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Twelve-year-old Vivian likes everything about school. Just ask her.
What's your favourite subject?
"Umm, all of them."
Why do you like school?
"Because I learn a lot and it's interesting to learn new things."
Is there anything about school that you dislike?
"No."
Fair enough.
Not surprisingly, Lily Cheung is thrilled by her daughter's answers. Lily chose to enroll Vivian, then three years old, at Toronto French Montessori School (TFMS), in Ontario, a form of alternative school that focuses on self-motivation and encourages students to learn at their own pace.
"I looked around and had a few recommendations from friends," Cheung recalls. "I looked at a number of schools but I think that the method that they taught, the theory, the material that they taught, I thought it was a big part in helping kids understand the concepts."
TFMS is one example of a worldwide network of Montessori schools that promote self-directed learning. Established by Italian doctor Maria Montessori in the early 1900s, the Montessori method seeks to create a space in which children feel naturally free to pursue their interests.
"They're able to choose their own work and complete it and repeat it to their happiness. Guidance is given by the adult when necessary, not overly imposed," explains Katherine Poyntz, executive director of the Canadian Council of Montessori Administrators.
All Montessori schools seek to develop children into naturally curious young adults through self-guided learning, but each school can interpret the method differently. As practiced at TFMS, the Montessori method involves engaging children in activities that require mobility and the use of their hands. The school believes that when kids become more engaged and more interested in their activities, they mature. In turn, this maturity helps cultivate a natural desire to learn.
One reason Cheung is so happy that Vivian enjoys TFMS is that Vivian's older brother, Titan, didn't feel comfortable in a Montessori school when he was first enrolled at age three.
"Before I picked Vivian's school I had picked (a different Montessori school) for my son, who is two years older than Vivian," Cheung recalls. "I liked it very much, the teacher was good, the environment was good…but my son didn't like it too much."
Like other alternative schools, says Queen's University professor of education Rena Upitis, the effectiveness of a Montessori school's methods are subject to the learning style and aptitudes of each individual student.
"The bottom line, for me, is that thoughtful choices about schooling should take into account the child's strengths and needs, as well as the particular strengths of any given curriculum," she says.
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