While many schools may not look at kindergarten students as leaders, Inly provides five-year-olds with a unique opportunity to be leaders and explore what that it means to them. On the day before school begins, Inly invites incoming kindergarten students to join the incoming third, sixth, and eighth graders for a Student Leadership Summit. This year, approximately 50 students attended the September 6 event, where the oldest students in each level come together to learn and discuss what it means to be a good leader, both inside and outside the classroom.

Donna and Julie addressing the group.

The mix of students is a critical piece of the Summit’s success. Younger students not only get the chance to spend time with older counterparts, but they gain confidence from being in a peer group together. Older students have a chance to flex their leadership muscles and mentor the younger ones. This type of multi-age learning is a foundation of the Montessori philosophy and an important aspect of Inly’s community.

The Summit began with a pizza lunch in the Meehan Family Artsbarn. Head of School Donna Milani Luther welcomed the group and explained, “Many of you have been in your classrooms for quite a while. We are expecting you to be leaders and to help the other children in your classroom. We are expecting that you are going to help them in a respectful way.”

Students worked in multi-age groups to discuss what makes a good leader. Each group outlined one of its members on a large piece of paper, and then wrote or drew their interpretation of the qualities of a good leader on the inside of the body outline. Common qualities were responsibility, caring, and listening. Other traits included: reliability, honor, empathy, compassion, and creativity.

One group's interpretation of a good leader.

Later, students worked in groups split by age level with a focus on more practical, day-to-day scenarios. The kindergarteners talked about how they would work together in different situations, like when other students are disruptive in class, and then they acted out how they would deal with the situations. Third graders used role plays and discussion to explore the “right” and “wrong” situations and how to manage different personalities. The sixth and eighth graders worked in teams to determine, by consensus, the most important items they would need if they were stranded in a desert. At the end of the day, everyone came back together and shared insight on their small group work.

Upper Elementary teacher Jeff Klein facilitates a small group discussion.

Valery Billings, a Children’s House teacher who helped lead the Summit, was impressed with the student interaction. One participant told her that being a good leader needs “to listen, to listen to what the other person has said to you, and not to respond right away…but to listen to their ideas, and to take those ideas into consideration and build on them.”

Defining and practicing leadership skills now is an important step Inly students take in their educational journeys toward becoming “global citizens” who are responsible, caring, and creative.

2011 Summit Participants

In “Montessori Builds Innovators,” a blog post on the Harvard Business Review website, Andrew McAfee recently weighed in on the “Montessori Mafia” theory posed by Peter Sims in the Wall Street Journal. McAfee is a principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business in the MIT Sloan School of Management.

McAfee begins by saying “There are strident disagreements these days over every aspect of American educational policy, except for one. Everyone thinks it would be great if we could better teach students how to innovate.”

Remembering his own Montessori school experience, McAfee wrote about how plentiful opportunities for discovery, in tandem with hands-on Montessori materials, provided the perfect formula for impressionable learning.

No matter how young you are, after you see five beads on a wire next to 25 arranged in a square and 125 in a cube, you have a grasp of 5^2 and 5^3 that doesn’t leave you. And after you hold the five-cube in one hand and the ten-cube in another, the power of taking something to the third power becomes very real. One is eight times as heavy as the other!

We encourage you to read the full post, which concludes with McAfee saying, “The main thing I learned there [at Montessori school] is that the world is a really interesting place, and one that should be explored. Can there be any better foundation for an innovator in training?”

About Innovation at Inly School:

Why Montessori? Making the Case for Montessori

What Does it Mean to be an Innovative Montessori School?

Inly School’s Differentiator: A Culture of Creativity

By Pam Golden, Inly Art Instructor

Former Inly student Caroline Jones recently wrote to me from Costa Rica, where she is a student at Global College. Her service learning project was working with the students at a small Montessori school in La Carpio.

Lynda Jackson, Inly Spanish instructor, Caroline Jones, and Pam Golden, Inly art instructor

We decided to do an art exchange between the Inly Lower Elementary students and the students at her school. Inly students drew pictures showing their lives—friends, pets, school, sports, family—and Inly Spanish instructor Lynda Jackson helped our students write captions in Spanish.

Caroline, a student at Inly through 5th grade in 2003, came back to her roots on June 7 and talked to our elementary students about her experiences working in La Carpio. She showed a movie that she made about the school, answered lots of questions, and brought drawings from her students for our students. This artwork is now on display in the Artsbarn corridor.

Artwork from students in La Carpio

Student thumbprints make a beautiful rainbow

Sharing stories through art

Caroline with several Inly students

Caroline received a warm welcome from Inly students

Caroline's presentation about La Carpio

Caroline with Donna Milani Luther, Inly Head of School

Many thanks to Sandy Kronitis-Sipols, Holly Clifford, and the Inly After School Community Service Club, who contributed art supplies for La Carpio, as well as to Caroline’s parents, Karen and Dan Jones, who delivered the art materials to Costa Rica in April.

Thank you, Caroline!

Caroline points to the clay head she made as an Inly student

Three days after she finished seventh grade at Inly School, Lucy Knox boarded a plane for a week-long World Leadership Forum with People to People in Washington, DC. Lucy was nominated by her history teacher, Tschol Slade, who qualified her as an “outstanding student.” The focus of this particular forum was to develop a greater understanding of the role that leaders, both past and present, have played in developing our nation, while learning leadership skills to bring home.

Lucy Knox (left) in front of the Lincoln Memorial

Before she headed to DC, one part of Lucy’s People to People homework was to articulate what she was looking forward to during her trip. She wrote, “As the end of the school year approached this spring, we started talking a lot about memorials in history class, specifically in terms of the Holocaust. We researched, learned about, and even created our own memorials, so I really look forward to seeing some of these memorials in person. I also look forward to seeing where some of the most important decisions for our country were made and how they are remembered today.”

Lucy (second from left) in Gettysburg, with members of her People to People Leadership Program

Some highlights of the week included:

• A visit to the Library of Congress
• A tour of the Capitol Building
• A trip to Gettysburg
• An exploration of the Eisenhower Farm, once the weekend retreat of People to People founder, Dwight D. Eisenhower
• Time at plenty of museums such as the Holocaust Memorial Museum, Newseum, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the International Spy Museum, and more
• Paying homage at several memorials including the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the World War II Memorial, and others
• Watching the changing of the guard at the Arlington National Cemetery
• A viewing of the White House (Lucy reports that Bo, the First Dog, was on the lawn with the presidential dog walker)

Lucy in front of the White House

“Overall, this was an incredible experience,” Lucy said. “I had the opportunity to visit historic sites, meet many new people, try new things, and learn so much. I would highly recommend a People to People trip!”

Reflections on Reflecting

“Having gone to Inly, I have learned so many valuable transferable skills,” Lucy said upon her return, “including the ability to look at any given situation through various different lenses, to discuss themes on an in-depth level, to go through daily reflections on our contributions to the group and to ourselves, and possibly most importantly, to take time to reflect on what we have learned about ourselves and how we have grown through the experience.”

“Because of my ‘training’ at Inly, I was able to take the journaling at People to People to a deeper level. So instead of just documenting ‘what I did today’ it was natural for me to reflect and write about ‘what I learned about myself today’ or ‘ how I contributed to my community’ or ‘how I can apply my knowledge somewhere else.’

“At Inly, I have learned how to do this meaningful reflection, and most importantly, I have learned how to apply this skill set to other situations. I can proudly say that because of Inly, I gained so much more out of the People to People experience than I would have otherwise.”

Inly Middle School students were invited to participate in a joint installation at the South Shore Art Center’s Festival on the Common. The theme of this exhibit was “Our Towns—Outside the Frames.” Eighteen local high schools and two middle schools (including Inly), were given canvases and challenged to interpret their communities through art.

About Inly’s Contribution

When presented with the invitation to participate in the SSAC “Our Towns” exhibit at the Arts Festival, a group of Inly Middle School students chose to work collaboratively and create a painted collage piece. We were lucky enough to have the wonderful SSAC gallery artist Valerie Forte Vitali introduce the project to the group.

Inly students brainstormed many ideas and decided to create a symbol that could represent the many diverse images of life on the South Shore. Ellen P. (7th grade) painted the fractal branching tree on the canvas, while other students created images within the apples growing upon the tree, representing the fruit of life!

More about the exhibit from boston.com:

Hometown visions translated to canvas