Drøbak Montessori Ungdomsskole

On November 18, 2008, I took the bus from Oslo to Drøbak which is a small town about 45 minutes outside of Oslo. Drøbak is most known for huge Christmas store that you can post letters from Santa. I visited Drøbak Montessori Ungdomsskole. This was really interesting to me because in the past I have always associated Montessori with early childhood education and so I was very interested in learning how the Montessori philosophy was applied to young adolescents.

Apparently Marie Montessori had just begun to outline how her philosophy would apply to older students when she passed away. So Drøbak Montessori Ungdomsskole says it is “Montessori-inspired.” The school is a private school, but due to the Norwegian education system, 80% of the funds come from the government while the students’ families pay the other 20%. There are 60 students in the school and much of the day is spent in multi-age engagement. However, due to certain testing requirements by the government some classes are conducted by grade level.

The host teacher, Borge, has spent quite a bit of his time in the US and actually worked to form a Montessori school on the west coast before returning to Norway with his American girlfriend (who is also a Montessori teacher in the younger grades). Borge is in an indie/rock/electronica band and because of this has worked to make sure the school has a rather impressive amount of musical instruments (mostly guitars, drums, piano, etc.). Borge is also an avid environmentalist and has worked diligently to get Drøbak Montessori Ungdomsskole very ecologically friendly. The school as a whole has only one normal size trash bin a week to actually dump because it has its own compost pile and individual recycling bins (i.e. plastic, paper, glass, etc.).

There are only two Montessori-inspired lower secondary schools in Norway (the other is in Oslo), but apparently there are quite a few in the US. The most famous one (and Borge is considering going there for some advanced training) is the Hershey Montessori School (http://www.hersheymontessori.pvt.k12.oh.us/) in Ohio. I have watched the videos and talked with Borge about the Montessori philosophy with adolescents and I am rather embarrassed that I know nothing about this, especially when it seems to fit so well with the middle school philosophy espoused by the National Middle School Association. To help you understand this a bit, I will share with you what the students told me they like the most about their school. They liked the “small numbers” of students (the Montessori believes that teachers should get to know students), “the computers” (they rarely use paper for ecological reasons and because the teachers feel it is more like the read world). The students “work at our own pace and level” (the philosophy is that students have different needs at different times and by allowing students to work at their own level they can better meet those needs), “individual learning” (much of their afternoon is spent in advanced study which is time spent in inquiry where students rely on teachers solely as facilitators and guides but learning is directed by students), and “there is no bullying” (the students work together as a community). Lest you think I was in a Stepford school, one student said he didn’t like the longer days (the school day is ½ an hour longer than the regular school day in Norway) and another kid told me he liked the basketball court.

The teachers do not have a teacher’s lounge, instead the lounge is a communal lounge in which teachers and students relax. This lounge has a pool table, ping pong table, and an area that has sofas and overstuffed chairs. There is also a communal kitchen students can use to make their own lunches. During lunch when I went into the lounge, I saw kids playing pool and ping pong or curled up reading right next to teachers who were working on laptops or reading a novel. This was such an obvious break-down of the usual power roles in schools. It was really cool seeing students and teachers working, relaxing, and talking together as equals. Borge says he likes this set-up because, “you know, talking with the kids, they have really interesting things to say.” This type of relationship with students was fascinating because I could see that the teachers really respected the students as real people with important things to say. This set the expectation for students to act that way as well. Over lunch, I sat with a Borge and we talked with one student who also has a band. The student was playing one of the acoustic guitars as we talked and was an amazing musician. Borge and him talked about managing a band, interviewing vocalist like two adults. Borge treated this 16 year old’s band as important and real learning.

Also during lunch I got to see one of the businesses that were set up. As Borge explained to me, Montessori philosophy is that students need to “get their hands dirty.” At the time, Marie Montessori meant this literally in regards to farming. Drøbak Montessori Ungdomsskole has taken a more metaphorical take on it and instead of farming they have student participate in industry. The students choose people to work with and develop and implement a business idea. The students donate 30-40% to a charity of their choice and then get to keep the rest of the money they earn. The lunch business I saw was a pizza and smoothie business. The students sold hot slices of pizza and made smoothies. According to the students, this business was doing the best (the kids seem to have an underground competition to see who makes the most money).

Borge scheduled me to do two 2½ hour lessons on short stories. The students signed up to come to my lessons so I had about 15 in each of my two lessons. Both groups asked great questions such as, “why is the US so diverse?” Of course they also asked if US high schools were similar to the way they are portrayed in the media (like Gilmore Girls) and is it true that we really have a ton of McDonalds. They asked so many questions that I had to tell them they needed to go and I could only do one more question. This reflected of course their strong grasp of English but also the way the Montessori tradition encourages questioning and learning.

The lesson consisted of the normal introduction and then the modified Tea-Party strategy. This group easily completed this activity and took much less time than any of the groups thus far. I then had them read the short stories in their groups and “stop and share something” at several intervals throughout the story. The first thing that I noticed about this group is that in both lessons most of the students chose to read individually except one group who read aloud. Oddly though both of the groups were a bit loud in their reading, none of the other students made a comment about not being able to concentrate on the reading nor did they want to go outside the classroom.

I noticed two other things in this group that was new. The first is that all the students read the short stories and I even saw students interact with the text, which I hadn’t seen happen any other time. An example of this was a small group of students who were reading a story about an abusive father who ends up beating the mother to death. When one of the group members figured out what happened while reading the text, she gasped and said, “She’s dead!” The other group members agreed and the talked briefly about the fact. The other aspect of working with this group that was different was that even when I wasn’t present in a group discussion, the students spoke English with each other. This is not something I ever require. I usually encourage them to use whatever language they prefer when they are talking amongst themselves, but to share with the whole class I have them do it in English. But this group talked in English, even when I wasn’t around which I found interesting in that it was obvious there is an expectation of learning that is placed on the students and so they choose to speak in English so they can practice it.

After reading the short stories, I had the students jigsaw and share their stories with the others and come up with some patterns among the short stories. They then returned to their original groups and came up with a thesis statement that illustrates what they now think about American culture and a visual representation of that thesis statement. I then had them share with the whole group. The following images are some of the examples of the thesis statements/visual representations:

As you can tell, the students has some pre-exisiting ideas about the US that came to play in how they saw the culture in the short stories. The one above in all green that is hard to see was one of the better ones I think. it says, "In many ways, people in Norway are similar, while in America where ever you go you see different people." The image is of two boxes the smaller one has four stick figures who look generally alike and in the larger box there are 12 stick figures who look different (some are fat some are thin, some have cowboy hats on, etc.). Ironically the one that has three different types of people thinking about hamburgers was actually associated with one of the better thesis statements (though many Americans may look different they often all want the same thing). And of course, I cannot not comment on the US president that was colored in with black marker (what a change from the US president giving the middle finger from earlier this year!).

I had to walk back to the bus, down a muddy path (yes in my high heels) for about 10 minutes. But during that walk I kept going back to how curious those students were, how cool they were to talk to, and how I want to go back and just spend a day hanging out with the students to get a really good sense of the school’s negative as well as positive thing… because right now, I thought it was a pretty cool school!