[asdff]

I attended one for elementary and middleschool. Early on everything we did was in groups. Take the multiplication flash cards and quiz eachother. Mess with the abacus. Look at the geological periods chart, etc. All the stuff seemed pretty fun to me. Yes, we had outdoor recess everyday, alhough we had a good setup with a big playground and some woods on the property. A lot of montessori setups I see now look really spartan like almost a daycare center.

But in hindsight I could tell it depends heavily on the teachers as well as the students you are saddled with because of how much group stuff there is. There was clear divisions between the kids who would reliably do their work and the kids who procrastinated and played around flicking pencils at eachother all day. This was generally possible while the main classroom teacher was busy with some subset of students for a lesson or some other work.

Once we got access to desktop computers we replaced the pencil flicking all day with games. They'd be in the main classroom but we'd just turn the crt monitors to the side to hide it. This was long before IT surveillance tools, we had full internet access too. Gameboys a plenty.

There was a lot of fluid experimentation however. At one point we took all the shelving in the room and turned it in such a way to create sort of cubicles. I think the idea was to get the kids who probably had ADHD to lock in and do their work more vs being tempted to socialize and screw around all day with their friends. Eventually they banned us from turning the CRT monitors as well.

Would a more rigid school structure help other kids? Sure, probably, but I don't think what public school was doing would have helped those kids much. Honestly montessori is a lot like the adult working world now that I am in that and see the parallels. A lot less handholding and you needing to not give into procrastination and ask mentors for individual direction from time to time. Group work and discussion coupled with independent work. Project based education that is more like actual real life work projects vs the dry lecture/memorize/exam patterns. That being said it was more "traditional" and less montessori towards the end as they had to prepare you for a proper highschool setup, so more formally scheduled classes and a lot less free time in the main classroom.

[Broken_Hippo]

I think the idea was to get the kids who probably had ADHD to lock in and do their work more

Wow that sounds terrible. My mother used to have me sit in silence at the dining room table to try to get me to do my homework. My god, so much noise. Libraries are similar. People adjusting on a chair, pages turning, pens dropping, car doors outside, eating.... There are just so many freaking little noises. I'd rather have a wall of noise so I can't pick out the distractions and work on whatever I was working on. (Not that it always worked, but I had a chance).

[em-bee]

thank you for that detailed insight. i only had the opportunity to observe ad learn about montessori in kindergarten. what you describe is pretty much what i expected from reading about it, but i haven't seen any stories from actual students who experienced it.

it would seem that some groups in your class could have benefited from more teacher attention. or maybe from mixing up the groups.

[asdff]

People were loathe to work in other groups compared to their friends like most kids are. Overall it was a great experience though. A few kids probably with the most lack of focus and fooling around did eventually end up with special 1 on 1 attention as well. Everyone is doing fine today, great outcomes really.

[em-bee]

People were loathe to work in other groups compared to their friends like most kids are.

understandable, but actually a problem that should to be counteracted. it's not really healthy if the same kids always work together because it leads to building cliques. ad you don't want that in a school. it also causes kids that don't fit in any group to be excluded.