Montessori Blog - Earth Day 2021 - Grumble Services Learning Resources Blog Post

Earth Day

This past Saturday, I invited my students to join me in the Annual Milwaukee Riverkeeper Spring Cleanup. I get some sort of weird satisfaction from picking litter up with my grabber tool. Looking for a central site safely away from busy traffic, I stumbled upon the Kinnickinnic Trail.

Like many educators, I have deep concerns for my students when they get older. What legacy are the generations before them leaving behind?

Our world is on fire and our planet is melting. Is it too late to affect real change?

Montessori Blog - School Reopening- Grumble Services Learning Resources Blog Post

School Reopenings

School reopenings are occurring more and more each day. Our school district has been 100% virtual since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. As I type, students are finishing up spring break and preparing to head back to in-person school for the first time this year.

I would be lying to you if I told you I didn’t have any misgivings. I’m convinced the general public has little idea as to what hoops schools need to leap through in order to raise the façade of normalcy for its families. I also believe many students will be coming back with the mindset that school might look close to what it was like before March, 2020.

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Montessori Parent Education

Montessori Parent Education is an integral part of each child’s academic success. As we all journey down this virtual-hybrid-physical school path together, I have rediscovered a few important truths. For me, the most critical of these is what we call parent education. I believe this is more critical now than ever before!

The Montessori Method is a unique educational approach nurturing a child’s intrinsic desire to learn. Montessori focuses on the whole child—their cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development.

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Unschooling Movement

Unschooling Movement is an informal learning approach encouraging learner-chosen activities over adult-chosen ones. It was inspired by John Holt, widely regarded as the ‘father of unschooling.’ He served in the military during WWII. As a civilian, he served as a dissatisfied elementary school teacher.

Coining this term in the 1970s, Holt came to the conclusion reforming the American school system was an impossibility. He began recommending to parents to keep their children at home; to let them decide what to learn and when.

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Growth Mindset

Growth mindset is one of two belief systems we might have about our own abilities. Growth mindset has a more stagnant counterpart known as a fixed mindset. Research has shown encouraging different types of behavior might predict a person’s future successes.

Motivation Research has shown that these two mindsets are manifested from a very early age. Our mindset governs our behavior and our relationship with success and failure. This occurs in both professional and personal contexts, and ultimately affects our capacity for happiness in life.

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Upward Social Mobility

Upward social mobility: What is it? In this case, leading researchers have divided the population into five categories or quintiles. If you are born in the bottom 20% (experts refer to this as the bottom quintile), upward social mobility is the chance you have to move up to the top 20% (or the top quintile). Another term commonly used for social mobility is inequality.

According to The Brookings Institution, there are multiple layers at work when it comes to our personal social mobility.