Multilingual Montessori

Jackie Howard is a bilingual educator and former Montessori child living in Austin, Texas. Jackie grew up speaking Spanish and English at home, and went to a Montessori school from kindergarten to 8th grade. She has worked in the education field for 13 years, first as a bilingual elementary teacher, then as an instructional coach mentoring teachers, and now as a high school humanities teacher and college consultant.

In our conversation, we discuss Jackie’s childhood memories of Montessori school and how she thinks her Montessori education has influenced her as an adult, as well as what it was like transitioning from Montessori to a Waldorf high school and then to college. We also discuss her experiences studying abroad in Spanish-speaking countries, first in high school in Peru, then in college in Mexico, and finally in Spain where she got her masters degree in Spanish Language. Jackie shares her experiences as a bilingual Spanish-English educator in low-income public schools in Texas, and what advice she has for parents who are raising bilingual children.

Lynda Apostol is a Montessori teacher, parent, and homeschool coach who lives in Southern California with her husband and two children. Lynda has worked in both public and private schools as a teacher, instructional coach and administrator. During the pandemic, she decided to homeschool her young children, and we talk about how that decision came about in our conversation.

Sophia O’Brien-Udry is a Children’s House guide at a Montessori school in New York City. Although Sophia is monolingual herself, she teaches at a bilingual Montessori school, and we talk about her experiences working in a bilingual environment, and what she has learned about language from her bilingual colleagues and students. Sophia is also the Director of Culture at her school, where she partners with families to narrow the gap between the Montessori classroom and the home. In this episode, we talk about ways that parents and teachers can support children’s language development in the preschool years, and what Sophia believes is the most important reason to expose children to multiple languages.

The guest for this episode is…me! I invited my good friend and former coworker Claudia to interview me about my education background and how I came to start Multilingual Montessori. Claudia was a podcast guest a few episodes back (linked below) and in honor of my 20th podcast episode, I thought it would be fun to be in the hot seat myself. I asked Claudia to interview me and she came up with some great questions for me about growing up in Manhattan and going to NYC public schools, teaching English in Italy, how I discovered Montessori, training in London, my teaching experiences, the masters program I’m finishing up, and of course, how Multilingual Montessori came to be. I hope you enjoy getting to know a little more about me and my journey!

Episode 15: Claudia Lundahl on Montessori with Toddlers

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Siri Panday is the Director of Education for Toddler and Primary at Marin Montessori School in Northern California. Siri is trained as both a 0-3 and 3-6 AMI Guide, and she has worked in Montessori schools as a guide, administrator, and consultant for over 20 years. Early in her teaching career, she had the opportunity to help open a Montessori Children's House classroom in Kathmandu, Nepal, and we chat about her memories of teaching in Nepal and learning to speak Nepali. Siri grew up bilingual in English and Norwegian, and she now has two daughters who are trilingual in English, Norwegian, and Nepali. In this conversation, we talk about navigating identity and moving between cultures, raising multilingual children, and how Siri's understanding of Montessori evolved once she became a parent.

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María Laura Ribadeneira grew up in Quito, Ecuador where she spoke Spanish at home, English at school, and studied French outside of school. She went to college in the US (with me!) where she also studied Italian and Ancient Greek, and studied abroad in Italy and France. After college graduation, she moved to Paris for a masters degree, where she has lived ever since, and just became a French citizen a year ago.

In this conversation, we chat about language and identity, as well as navigating an academic life, a professional life and a social life in multiple languages.

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Tania Ginsberg-Jambou is a French-American bilingual mom and Montessorian living in California. Tania grew up speaking both French and English with her American father and French mother. Tania and her husband, who is French, have three children with whom they speak exclusively in French at home.

Tania is trained as an AMI 3-6 Montessori guide, and before she became a mother, she taught in a bilingual Montessori Children’s House in Paris. She shares what that experience was like for her and how bilingual education functioned in that classroom. In addition to her Montessori training, Tania is also trained in the Pikler Method, known as RIE or Resources for Infant Educarers, and she is also trained as a NeuroMovement Practitioner. We talk about how she uses both her RIE and NeuroMovement trainings with her children these days, and how NeuroMovement has been particularly transformative for her son, who has cerebral palsy. We also get into a wonderful discussion about language and identity, both about how these themes have shown up in Tania’s own life and how she sees them manifesting in her children’s lives as they grow.

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Janina Burmeister is a mom and Montessorian living in Valencia, Spain. Janina is originally from Germany but she has lived abroad for the past twenty years! In this episode, Janina shares her experiences as an expat living in nine countries over the past two decades, and how that has shaped her cultural and linguistic identity.

Janina and her husband have a five-year-old son Henry who speaks three languages: German, English and Spanish. When Henry was a baby, Janina and her husband, who are both educators, realized that his language wasn't developing as quickly as they would have expected. Instead of deciding to speak in only one language to him, as some people recommended, they decided to get him checked out by a doctor. Janina shares that experience and what her son's language progress has been since then.

Janina also shares her journey to becoming a Montessorian and what advice she would give to parents wanting to raise their child with two or more languages.

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Claudia Lundahl is an AMI Montessori toddler guide, postpartum doula, and freelance artist living in London, England. One of Claudia’s first teaching experiences after college was teaching English in France through TAPIF, which stands for Teaching Assistant Program in France, where she taught English to French middle schoolers in a town along the Swiss border near Geneva. Claudia then discovered Montessori, and we talk about her experiences as a toddler guide, including what developmental work happens in a Montessori toddler classroom and what it’s like to be an early childhood educator and not be a parent.

Claudia also shares her experiences as a postpartum doula and why she finds that work aligns very well with Montessori principles. She also  shares about her experience starting an English-immersion Montessori homeschool class in London with a French family during the first summer of the pandemic. Claudia is a font of knowledge about toddlers and Montessori, and I think you’ll learn a lot from her, whether or not you have a toddler in your life!

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Romali Rosales Chavarría is a Montessori educator, researcher, and mom of two bilingual sons. Romali is from Mexico and lives in Glasgow, Scotland with her family. In the spring of 2021, she published an article in the Journal of Montessori Research called “Second Language Corner for Children’s House: A Practitioner–Researcher Journey Into Bilingualism in Montessori Education” in which she shared her experiences implementing an English language program in a Montessori Children’s House classroom in Mexico.

In our conversation, Romali shares her thoughts about implementing bilingual programs in Montessori, as well as the process of researching and writing her article, and where the fields of multilingualism and Montessori are headed next.

Link to Romali's paper: https://journals.ku.edu/jmr/article/view/13401/13910