What Teenagers Can Really Do: Our Students Are Building Two Satellites at Once
When parents and educators ask what teenagers can really do, the honest answer requires looking at adolescents who have been given work that can actually fail. Most school programs do not provide this kind of work. Tests with predetermined correct answers, projects whose outcomes are pre-scoped, exhibitions assessed against rubrics rather than against reality — […]
Teaching Teenagers Engineering: How Adolescents Convinced a Satellite Company CEO in 30 Minutes
When we approached Ronak Samantray — CEO and founder of TakeMe2Space, an Indian satellite company that builds and launches real spacecraft — about collaborating with our adolescents on a CubeSat, he was not sure adolescents could do this kind of work. He said so directly. That was the right response from him. Teaching teenagers engineering […]
What Happens When a Teenager Asks for Summer Homework: Research Identity in a Montessori Adolescent Program
In the final session of a four-week palaeontology program I ran for the Erdkinder cohort at our school, one of the students asked me if she could have summer homework. The school year was about to close. She wanted, before it did, to know what she could keep working on through the holidays. She did […]
Why Twelve Adolescents Started a Palaeontology Program and Three Finished It: Attrition as Evidence in Erdkinder Montessori
Twelve adolescents at our school joined the first session of a four-week palaeontology program this April. Eight returned for Session 2. Four returned for Session 3. Three completed Session 4 and continued working with us after the school year ended. The numbers are the most useful single data point in the case study, Blue Blocks […]
From Pink Tower to Satellite: Three Montessori Adolescents at the AMI Congress
Three adolescents from Blue Blocks Montessori School in Hyderabad stood on the main stage of the 30th International Montessori Congress in Mexico, in front of 1,500 attendees from the global AMI community, and walked the audience through their work — from the foundational Montessori material every one of those 1,500 trained adults had once placed […]
Self-Expression in Montessori: How a Five-Year-Old Speaks to a Stranger Without Help
A five-year-old stood at his stall at our annual school event and explained his project to visitors he had never met before. He had no script. No adult prompted him. The visitors had not been prepared in advance with the right questions. His father, watching from a few feet away, told us afterwards: “He’s just […]