Spirit of City Country School
Montessori
A Montessori education is holistic, it considers all aspects of development: physical, aesthetic, social, emotional, spiritual and cognitive. Maria Montessori viewed life as a series of transformations, each stage characterized by the emergence and disappearance of special potentialities or sensitivities. This series of transformations is a natural, normal, spontaneous process through four planes of development: the first from birth to six years, the second from six to twelve, the third from twelve to eighteen, and the fourth from eighteen to twenty-four. A child progresses from sensory motor to abstraction to moral development. Montessori is a child-centered pedagogy designed to help children with their task of self-construction as they develop through these planes, from childhood to maturity.
What We Believe
Learning is growth.
Learning is interlocked with the environment: with the people, the objects, the values, the beliefs, the hopes and the fears, that surround it.
Human beings learn with pleasure and joy, in a state called flow, when they voluntarily participate in interesting and challenging activities.
Learning is sometimes discouraging. Real challenges, difficulties and setbacks help build the character and grit necessary for overcoming setbacks and difficulties in adult life.
There is a difference between integrating learning and simple recall. Academic subjects are specific ways of understanding the world that must be learned. A child can learn the rules for multiplication, for example, and sit down and take a test of that knowledge, solve problems, and do well, but this in no way means that the child has integrated the information: there has not necessarily been any mastery. Mastery requires time and a supportive environment.
Different people learn in different ways; there are different types of intelligences and a school must recognize and encourage all the intelligences.
Learning flourishes where there is trust, respect, understanding and uninterrupted work time.
The apparatus of school “learning”–tests, memorizations, time constraints, for example — interfere with real learning.
Children learn best when they are doing something real and meaningful.
Children learn many lessons from being in nature and observing nature.
Children need solitude, as well as company.
Individual development and group development are integrated: trust, collaboration and group action must be created and fostered.
Our Aims
At City Country School we teach children how to learn, so that they can continue to learn and grow during their entire lives. To achieve the great competency of LEARNING TO LEARN, the school seeks to achieve these aims:
To create a strong collaboration with parents and a warm and supportive school community.
To help the child seek and recognize excellence.
To help the child develop focus, concentration, order and peacefulness.
To prepare the child to discover the interconnectedness of seemingly unrelated things.
To foster in the child a mindset that values longterm goals of enrichment and self-improvement over short-term goals of performance.
To prepare the child to see mistakes as necessary steps on the path to success.
To help the child find happiness and pleasure in school and in life.
To help the child recognize his/her own needs, and to distinguish needs from wants.
To help the child understand his/her place in the world.
To help the child learn to communicate effectively, honestly, constructively.
To help the child discover his/her talents, interests and passions.
To help the child see that s/he is capable of surpassing his/her own expectations, limitations, fears.