Breaking the Paradigm

The Montessori Method, Continued: An Invitation to Change the World

I was honored to deliver the keynote at this year’s Montessori Educators of Alabama conference around their theme of “Better Together.” I wanted to use this time to sit with a question that’s been nagging at me for years: if Montessori education is so revolutionary, why haven’t we achieved the world of peace and justice that Montessori described? Why, nearly a century into this work, are we still so far from the equitable interdependence she believed was possible? That question led me back through my own journey: into my own childhood and adolescent experiences, some shocking revelations I had while working with 12-15 year olds, and into a hard look at what we might be unconsciously reproducing even in our most beautifully prepared environments. I wanted the room to wrestle with the reality that the dominant culture of modernity doesn’t just surround our schools, it lives inside each of us. And that meeting developmental needs, as essential as it is, may only be the starting point of our truly revolutionary work. Ultimately, this talk is about what’s becomes possible when we recognize the path we’re actually on: when we understand that Montessori didn’t leave us a recipe to follow, but a method to experimenting with. It’s about the new human that each of us is capable of becoming, and the courage it takes to walk that path alongside our students rather than sending them ahead alone. I’m grateful to the Alabama Montessori community for creating such a warm and generative space. After the talk, multiple participants wanted to share their Montessori origin stories with me. One school leader, who was a Montessori student at her mother’s school, said to me “I realize I am not just carrying on my mother’s legacy, but Maria’s too.” This is at the core of what I think needs to shift in our Montessori collective conscious: that we are carrying on Maria’s legacy and must act as she did- not as replicators of her end result, but of scientists of human development and radical social change. I hope you’ll give the talk a listen and share your thoughts. It was a labor of love to create, and so much was left on the cutting room floor. I hope it invites you to revisit your own origin story and consider how YOU are a part of this legacy too! Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum! Our Purpose: Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community. Why join the MAC Forum? * Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world. * Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion. * Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available. Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST Join Today and Find Your Community! The traditional education system had its chance. Now it’s our turn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe [https://breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

We're Losing the Tech Conversation Because Students Aren't a Part of It

There’s a quiet truth most schools are avoiding right now: our students are navigating AI, social media, and digital life every single day; and if we’re not in that conversation with them, something else is. Probably AI itself. That was one of the most clarifying moments from our recent webinar with Dana Anderson, Building a Positive Tech Culture at Your School (and Why It’s Not About AI Bans and Phone Policing). Dana, who comes to this work as a Montessorian with experience across all three levels and who is one of the most thoughtful voices on digital citizenship I know, didn’t come to give us another policy template or a tighter phone ban. She came to ask a harder question: Who actually gets a voice in how your school handles technology? Because right now, in most schools, the answer is “adults.” And that’s exactly the problem. The reactive playbook isn’t working Schools keep reaching for the same tools: ban the phones, block the AI. Write a stricter policy. Print it out. Post it on the website. But as Dana pointed out, a recent Gallup poll shows that 60 to 87 percent of teachers are already using AI for school-based work. Meanwhile, students in many of those same schools are told they can’t use AI at all, under any circumstances. This isn’t a policy problem. It’s a trust problem. And the fallout is predictable: young people circumvent the rules, hide their use, and stop bringing their real questions to the adults in their lives. Dana named it plainly: when students feel a tech policy has been imposed on them rather than built with them, the response is rebellion, not reflection. In a time when young people need to build discernment and critical thinking, not talking about technology is a disservice. What happens when we co-create rather than dictate? One powerful moment in the webinar came from Mara Weitzman, a Montessori educator who ran a service-learning program where her students used 3D printing and CAD design to create real replacement pieces, and entirely new materials, for other classrooms across her school. The students managed the projects, emailed the teachers, set up the meetings, and iterated until the material was right. The teachers ended up needing the students’ expertise. The students experienced themselves as contributors, not consumers. And the whole culture of the school shifted, not because someone wrote a better tech policy, but because young people were trusted with real responsibility. At Bridgemont International School, where Dana teaches, her AI literacy students are currently designing a professional development day on AI for the faculty. The students are teaching the teachers. That is what a positive tech culture actually looks like. Not surveillance. Not bans. Partnership. The paradigm we’re inviting you into As Dana reminded us, Maria Montessori wrote that education depends on a belief that the child has within themselves the capacity to develop into a being far superior to us, and that they will be the only ones who can show us a better way of living. Comfortable conversations don’t dismantle oppressive systems. Adult-only tech policies don’t prepare young people for a world saturated in technology they’ll inherit from us. The students are ready. The question is whether we are. What’s next! Dana and Developing Education are building something bigger around this work: a full course for educators and school leaders who are ready to stop reacting and start partnering with young people to build genuinely positive tech cultures in their schools. We want it to actually meet you where you are. If you’re even a little curious, we’d love your voice in shaping it. Share what YOU want to see in a course here! [https://forms.gle/Yyd5qAWL9n37ZVPk7] The revolution our students need starts with us having the courage to let them in. The traditional education system had its chance. Now it’s our turn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe [https://breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Letting Go to Move Forward: The Unfinished Work of Montessori with Kathy Leitch

What if the biggest obstacle in Montessori is moving past our fear? Kathy Leitch, executive director of the International Montessori Council, joins Breaking the Paradigm to explore what it really means to carry Montessori forward as a living, experimental method rather than a fixed recipe. With decades of experience in Montessori schools around the world, Kathy makes a case that’s both provocative and deeply generous: Montessori is for every child, even if every school, every classroom, and every guide isn’t yet ready for every child. What would change if we stopped treating the album as the method? What happens when we let fear: of parents, of imperfection, of breaking with tradition, drive decisions that should be rooted in love? And what does it actually look like to transform our own spirit before we try to transform education? Kathy names the energy of love as the most powerful and least explored dimension of Montessori's legacy: an organizing force that shows up in highly functioning classrooms and lingers in the adults those classrooms produce. She challenges the protective instincts that keep our movement small: the hierarchy, the gatekeeping, the insistence on perfection. And she calls us back to the inner work that makes everything else possible: the kind of spiritual preparation that doesn't just happen once in training but every time a child triggers something we didn't know we were carrying. This is a conversation about courage, energy, and the unfinished work Montessori left us, not as a limitation, but as an invitation. Thanks Kathy for a great conversation! Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum! Our Purpose: Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community. Why join the MAC Forum? * Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world. * Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion. * Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available. Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST Join Today and Find Your Community! The traditional education system had its chance. Now it’s our turn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe [https://breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

From Compliance to Emergence: Rethinking Peace Education and Montessori Teacher Preparation with Tammy Oesting

What if peace education has nothing to do with teaching kids to be calm? Here’s the provocation from Tammy Oesting in her third Breaking the Paradigm apprearance: Peace education isn’t about mindfulness exercises or conflict resolution scripts. It’s not the “kumbaya approach” where we shield children from the world’s hard truths. Real peace education creates conditions that produce a new human who has embodied interdependence: who knows in their bones that they are part of a web, not standing above it. That’s systems-level work. That requires us to look at what we’re afraid to see. And then there’s the question we need to ask about Montessori teacher preparation: Is all our scaffolding: the affiliations, the compliance measures, the rigid fidelity requirements, supporting the rise of human potential, or is it a cage? Why are we so committed to structures that don’t reflect how adults actually learn? And why do we trust children to organize their own time and follow their developmental path, but then demand adults comply with preparation programs that look nothing like the way Dr. Montessori herself taught? At the heart of everything Tammy is asking us to sit with is this: What happens when we let go of control? What emerges in the chaos? Because from chaos comes emergence. This conversation won’t give you easy answers. It will give you better questions. Thanks, Tammy, for bringing the courage we all need right now! Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum! Our Purpose: Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community. Why join the MAC Forum? * Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world. * Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion. * Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available. Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST Join Today and Find Your Community! The traditional education system had its chance. Now it’s our turn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe [https://breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

45 States, Two People, One Mission: The Work of the Montessori Public Policy Initiative

What if the most powerful thing Montessori educators could do for children right now isn’t in the classroom, but in the halls of Congress? Mixed-age groupings. The three-hour work cycle. Observation-based curriculum. Teacher preparation rooted in human development. Everything that makes Montessori transformative deserves to be reflected in the laws, funding streams, and regulations that shape what’s possible for schools and families. But when we’re not at the table, the language gets written without us; and that’s exactly what MPPI is working to change. In this special live episode, Kelly and I sit down with Denise Monnier and Vyju Kadambi of the Montessori Public Policy Initiative: a two-person organization with advocates in 45 states doing the essential work of making sure Montessori has a voice where it matters most. They’re not waiting for a crisis. They’re building relationships with legislators so public policy includes and uplifts our work in Montessori. This Thursday, as part of the AMS conference in Washington, D.C., MPPI is leading Montessori on the Move, a day of preparation, storytelling, and over 30 meetings on Capitol Hill. It’s the first time our community has organized something like this at the federal level, and Denise and Vyju want you there! It’s not too late to register. It’s not too late to show up for the afternoon. It’s not too late to be in that group photo on the Capitol steps (and get a cool Montessori hat while you’re at it!). And if you can’t make it to D.C., this conversation will convince you that advocacy is already something you do, and that the leap from advocating for a child in your classroom to advocating for Montessori in your statehouse is shorter than you think. You can find MPPI and get connected at MontessoriAdvocacy.org. See you in DC! Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum! Our Purpose: Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community. Why join the MAC Forum? * Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world. * Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion. * Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available. Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST Join Today and Find Your Community! The traditional education system had its chance. Now it’s our turn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe [https://breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]