Adaptive learning

To keep up with a constantly changing society, schools around the world have been altering their methods, focusing on an approach that caters to students as individuals and freethinkers rather than the time-honored desks-and-chalkboard setting. Montessori schools have been doing this from the very start.

"Montessori hasn't changed a lot, because it was so innovative in the beginning," says Pherooz Karani, head of the International Montessori School Prague (IMSP). "When Maria Montessori developed her method 100 years ago, she was really looking at whole-child approach and saying that the teacher and the child are on a very close level and in a partnership for education, and children play a huge part in their own education. It's self-directed learning, and that's what we've been following for more than 100 years now."

Karani, who grew up in the United States, has a long history with the method: She attended a Montessori school until she was 12 years old, and her mother and grandmother were Montessori educators, as well. While she says she knew from age 6 she wanted to be a teacher, she avoided the Montessori approach initially in what she calls an attempt to rebel and break away from her family.

Then, in her first year of university, while doing a degree in elementary education, Karani says that none of it made sense to her as a method. After researching Montessori on a practical level, she decided to leave university and complete training in the method first. Now Karani has spent nearly all of her 18 years in education in Montessori environments. For the past two academic years, she has served as the head of IMSP.

"I just think it's the best method for children, because it really serves the whole child and that's what I like about the approach," Karani says. "So I was very resistant to it, and it took me a while to come around to it, but now I can't even imagine not doing it. And now people say, 'You're just like your mother.' "

IMSP, located on Hrudičkova street in Prague 4, was originally established by Kateřina Bečková in 2002 as a private school in a different location in the neighborhood. Though it started with 16 children aged between 1.5 and 6 years and divided between just two groups, over time the school grew, adding an elementary classroom in 2003, and a second primary classroom in 2005.

In 2007, the school gained accreditation from the American Montessori Society (AMS) as well as expanded its program into lower elementary for students between the ages of 6 and 9, and upper elementary, with students ages 9 through 12. According to Karani, the school currently has about 90 students total, with a maximum of about 108 students.

"We don't want to grow much larger as a school," Karani says. "We're not a school that aspires to have 500 children here. We like our community feel; we like that we're a small, family-oriented school. We all know each other: I know all the parents, I know every child in the school - we like that, that's what we want to continue to nourish."

Despite not seeking to grow much larger in student numbers, Karani says IMSP does have plenty of plans for the school's future.

"We have things that we want to do to grow," she says. "We would like to put in a full-size library - all our classrooms have libraries of course, and for the elementary children they're digitalized and the children can use the libraries for research and reading, but it would be great to have an actual, large, all-school library and develop more of a technology program."

In addition to that, Karani mentions that IMSP currently has a strong physical education program in which the children have classes once a week. However, because of the lack of a gym at the school, the students must use one elsewhere, so Karani highlights a potential on-campus facility as another plan for the future, as well as further development of its playground and garden.

Aside from that, Karani does not see IMSP drastically changing in coming years. On the contrary, she believes it is the lasting power, recognizability and stability that draws so many to the Montessori method.

"People ask me, 'How much do you think Maria Montessori would change if she were to come back today and look at the method?' and I certainly think that there are things she'd change, because she always said that you have to prepare children for the society they're going in to," Karani says. "There's lots of changes and lots of growth; the needs of children change, but the core mission of helping develop that well-rounded child who has self-directed learning is still there, and I love that."

Kasia Pilat can be reached at
kpilat@praguepost.com