1 of 5
Photographs by Dilip Vishwanat
2 of 5
3 of 5
4 of 5
5 of 5
Montessori
Chesterfield Montessori School
Maria Montessori believed that all learning starts with the hands. If we want to know what corn is, we pick it up, feel its weight. The same should hold true for abstract concepts, she said. In Montessori, when elementary students learn about squares and square roots, they do it thus: sitting on the carpet, holding a wire square that holds 100 beads, wrapping two rubber bands around the beads to create visual squares.
Observing a Montessori classroom is like watching water move around rocks in a stream—flowing and purposeful, but calm. “It’s a peaceful and productive environment,” says Anita Chastin, head of school at Chesterfield Montessori School. She explains this is because the children’s needs are being met, and so they have no need of strife or struggle. What are these needs, according to Chastin? “Purposeful work, physical movement and meaningful communication.”
There is a point, near the center of the Montessori room, where children stop and think. Like planes on a flight path of their own determination, these children, who have been given lessons in how to use each perfectly crafted learning tool, follow a pattern: They put the activity they’ve finished on its appropriate shelf (kids as young as 3 do this with little direction), turn and head off in search of the next task. Often, this line is direct. Other times, however, the child will, upon reaching the midpoint of the room, stop, slowly, as though responding to an internal cue—the way an artist stops in front of the canvas—with that mixture of intention and lost thought that comes just before the next idea, the next brushstroke.
Because the philosophy centers on the idea that one of a child’s greatest needs is to be engaged in productive work, the school is designed to let children sink into tasks, whether it’s building words with sandpaper letters or learning to research geological ages (by, say, calling up a geologist).
Montessori believed that children work best together, and so the schools are most often divided into three sections: primary (3- to 5-year-olds), lower elementary (first through third grade) and upper elementary (fourth through sixth grade). Older kids help younger ones, and the learning remains hands-on as children grow, though the materials become more traditional. Most striking about the Montessori model is the extent to which its students become independent, self-directed learners. They do so from a place of innate curiosity, not to receive any reward beyond that of discovering, in the school’s words, “knowledge of the earth and its creation, plants and animals, their needs and life, and the history of their own species.”
Reggio Emilia
The College School
If Chesterfield Montessori is water, The College School in Webster Groves is electricity. Its classrooms crackle with energy. A large area of a kindergarten room has been dedicated to constructing a replica of an amphibian habitat. Blocks, shiny glass pebbles and pine cones spiral and rise to create a river and its bank. On the shelf above it are handmade clay frogs, and on the wall above that are posters about frogs—what they eat, their life cycles, the sounds they make—designed by the students. In line with the Reggio Emilia philosophy, the school thrives on what it calls “a sense of purposeful clutter.” However, its array of colors and natural materials feels harmonious and light. “Children think and learn better in a beautiful environment,” remarks Stephanie Dooley, the school’s diversity coordinator. “We’re very creative around here.”
The College School was founded in 1963 as a lab school for Webster University, and it has always had an experiential approach to education, which means, simply, learning by doing. When its curriculum coordinator, Louise Cadwell, traveled in the 1970s to Reggio Emilia, a town in Italy where educators were letting the students decide what to learn, she knew she had to bring back what she’d observed. Now, more than 30 years later, The College School has absorbed but transcended the model; call it Reggio-plus.
The College School encourages children’s independence and sense of citizenry. From day trips to the Hill to a 10-day trip to the Okefenokee Swamp, Sapillo Islands and the Smoky Mountains, students at The College School get out into the world and report back. With its emphasis on written, oral and visual presentation, The College School prepares its students not only to analyze information, but also to share what they’ve learned with peers, teachers and parents.
Parish
St. Margaret of Scotland School
The classic image of children in plaid jumpers, navy pants and collared white shirts is as much a part of the St. Louis psyche as the Arch, and for good reason. There are 121 parish schools in the St. Louis area; nearly every neighborhood is anchored by one. So why should the parish school, as such, be included in a list of “alternative” models? Because with its faith-based approach, its insistence that the way to engage children’s minds is by nurturing their hearts, and its ability to enfold children into a spiritual community, it is indeed an alternative to public elementary.
“Bringing children up this way teaches them to value themselves as sacred and called to serve, and to value other people as sacred, too,” says principal Juliann DePalma Hesed of St. Margaret of Scotland School. “Our faith pervades how we make choices about what literature we read and how we approach it. For example, in eighth grade we do a section on the Holocaust. We approach the subject as Christians, so the lessons cross social studies, literature and religion classes. We are not just reading The Diary of Anne Frank, we are discussing what our place was in that time and what that means for us today. There are holocausts happening right now, and we discuss what that calls upon us to do as Christians.”
St. Margaret of Scotland takes the idea of anchoring the neighborhood seriously by encouraging families of all religious stripes to join their community—26 percent of students are non-Catholic—and by making sure to offer as much financial assistance as they can. “We never want any family to feel like they can’t come because of money,” Hesed says. “It’s important to keep up our diversity and reflect our neighborhood. To do that, you need to put your money where your mouth is.”
Multiple Intelligences
New City School
According to Howard Gardner, the pioneer of multiple intelligences theory, there are eight different kinds of intelligence: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalistic. At New City School, a multiple intelligences (MI) school in the Central West End, teachers approach each lesson in a variety of ways to access these various intelligences. For example, they might give students options for learning how to spell words. Students with strong linguistic intelligence might write them out; those who think spatially might draw pictures of the words; others might drum the letters with their fingers, thereby tapping into their musical intelligence; and those who learn kinesthetically might trace the letters in sand.
At New City, each grade has a theme, essentially an area of study its students investigate for the whole school year. Third graders spend the year learning about Native Americans. Of course, while they’re learning about specific tribes, they are also learning geography, conservation and a host of other subjects. In addition to the themed work, there are traditional lessons, and standardized tests are administered twice a year.
“Joyful learning” is the phrase head of school Tom Hoerr uses to describe New City’s goal. “People have the idea that if kids aren’t a little unhappy, they’re not really learning, and that’s just not true. We give homework, but not too much and not unless it’s meaningful.” So the third graders’ homework is to make a diorama of their tribe’s village, not just to fill in worksheets.
Despite its wealth of resources—including what the school calls the first multiple intelligences library in the world—the philosophy at New City is that people, not just their intelligence levels, matter most. “We believe that all the intelligences are important, but that interpersonal intelligence is the most important,” Hoerr says. “Parents of our graduates tell us that their children know what they need to do to succeed in the world, but more importantly, that they know how to get along with other people.”
Learning Disabilities
The Miriam School
Here’s an idea that every school might borrow from the Miriam School: Start and end the day with P.E. Each morning every class of 10 children completes the school’s obstacle course. It takes 15 minutes and entails swinging, hopping and other acts of happy exertion. Explains admissions director Jackie Smith, “Sensory integration helps kids calm down.”
The Miriam School is designed for children with average or above-average potential who are also dealing with learning disabilities. Its approach is to provide highly structured, individualized plans for each child, combining specialized therapies to address deficits in speech, language, sensory integration, and fine and gross motor development. In other words, “We do whatever it takes to maximize academic success,” says Smith. This includes providing the kids with special keyboards on which to complete homework and a sound system that surrounds the students with the teacher’s voice to help distractible kids stay on task.
The single most important lesson Miriam teaches its students is to be their own advocates—to learn their educational needs and verbalize them. “High school teachers tell us,” Smith says, “that our students are better than anyone at saying exactly what they need to succeed.”
