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Maria Montessori, The Pioneer From Montessori150.org ​ Maria Montessori was born on the 31st August 1870, in Chiaravalle, Italy. From an early age she broke through the traditional barriers for women, attending a technical school with initial ambitions to be an engineer, to go on to choose a career in medicine. In 1896 Montessori became one of the first Italian women ever to obtain a medical degree. In her early career as a doctor, she was asked to represent Italy at the International Congress for women’s rights in Berlin, where she called for equal pay for women. ​ As a doctor her interests led her to join a research programme at the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Rome, where she came to work with differently abled children. Through her in depth research, observation and analysis, Montessori developed a pedagogical approach which resulted in incredible outcomes for these children. At just 28 she addressed medical and pedagogical congresses, advocating for greater support for children with such difficulties and putting forward the controversial notion of education for social reform. While her work in this area received a great deal of acclaim, Maria Montessori discovered her techniques were applicable for use with all children, with extremely successful outcomes. She established the first of her “Casa dei Bambini” (children’s house) in Rome in 1907 and delivered her first training course in 1909. The success of the Montessori method spread throughout the world and Montessori travelled and lectured extensively on her unique, child centred approach, establishing schools and a loyal following of educators and researchers. ​ In her career she came up against opposition from fascist regimes, witnessed some of her work being destroyed during the war, and had to reside in India for 7 years until she was able to return to a war free Europe. An advocate of education for peace, Maria Montessori spoke in Geneva on the topic of peace in 1932 at the Bureau de l"Education (forerunner of UNESCO). She believed strongly in the power of education to bring about social reform and was nominated three times for a Nobel Peace Prize. Her son, Mario Montessori, worked with her across the world and continued her work following her death in 1952. ​ Today Montessori education is present in more than 25,000 schools across the world and in more than 140 countries. Montessori left the world a legacy of a truly universal approach to the education of not just the child, but the whole human being, with a global impact which continues to be felt today.

About MOTEACO The Montessori Teachers Collective was born over coffee. ​ One of the best things about Montessori teaching is the camaraderie. I loved spending time with other teachers and felt stronger in the classroom afterward, but conferences and seminars were few and far between - time was the thing that was the hardest to find! In the mid-90s I began to wonder if the Internet might help to fill the gaps between get-togethers. It wouldn't be the same as coffee & kid stories in the lobby of the conference hotel at 1:00 am, but it'd be better than nothing. ​ My fascination with HTML and increasing numbers of Montessori folks online proved to be fertile ground. The first iteration of the page, then called the Montessori Teachers Collaborative , was uploaded to AOL's Hometown service on December 8, 1997, as part of my elementary training final project. A slight name change accompanied a large format change in March 1998, and the somewhat more aptly titled Montessori Teachers Collective started to grow. ​ Other projects sprouted up along the way... a Montessori teachers discussion forum (MTF), a discussion forum for Montessori parents (MPF), free one-page websites (The Homepage Project ) for Montessori schools who couldn't afford a web presence of their own, and Montessori Schools Online , a 'webring' of connected Montessori school home pages from around the world. At one time MTC also featured an exhaustive list of every Montessori school and materials vendor, hundreds of sourced quotes, classified ads, Montessori postcards you could send by email, live chat with whoever happened to be at the site, and two applications written for the Palm Pilot : an animated quotes generator and a classroom management application. ​ September 1999 saw another redesign and a move to new server space - I was all-in on the technology thing and MOTEACO was now officially larger than the sum of its parts. ​ Feature articles in local papers, The Public School Montessorian , and Montessori Life Magazine brought increasing numbers of people to the site. At times there were even more visitors from Africa, South America, Asia, and Australia than the United States, Canada, and Europe, combined. Most importantly, though, lots of small, single-classroom schools with a handful of students, a passionate teacher, and incomplete sets of second-hand materials could afford to do more, as everything on the site was free to use and share. ​ You're reading the latest version of MOTEACO . We were on and off again in the mid-late 2010s, though our Facebook Page kept chugging along. A volunteer hosted a copy of the site's content during that time, and COVID finally provided me the time to get things running again in December 2020. My name's Don Jennings . Welcome to the Montessori Teachers Collective !

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