A Sykesville mother plans to open South Carroll?s first Montessori school and shatter misconceptions about the methodology creating haphazard classrooms.
“Children are given the freedom to choose and to learn, but that doesn?t mean I am putting them in a chaotic environment,” said Marie Atalla, who will open the Ava Wanas Montessori School in Sykesville in September for preschoolers and kindergartners.
“It?s about discipline and structure.”
Atalla fell in love with the Montessori system, established a century ago by Italian educator Maria Montessori, when her son attended Julia Brown Montessori School in Columbia in Howard County after the family moved from Egypt to the United States nine years ago.
In 1907, Montessori opened A Children?s House, where she observed how students “learned best when engaged in purposeful activity rather than simply being fed information,” according to the American Montessori Society.
Teachers do not assign homework or tests; instead, they encourage students to work quietly and independently on activities designed to foster a love of learning and an understanding of how abstract concepts are applied concretely.
Atalla selected a location along College Road because of its green landscape and her desire to have students plant a garden and develop respect for nature. She also wants to teach her young students French.
This will be Carroll?s third Montessori school. The Montessori School of Westminster opened in 1979, and another used to operate in Mount Airy.
Critics of the Montessori philosophy, which is taught at 60 schools in Maryland and 8,000 schools nationwide, argue that it discourages social interaction and makes it difficult for Montessori students to adjust to homework after they transfer to public schools in their older years.
But Montessori students performed equally well or better in most subjects than their counterparts, according to research presented in the journal Science.
That includes Atalla?s son, Anthony, now 8, who tests above his third-grade level in reading and math.
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