|
Friday for Heads and Administrators (only)
Crowne Plaza Chicago Metro Hotel
733 Madison Street
Chicago, IL 60661
312-829-5000
9:30 AM - 10:00 AM
Registration
10:00 AM - 12 NOON
"Governance and Leadership for the 21st Century"
Audience: Heads of School, Principals and Administrators
The president of NAIS presents on the three levels of governance: fiduciary, strategic, and generative, with examples of each to engage trustees and school leaders in thinking about how boards can add value to the school enterprise. Then, Bassett turns to the three levels of 21st century leadership schools expect from school administrators: managerial, strategic, and change-agency leadership.
Presenter: Pat Bassett, President - National Association of Independent Schools
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
"The Power of Adaptive Leadership: Guiding Your School Community Through Change and Growth”
Audience: Heads of School, Principals and Administrators
Based on the work of Ron Heifetz at Harvard Business School on leading organizational communities through planned and unplanned change, in this workshop we will take a detailed look at how the six principles of adaptive leadership can be applied to Montessori school management in times of growth, transition, and challenge. The six principles are:
1. “Get on the balcony” Take in the big picture, get all the information first, before moving to conclusions, strategies, or action. (analogous to Montessori observation and assessment)
2. “Identify the Adaptive Challenge” Move beyond the temptation to institute a quick technical fix to the problem or situation, and truly understand the transformational, systemic, and organizational values work that must be done to move people from Point A to Point B. (analogous to Montessori normalization/development aims as foundational to specific outcomes and academic mastery)
3. “Regulate Distress” Help people plan and pace the adaptive work in a manner that fosters a commitment to self-assessment and self-improvement, and avoids the destructive extremes of learning/growth avoidance or stress-driven work-a-holism. (analogous to the individualized pacing and formatting of Montessori lessons)
4. “Maintain Disciplined Attention” Help people air out and resolve divisive issues, before they complicate or obstruct the change process. (analogous to the Montessori Peace Table or community meeting process to resolve issues and disagreements)
5. “Give the work back to the employees” Encourage sharing of ideas, risk-taking and responsibility. Help people rise to a higher level of ownership, collaboration, and innovation. (analogous to the Montessori quest for student independence and empowerment)
6. “Protect leadership voices from below” Invite and encourage novel and out-of-the-box thinking and problem-solving. Anyone, regardless of experience, position, or education, can present their perspective and ideas – and be seriously considered (analogous to Montessori peer coaching and mentoring – which is not always age-based. Sometimes younger and more skilled students help older less skilled students)
Presenter: Jonathan Wolff, Founder, Learning for Life
Friday Evening for Heads, Administrators and Parents
Crowne Plaza Chicago Metro Hotel
733 Madison Street
Chicago, IL 60661
312-829-5000
7:00 PM
“Tips to Help Parents Recognize and Ease Stress in Children”
Audience: All, including parents
Childhood stresses come from family factors, life troubles, developmental difficulties, school bullying, and environmental stressors (such as hurricanes and violent neighborhoods). Some children internalize; some act out with externalizing aggressive actions. This session will provide dozens of ideas that parents can use to help ease stress in children’s lives.
Presenter: Dr. Alice Honig, Professor Emerita, College for Human Development at Syracuse University
Presentation Notes:
|
Saturday for All Montessori Professionals
Near North Montessori School
1434 West Division
Chicago, Illinois 60642
773-384-1434
9:00 AM
Keynote: "Montessori and the Human Spirit: From Birth to Young Adulthood"
Paula Polk Lillard - author, head of school, and Montessori mother and grandmother with half a century of work for Montessori education - reflects on Montessori’s unique emphasis on the human spirit within each child that makes possible the realization of human destiny. Presenter: Paula Polk Lillard, Educator, Author, and Montessori Advocate
10:30 AM
Concurrent Sessions (separated by "***")
"Discipline: A Branch of Knowledge or of Teaching"
Primary Audience: Infant-Toddler Teachers
Secondary Audience: Infant-Toddler Assistants
This session will focus on understanding the requirements for achieving discipline, as well as providing strategies to help children acquire "inner discipline" (self-discipline and self-control) in an environment balancing freedom and structure.
Presenters: Rosana A. Amato: Early Childhood Learning Resources Coordinator - Chiaravalle Montessori School and Toni Friedman: Infant- Toddler Teacher - Children's Learning World
Session Slides:
***
“A Way to Get Moving”
Audience: Infant Toddler and Early Childhood Teachers
Successful communication through songs, chants, rhythms, and rhymes.
Presenter: Ella Jenkins, The First Lady of Children’s Music and Grammy Award Winner
***
"Lighting a Child's Inborn Sense of Wonder: Mobilizing Your School to Bring Nature Back to Children"
Primary Audience: Early Childhood and Elementary Teachers
This workshop will present strategies for reconnecting early childhood and elementary children to nature. We’ll explore activities and curriculum ideas that reengage students with the natural world through art, creative writing, science observation, and alternatives to traditional play concepts, all using available natural space, whether urban or suburban. You’ll leave with a revitalized understanding of the importance of nature in fostering students’ ability to concentrate and be creative as well as their physical, social, and emotional well-being.
Presenters: Geoffrey E. Bishop, Executive Director and Founder Nature’s Classroom Institute and Montessori school, and Deepa Shreekumar. AMS Early Childhood Directress
Session Slides:
Article of Interest:
Three Huge Mistakes We Make Leading Kids…and How to Correct Them
***
"The Conversation with Parents I Hate to Have"
Audience: All Teachers
This workshop will provide you with practical techniques for enhancing communication, maintaining mutual respect, finding solutions and reaching agreement with parents on sensitive issues concerning their child in your classroom.
Presenter: Jonathan Wolff, Founder, Learning for Life
Session Slides:
***
"Building an Ethical Adolescent"
Audience: Junior High Teachers and Administrators
How do we provide for the ethical and social needs of the adolescent Montessori student? What is appropriate practical life work for an adolescent? The 12-14 staff at Near North Montessori will discuss these questions and much more. Speakers will share how the program at NNM has evolved to engage its students through entrepreneurship, sustainable service and pedagogy of place. Participants will gain insight into the challenges and rewards of working with adolescent students, as well as practical tools aimed at constructing a workable Montessori city model.
Session Leader: Chris Ambroso, Junior High Director, Near North Montessori with Junior High staff: Meg Amandes, 12 - 14 Head Teacher-Cynthia Castiglione, 12 - 14 Certified Intern-Rick Mosher, 12- 14 Head Teacher-Jamee Warrenfeltz, Sandwich Shop Coordinator
Session Slides:
***
"Strategies for Conquering Daily Challenges in a Public Montessori School"
Audience: Public School Montessorians
This workshop will explore public school Montessorians’ experiences with and solutions to the challenge of providing continuous, high-quality professional development for all staff membersundefinedteachers, assistants, and substitutes. You will learn proven methods for supporting staff, including structuring the school day to make time for professional development. In addition, a discussion on public relations strategies and explaining the benefits to families and schools of involving parents as an integral part of your efforts. Accreditation will also be discussed as a framework for guiding public school development and assurance of high quality Montessori implementation.
Panel Leaders: Marilyn Horan, Principal, Bunche Montessori Early Childhood Center; Phil Dosmann, Principal, Howard Avenue Montessori, Milwaukee Public Schools.
Session Slides:
***
"Steps to Successful Staff Evaluations"
Audience: Heads, Principals and Administrators
We will define the role of the Montessori Guide and present ideas on the purpose and goals for successful staff evaluations and how they can support not only the staff but also the children and the parents they serve.
Presenters: Louise Kunnert, Co-Director/Director of Education: Mary Strezewski, Early Childhood Coordinator - Midwest Montessori Teacher Training Center
Sessions Slides:
1:15 PM
“To Provide Calmness You Have to Feel Calm – Understanding and Working with your Intense Feelings in Class”
Audience: All Teachers
The presentation uses basic concepts of infant mental health to talk about relationship experiences between teachers and children that can generate very intense feelings. The presentation will uncover underlying relationship dynamics using concepts from attachment theory in order to help teachers better understand the objective patterns underlying their feelings with certain students. This presentation will allow teachers not only to understand their own classroom dynamics, but also to use their feelings in a self-reflective way to understand the child and ultimately to be a more grounded teacher.
Presenter: Margret Nickels, Ph.D, Director, Center for Children and Families at Erikson Institute
Session Slides:
***
“Loving and Language Interactions with Toddlers"
Audience: Toddler Teachers
Participants will learn how language develops and how to empower children’s early eloquence. By third grade, children who cannot read well are far more likely to end up with academic difficulties. We will discuss all the loving and intimate ways parents and educators can use turn-taking –talk and dialogic picture- book- sharing to ensure that young children develop language skills as well as an enduring passion for book reading.
Presenter: Dr. Alice Honig, Professor Emerita , College for Human Development at Syracuse University
Session Article:
***
“The Role of Observation, Class Management and Professional Development”
Primary Audience: All Teachers
Advancing as a practitioner in the Montessori classroom can be elusive. The constantly shifting sands of an educational environment based on freedom, responsibility, and individualized learning can make the goal of professional growth something that remains constantly on the
horizon. Join veteran teacher, Wendy Calise, as she explores the role of observation, mentoring, professional development, and lifelong learning in advancing your skill as a Montessori practitioner.
Presenter: Wendy Calise, Head of School, Countryside Montessori School
***
"Why the Curriculum Age Three and Beyond"
Primary Audience: Administrators and trained Montessorians and assistants who work with three to six year olds
This session will examine the purpose of Montessori and how the purposes are delivered through the vehicle of the curriculum. It will include aspects of Montessori that enable the curriculum to deliver the best possible outcomes for the children. Focus will be on the Children's House environment for three to six year olds - how it serves the needs of children in the first plane of development and how it prepares children for the next plane of development.
Presenter: Jean Miller, Ph.D,: Consultant, Examiner, Trainer; Director of Training, AMI
***
“Getting Your Students to Talk: Best Practices for the Montessori World Language Program”
Primary Audience: Elementary and Junior High Teachers
Secondary Audience: Administrators/Heads
Current best practices in world language teaching center around the ACTFL (American Council for Teaching Foreign Languages) proficiency guidelines and focus on developing what students can do concretely in the language. Proficiency based work is an ideal match for the hands on, practical environment of the Montessori classroom, and encourages children to use language to navigate practical situations encountered in childhood. This workshop will address practices that foster oral and written proficiency, using the ACTFL guidelines in lesson planning and adapting the curriculum materials you are already using. Participants will leave with ideas and activities to use in class on Monday! This session is also helpful for schools looking to start or build their world language programs. Examples given in Spanish.
Presenter: Valerie Shull, 6-14 Spanish Teacher, Rogers Park Montessori
Session Slides:
***
“Working with 21st Century Families: Tools for Supporting Diverse Montessori Communities”
Audience: All Montessorians
The makeup of the American family and the demographics of those attending Montessori schools have shifted drastically in the last several decades. This session will incorporate experiential activities with information about the nuances of working with single-parent, blended and extended families, adoptive families, foster families, conditionally separated families, military families, transnational families and LGBTQ headed families.
Presenter: Jill Stansbury, Executive Director All Day Montessori School
Session Slides:
***
"Creating a Collaborative Best Practice Montessori Program"
Audience: Heads and Administrators
Too many Montessori schools look like archipelagos of classrooms, where well-meaning teachers close their doors and define the nature of authentic Montessori practice on their own terms, based solely on their training and field experience. This can impact enrollment as well as staff morale. In this workshop we will address two aspects of Montessori quality: 1) What are commonly considered to be the “essential elements” of authentic Montessori practice? 2) How to establish a faculty culture in which teachers are committed to ongoing personal and professional development, research‐based learning, and supportive relations with fellow staff.
Presenter: Jonathan Wolff, Founder, Learning for Life
Session Slides:
***
"Who’s Job is it, Anyway? Clarifying Roles & Responsibilities”
Audience: Assistants
We will discuss the roles and responsibilities of each adult in the classroom and how they can effectively communicate with each other to create a positive working relationship and learning environment.
Presenters: Margaret Combs, Early Childhood Teacher, Alcuin Montessori School; Presenter and Consultant, Midwest Montessori Teacher Training Center and Gwen Harris, Middle School Teacher, Crystal Lake Montessori School; Elementary Presenter and Consultant, Midwest Montessori Teacher Training Center
Session Slides:
***
“Answers to Top Technology Questions from Faculty and Administrators”
Hear straightforward answers to the top questions that your colleagues are posing about the use of technology in the classroom. This session focuses on what you really need to know and provides excellent, approachable resources if you want to learn more. Answers represent the synthesis of the presenter’s experience with technology, the insights of Montessori faculty, administrators and authors, as well as takeaways from educational technology authors and conferences (e.g. ISTE, NICE, BLC). Questions about effective Internet searching, the “cloud”, BYOD & 1:1, Macs vs. PCs, notebooks vs. tablets, Apps for iPad/Android, and website filtering will be addressed….and several more.
Presenter: John Barrett of barrett-TECH
Session Presentation (less helpful):
Session Notes (more helpful):
2:45 PM
“Start 'em Early: How Parent Child Builds Healthy Families, School Community and Retention”
Primary Audience: Heads and Administrators
Secondary Audience: Infant Toddler Teachers
Parent Infant or Parent Child classes provide a Montessori education for parents and their little ones (birth to 2 or 3). Classes build school community, parental commitment and retention. The class requires fewer materials than other levels, and licensing is not required as parents are present. In this session, Susan will discuss the basics of how to start a program, and provide support for those already running a program.
Presenter: Susan Tracy McDaniel, Parenting Coach and EFT Practitioner, Learning Together Education
***
“Encouraging Children’s Social and Emotional Self-Regulation”
Audience: Early Childhood Teachers
Emotional self-regulation in young children correlates even better with later school success than early IQ measures. Some parenting styles have been found to encourage dysregulated children. This session will elucidate strategies and child-rearing techniques that are effective ways to facilitate self- control and social-emotional maturity and that provide emotional buffers for children even when there are family stresses.
Presenter: Dr. Alice Honig, Professor Emerita , College for Human Development at Syracuse University
Session Notes:
***
"Global Responsibility and Social Awareness in the Montessori Upper Elementary Community"
Audience: Upper Elementary Teachers
In Montessori Elementary Classrooms thinking from a global perspective addresses a fundamental need in human development. Our global perspective must start with our interactions with each other and the central ways in which we treat and work with our peers. In this workshop I would like to delve into how educators can facilitate communication, understanding and collaborative efforts on the part of teachers and students. You will gain a perspective of the importance of international experiences in the development of a socially responsible and conscience student. “From the me to the world.”
Presenter: Geoffrey E. Bishop, Executive Director and Founder Nature’s Classroom Institute and Montessori school
Article of Interest:
“Fear of Fractions???”
Audience: Early Childhood Teachers
Turn that fear into enjoyment and understanding of fractions. Join us for presentations including meaning of the numerator and denominator, making fraction equivalencies, even addition, multiplication of fraction and more.
Presenter: Karen Riggenbach, Math Presenter for the Seton Montessori Institute
***
"Essential Elements in the Practice of Montessori”
Primary Audience: Elementary Teachers
Secondary Audience: Administrators
This session will look at the essential elements of Montessori over time - how and perhaps why it has changed. Some of the questions it asks include: Is the practice of Montessori losing some of its good qualities or is it gaining more good qualities? What is the difference between Montessori and traditional education? What happens to graduates after finishing Montessori training? How does an understanding of purpose affect the delivery of Montessori? What is not in Montessori that should be? How can we add those things to the curriculum so they will support instead of destroy the Montessori way of working?
Presenter: Jean Miller, Ph.D,: Consultant, Examiner, Trainer; Director of Training, AMI
***
“Montessori and the Common Core State Standards: what Montessorians Need to Know and How You Can Help to Advocate”
Primary Audience: Early Childhood, Elementary and Middle School Teachers
Secondary Audience: Heads and Administrators, Public and Private
Montessori educators have long agonized over the tedious work of creating curricular alignments to each of the states' standards in order to show outsiders how our work meets the expectations for children in traditional programs. At this time 45 states have adopted the Common Core State Standards in some shape or form. Come learn more about these standards, how Montessori fits with them, and the resources in development and those available to you and your schools to show parents, public school districts, charter school approval agencies, and politicians how the Montessori "curriculum" not only meets the high standards established by this group, but often exceeds them!
Presenter: Anna Perry, Executive Director, Seton Montessori Institute and Schools
Session Slides:
***
“The Road to Normalization: The Essential Role of the Assistant in the Preparation of the Child”
Primary Audience: Assistants
Secondary Audience: Infant/Toddler and Early Childhood Teachers
While Practical Life provides the comforting connection between home and school, the Assistant is often the “human bridge” who helps the child become a part of the larger classroom community. Discover the critical impact of the Practical Life and Sensorial activities in creating pathways to normalization and the Assistant’s role in this development.
Presenter: Jennifer Nolan, Head of School and Early Childhood Program Coordinator, Seton Montessori School; Faculty Lecturer (Practical Life, Seton Montessori Institute)
Session Description:
***
“Branding Basics & Social Media Fundamentals”
Audience: Administrators
This session will give you practical ways to build and maintain your school's brand. We'll also spend time talking about how to use digital media, including social media and search. Learn how to tell and share your story to help build awareness for your school and the Montessori movement.
Presenters: Kristine Kelley, Head of editorial and content strategy, Grant Thornton LLP and
Marcus Norman, Associate Creative Director, Simple Truth - Chicago
Session Slides:
***
“Why Patty Melts...and How to Help”
Audience: All Teachers
Sensory Integration is a seamless process for most people. For some, the world can feel too full of sound, touch or lights one minute and too out of touch another. This session will focus on brain-related reasons for Sensory Integration Disorder and how to help the children and their families manage or even improve confusing sensory integration messages.
Presenter: Drina Madden, Neurodevelopmental Specialist and Montessori Instructor
Session Slides:
|
