City Garden Montessori School

Why City Garden Montessori School was nominated

Montessori is a well-established and relatively well-known model. However, it has generally always been available mostly to affluent families and communities. City Garden is attempting to be a leader in making this highly successful, highly learner-centered model available to learners from historically disadvantaged backgrounds. They have done amazing work in building an anti-bias, anti-racist curriculum that allows them to better serve a diverse population of learners, while not losing the central elements of Montessori education: multi-age classrooms, developmentally-appropriate materials and teaching strategies, following the learner. This is one school I have not yet visited, so there are elements of the program I do not know. Therefore, what I select below are not necessarily reflective the broad range of work going on at the school.