The Language Preservation Project decolonizes language learning to promote bilingualism in homes and schools.

In this conversation, Vero and I talk about her own language experiences growing up and what it has been like to speak exclusively in Spanish to her two young children. We also discuss what learning a heritage language means for many people, and how she supports heritage language speakers through her work with The Language Preservation Project.

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In Episode 3 of the Multilingual Montessori Podcast, I spoke with Chelsea Daniel, an AMI Montessori guide, birth doula, and certified yoga instructor living in Brooklyn, NY. Chelsea is the founder of Chickadee Yoga, where she teaches children's yoga, prenatal yoga, and postnatal/baby + me yoga classes. We discuss the intersection of mindfulness and Montessori, how to use mindfulness to support children, and how we as adults can use mindfulness practices to be our best selves when caring for children. We also chat about Chelsea's experience living in Austria for several years as a young child and learning to speak German there.

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Paula Lillard Preschlack was a teacher and the head of school at Forest Bluff School in Illinois for over 25 years. Her work focuses on the principles and benefits of the Montessori approach. Paula attended Hampshire College and holds a Master's Degree in Education from Loyola College in Maryland, has diplomas from the Association Montessori Internationale for Assistants to Infancy, Primary, and Elementary Levels, and she audited the NAMTA/AMI Orientation to Adolescent Studies. Paula and her husband Jim have two children, now 18 and 20 years old. Her new book, The Montessori Potential, will be published in February 2023.

In this conversation, Paula and I discuss her experiences growing up as a Montessori child and how she decided to go into the field of Montessori education herself. We discuss her new book, The Montessori Potential, and we talk specifically about some of the important features of Montessori’s language curriculum throughout the Planes of development.

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Claudia Serrano Johnson is a bilingual speech-language pathologist and a mom of three living in Virginia. Claudia is passionate about empowering Latinx parents with accurate information on bilingual language development. On her social media platforms, she clarifies misinformation such as "Bilingualism causes delays", "Bilingualism confuses children", and "Bilingual children speak later." Claudia feels strongly that these myths negatively impact the bilingual community by making parents fear passing on their language or delaying parents from seeking the right supports for their children. Ultimately, Claudia hopes that by sharing this information, parents can continue fostering bilingualism in their families.

In our conversation, Claudia debunks some of these myths about bilingualism, and offers advice on what parents can say to doubters to help bust these myths. We also talked about what signs Claudia looks for in her work as a speech-language pathologist that indicate a bilingual child might be experiencing a speech-language delay or disorder, as well as strategies to maintain bilingualism with a child who is diagnosed with a speech-language delay or disorder. And of course, Claudia shared her own journey as a bilingual parent and the joys and challenges she and her husband have experienced in raising their three children with two languages.

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