What have I noticed? I have noticed a couple of things being a public school teacher in a Montessori classroom. First of all, I don't always choose Montessori material when teaching. This might sound disappointing. However, with a classroom of 21 children and one teacher, using Montessori material for each lesson is always not feasible. The Montessori system was designed for small groups of children of differing ages. Which leads to my second point. This is not what we have in the public school system. Sure, we might have three grades in one class, but many have just two grades. This is what I have. And this is not easy! Any teacher can tell you that teaching one grade is much easier than teaching a split grade class. And now here is the third point. Even though there might be some classes with differing ages, there is still one teacher in the classroom. There might be an EA (education assistant) but they would only be in the class to work one on one with a child who has a designation; they are not there to assist with all children, although some choose to do so. How can small group lessons be made with only one teacher? Well, it can be done. But it takes very eager and dedicated teachers who have the patience of angles and are masters of multitasking. All this is possible, I'm not saying there are no successful Montessori public classroom out there. I know there are many. But if you choose to put your child into a Montessori program in the public school system, you are rolling the dice on whether they are getting a true Montessori education or not.
