Leadership interview with Magnus Hanton, Westmont Montessori School

I love connecting with the parents at the school. One of the highlights for my day is getting out in the mornings greeting families. My vice principal and I, we get out every morning and greet people as they arrive. So I've really enjoyed that. Connecting with families in the morning has been a cornerstone since I took this job, and it's a great way for me to start my day. I love that aspect of it.

I love the small community nature of our school. I grew up in small towns as a kid and in schools or towns of 500 to 1500, so, very small. With our school being sort of 300 students, it has that connection where everyone really knows each other. And then the other thing I love about our school is it really just allows students to think about who they want to be and not have other people determine what that is, that they have the freedom to say, I'm going to go this path. And yeah, I might be good at something else, but this is what interests me and this is what drives me, and this is what I'm passionate about. So that's what I'm going to pursue.

And that applies for three year olds all the way through 18 year olds at our school. And I think that is probably the most powerful thing that we can have our students leave with. I had a job at the school as an educational assistant during the day. My wife is a Montessori teacher. She got the job here first, and I just took it as a small job to kind of make ends meet. And I did that for four years. And in those four years, I saw what the potential of the school could be.

Some people start a job like this and they're like, well, we'll just see how it goes and we'll make some changes once they get comfortable. I came in sort of with the mandate to let's change things up, and it's kind of been my mandate right from the get-go. We're not going to rest on our laurels every year, every moment there is an opportunity to improve and have a better experience for the students at the school. And the great thing about running an independent school is that you have that opportunity to do that. We were not fully Montessori to start with, and now we are a fully Montessori school.

And then it’s about applying that through middle and high school, where we saw that there were students who were looking for something different in the way that they learned. Meaning to sort of connect better with what was happening in the classroom, not just memorizing facts for the sake of memorizing. I start my day, my work day pretty early, not coming into the school, but I work from home just to get caught up, see where things are at, respond to any messages. 

I always say to my staff is to find that work-life balance. So I do that early because then when my family gets up, I can spend some time with them and get them all going for the day that we all knock in together. And I think that's really important to find that balance. And then I come into school with my kids. Both my kids attend Westmont. They've been here since they were two and a half years old and one's in grade eleven and one's in grade nine now. So we all come in together, which is fantastic. And then I greet families right away, starting at 8:15, where I'm outside for 45 minutes.

My job has shifted over time. I used to be very much up and about in the classrooms, going around and seeing what was going on, as our school’s growing a bit. My job has changed a lot into sort of a more managerial type role where I'm left in the classrooms. But I often will meet with various families around issues or initiatives that they want to start. That's a common thing, whether they want to see after school programs or things happening on campus, connecting with board members to see where we're headed and what we're planning to do. Sort of visioning out for the next year, two, three years. When I do that type of work, it's about how can we offer more to the community versus talking about what we do, sort of trying to lead by example, how we want our students to act in the world. And that's how we try and do. So that's a lot of my work right now is to do that.

There’s also connecting with things like the parent advisory groups, the parent advisory group, I work closely with them. And some of the projects that they're working on, new playground equipment is a big focus right now. For example, that's one of the projects that we're taking on. It's been interesting what that journey looks like for students over the years. Obviously, as with most, Montessori had a real focus on the preschool and kindergarten ages to start with. And that's sort of the stereotype around Montessori is that it does a great job with little and then once you want to get into serious work, you go elsewhere. But that is changing.

Montessori is just a different way of educating. And so when we get families now, they probably would have started saying, oh, we're just looking for somewhere for a little one to start, and then we'll move on. Now when they arrive, even with three and four year olds, they're like, okay, so what does grade twelve look like? The transition between programs is always something that they work around. The fundamentals of what they experience in the early years continues on as they get up through the older years.

There are the same fundamentals. Independence, self-reliance, and confidence are all those factors that we're building in. And so each year as a student goes through our program, it's about building and developing on that. And so that the competent learners that we have in grade twelve are really built off of the multiple years they've had. And that was one of the big drivers for us to go through high school is that we want to reap the rewards of all the efforts that everyone has put in along the way. And that's the journey that we want for our students is that they don't waste that time. And then when they get through grade twelve, they have that opportunity to know what they're going to do.

And so we call the grade 12 “launch year” for a reason. They've established, they've laid out all the parameters that they need to decide where they're going to go, and then they're ready to really launch into whatever life adventure they want, whether that is deciding purposefully that they want to take a gap year or deciding that they want to go to University or trade school or whatever it is.

There’s very little staff turnover. We've got one staff member who started here in 1980, so she could have been my teacher in school. So she's been here a very long time. We've got, I think, a whole host of staff who have been here sort of 14,15 years, a lot. We have some new staff members as we've grown. We've added along the way, but we find that once we have staff join us, we work very hard to keep them here. They invest a lot in us. We've invested a lot in them. We often bring in staff as things like educational assistance, for example, for them to get to know the school. And then once they've established sort of a rapport with students, then we can see them move into a teaching position.

We have numerous families who are multi-generational at our school. So I mentioned that teacher who has been here since 1980. She has now taught three generations of one family. And so those alumni not only sort of value the experience, but they want that experience for their children. And so they're connected with the students biologically as well as emotionally. So it's a very interesting sort of experience.

And whether their parents at the school or their staff at the school that used to be alumni, they're still connected with us. The students that are drawn to our school are ones who don't just want to sit in the classroom and do the same thing as every other student, or they want to either advance quickly through material, they don't want to wait or they don't want to have to be pushed through if they're not quite ready. It's all about mastery for us, whether it's at a three year old level or a grade twelve level, they're also looking to be connected. We hear that people who are coming to us for high school are tired of not feeling like they belong to any particular thing, that they're having to sort of struggle to have a community, to find some meaningful connection.

I think in times like this when people are feeling increasingly isolated, that people are hungry for that connection, that human connection which they can't get in a school of 1500 students. They're also looking to connect with a diversity of people and that's again through the young ones all the way through grade twelve. They want to connect with people who don't necessarily have the same background. Like we've got families, some who are investment bankers, we've got some who are chicken farmers. Right. We've got the whole gamut of types of people who come to our school. And I think the other thing that people are looking for is for the learning to be meaningful. All of our classes, finding connections to the real world is really central to what a modular education is all about. 

Having learning being meaningful makes a big difference and it's not always present in some more traditional models. When we meet with a family and the student doesn't want to be at our school for whatever reason. And it can really vary. Like it can vary from group sizes too small. It's rural. They're not used to being on a more rural campus.

Montessori is interesting because it's a mix of structured and unstructured sort of scenarios. You are given as much freedom as you can handle. And for students who really are looking to be told what to do and just to get it done, this probably isn't the right place for them. Let's be honest. A lot of families who send their kids to an independent or a private school, they did very well in that other model, that traditional model of education. They've owned businesses or they're high up in a business or whatever it is that they've done. They've likely been very successful at doing it, but they realized that that model that they went through doesn't really fit as well with where the world is going. And so I think there's a real culture of looking at innovation and what the future holds and preparing for that.

 I think it's a very inclusive community. There's a parent who comments on the first time they came to Westmont seeing a grade six helping a grade one. And on the playground, they'd fallen off a swing or something, going over and helping and being really supportive in that way, and recognizing that everyone has a need and needs to be supported.

We have quite a few students with learning differences within our mix as well, and they're just part of the community. There's no separation. People get really concerned about students who have diverse learning needs being labeled and it doesn't even really come up. Right. I think that echoes a lot of people's experience who come through here, that every learner, no matter how they come, is supported and encouraged. 

I think we have a really strong staff community. I think that we're really connected, very flexible with staff, really willing to take on whatever it is to do to get the job done, filling in gaps where need be. And I mentioned sort of our culture being very open and transparent. I think that holds true as a staff. My door is literally open for people to come and go and communicate back and forth with me. I think that would be true across the board is to be really open with each other and I think that goes through to working the relationship with parents as well.

We do a weekly update out to everyone and I'm able to communicate about what's going on in the school. And open lines of communication usually solves a myriad of problems. One thing we don't have is a standard set of if this happens, this is going to be the consequence. That's just not the way that it goes here. It's always judged based on the individuals involved and the scenario and what's the prior history. Typically with interstate conflicts, it's sitting down with those students and having a conversation, like with both of them and getting both sides of the story and then coming to mutual understanding of what has transpired and then finding a path forward. 

And we do that all the way from our little all the way up through grade twelve, really encouraging that direct communication, just as we would with our adults. If you have a problem with somebody, you have to talk and work it out with that person that you are having the problem with and the teachers are there to help. 

We created an accessible trail just off of our property. We share access along the back of our property with the trail system in the big park that surrounds us. We have a really good relationship with the Capital Region District, the CRD, and so that's really strong. I think now we are seen as part of the community. I think we have a really strong connection with them and it's something that we really try to foster. 

Really think about the way that you want your child to learn. That, really, is at the core of it all. Don't worry about the curriculum side of things because the curriculum will get taken care of, right? But how your student explores towards that and how they find meaning from that. That's what you should look for in a school more than anything.