Montessori method of instruction

Sprawled across 44 wooded acres off Layhill Road, the Barrie School is enough to make even the most hardened grown-up wish he or she were back in class. Sixth-graders toss pebbles at the ice-shielded pond as their teacher explains how water freezes. Four-year-olds sing folk songs in Spanish. In a high-school science classroom, students battle handmade armored cars to see the laws of physics in action.

At Barrie, a private day school home to 500 students from age 2 through grade 12, "Montessori is a way of life," said assistant head of school Donna Danner.

This fall, the Montessori school will be educating teachers alongside its students. Barrie School is expanding its teacher training institute, previously limited to summer sessions, to include year-long internships for prospective Montessori teachers in Barrie's classrooms. After completing an intensive nine-week training session during the summer, student teachers will spend a year working in classrooms under the guidance of Barrie's master teachers in order to qualify for a teaching credential from the American Montessori Society.

The institute will also expand to host weekend Montessori training workshops throughout the year. The workshops are open not only to prospective Montessori teachers and international participants interested in opening a Montessori school in their native country, but to public school educators interested in applying the principles of Montessori education to their own classrooms.

Prince George's County has sent several teachers to Barrie's summer workshops, said head of school Julia Wall.

"Our students will benefit a lot," Wall said. The teacher intern program "just puts another person in there [the classroom] with a great enthusiasm for learning."

At Barrie, students are taught in the independently structured Montessori method until age 12, when they start sixth grade. In the Montessori model, students are grouped according to age rather than grade. Each student works with the teacher to design a curriculum, appropriate for his or her abilities and learning style, built around whole class, small group and individual lessons. Students stay with the same teacher for three years, forming bonds with their teachers and their peers and allowing students of different ages to work together.

In the Montessori method, students "can grow to their full potential in the classroom," said Betsy Wimbrow, who teaches 6- to 9-year-olds. "They're not limited by a curriculum that says, 'You're 7, so you can learn this and only this.' We're not limited in any way."

One of the greatest misconceptions about Montessori education is that it is unstructured, Danner said. In fact, she said, students work closely with teachers to develop the right curriculum for them from the variety of options available.

In Wimbrow's class, students ducked under a clothesline stretching across the room decorated with chronologically arranged illustrations of U.S. presidents, notable African-Americans and inventions as they moved to different work stations around the room. Wimbrow showed one student's work journal for that week, headlined with his objective -- "My goal is to do a lot of research" -- and annotated with his daily itinerary and comments from his teachers. At the back of the journal, there is space for the student, his teachers and parents to reflect on his work that week.

With the expansion of the teacher training institute, Barrie officials hope that the school Wall described in a monthly newsletter as "one of the best-kept secrets in the area" will become a major research center for the Montessori method, while keeping its focus on its students' education. The institute is another facet of Barrie's unique take on education.

"An independent school is just a different animal," Wall said.