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Good Neighbor Podcast: Virginia Beach
Good Neighbor Podcast: Virginia Beach
Good Neighbor Podcast: Virginia Beach
Ep. 19 The Heart of Montessori Education Teaches More Than Academics
Marie Weaver, a passionate advocate for the Montessori method, takes us on a fascinating journey from her roots in the music industry to her pivotal role in Montessori education at Organic Beginnings. Marie’s transition from music to Montessori was driven by a desire to cultivate fair and peaceful learning environments, and her dedication shines through as she discusses the unique curriculum at her school in the vibrant Vibe District. This episode offers listeners a chance to learn about the transformative power of the Montessori approach for children aged 16 months to 12 years, emphasizing independence, leadership, and community in mixed-age classrooms.
We delve into the inspiring story of a modest beginning to a flourishing campus in Virginia Beach, a city known for its transient military community. Marie shares the challenges and rewards of building lasting educational relationships amidst constant change. She addresses misconceptions about the use of church spaces by Montessori schools and highlights the integral role of nature in their philosophy. For families seeking a nurturing environment, Marie’s insights offer clarity on how the Montessori method fosters holistic development and independence, even for neurodivergent children.
Finally, we explore the opportunities for community engagement through summer camps at Organic Beginnings, open to all children in the Hampton Roads area. These camps offer a glimpse into the Montessori way beyond the classroom, providing enriching experiences for young learners. Marie’s commitment to community and education is a testament to her dedication to nurturing future generations, making this episode a must-listen for anyone interested in the profound impact of Montessori education.
Organic Beginnings Montessori School
Marie Weaver
1701 Baltic Avenue
Virginia Beach, VA
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Denise Taylor.
Speaker 2:Hello, I am here with Marie Weaver from Organic Beginnings. Hi, marie, welcome to the show. Hi Denise, good morning. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3:Of course.
Speaker 2:So you guys are down in the Vibe District and you are a Montessori-based. Is that the right way to say it? Montessori-based curriculum Yep, we are a Montessori school.
Speaker 3:We are ages 16 months through 12 years, so we start with an infant-toddler program, go through primary and then go through lower and upper elementary for now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you have the one location we just moved into this space which is more than quadruple time the size of our our last space, and so we sort of hit the ground running with growth and accepting people in from our waitlist. We still have a wildly long waitlist, though, so I feel like I can never stop looking at other properties and other ways to keep growing, and the staff are totally on board with what you know. They are flexible and they grow with the demand. So I would say, for the time being, we're still settling into our building. But you know, we had a like a town hall sort of meeting with all the parents yesterday afternoon after school, and one of the dads whose daughter is in elementary was like so when do you guys set up a middle school program? And I was like open this building, Give us a second.
Speaker 2:That's great. How many educators do you have at the school?
Speaker 3:There are eight of us, so each class has a lead teacher and an assistant teacher, and that's par for the course. With the traditional Montessori environment, there's only one lead teacher, so that the children aren't confused by receiving different lessons or you know the same lessons from different people. We only want them to show the lesson in one way, so that the child is clear to the child.
Speaker 2:Can you share what traditional Montessori looks like in a classroom or in your school?
Speaker 3:Yes, so Maria Montessori, she was this Italian educator turned scientist, and the way that she developed the philosophy was just by observing children working.
Speaker 3:And she realized that when you set their environments up for success, when you set the child up to be independent, they need us so much less than what a traditional school might think. And so in a traditional, like a public school setting, you know, we all go in and it's sort of like we're these empty vessels to be filled with knowledge. Well, really, if you take a child right out of the womb, they're going to be just fine, just experiencing things in the natural world. And what is different about the Montessori classrooms is that the child is trusted to be shown a lesson once, and then the teacher steps back and lets them figure it out. Of course we're there if they need help, but we don't offer them help. We want them to feel like they're capable so that way they can work at their own pace. And by the time our children in the primary classroom are turning six, they're doing division by themselves and moving on to elementary, where that's where they begin, you know, like a first grader, beginning with division is beyond what I ever did in public school.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Are all the children put together in certain grades like a traditional school, or is it more of a kind of a loose? That's a good question.
Speaker 3:Each program is and this is also traditional for Montessori they're mixed age ranges.
Speaker 3:So our toddler class is 16 months through three years, our primary class is three to six year olds and then our elementary is six to 12. And while that sounds like it might add up to being a lot of children, it actually works better that way because they're all learning from each other. A three-year-old rarely has to come ask me or another lead teacher for help when they have an older peer to show them the way, and that also teaches community leadership to the older peers who have been with us since they're three and now they're the leaders at age six, about to age out and go into elementary. And now they're the leaders at age six, about to age out and go into elementary. It's like they've worked up this whole time to get to this point where they they're sort of the teacher and so they learn from each other. And Maria Montessori always said that the sign of a successful classroom is when the teacher can walk away and the children continue as if she never existed. The teacher can walk away and the children continue as if she never existed.
Speaker 2:That's a beautiful thing. Marie, tell me how you actually got into the Montessori and your role as director there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, totally by accident. So, probably similar to you, I was a journalism major in college and um, I also studied music industry. So in my mind I'm like I want to be the next Annie Leibovitz. I wanted to do photojournalism and become the next cover photographer for Rolling Stone magazine. Um a few years later I realized I don't really have a competitive bone in my body and I'm not a cutthroat person. I want everyone to be treated fairly and I want everything to be peaceful. So I I kind of went through the steps.
Speaker 3:You know, I worked at some magazines, I worked at NPR and was doing a lot of media related internships and jobs and then I was managing this record label and that was kind of the breaking point for me. I was like I don't think I'm going to feel fulfilled by sort of lifting up already very well-known adults. So I quit the record label around 2010 in DC and went to Well, I was living right outside of DC at the time on this farm. This mom said, hey, like you're always so great with my kids, you could go apply to be their office manager at their Montessori school down the street. So I went in and interviewed and the head of school was like oh well, we've already filled that position, but if you want to sub, we'd love to have you. And I said no, I'm not interested and I have no experience in working with children other than babysitting and like hanging out with my little cousins. But you know, being a young 20 something in 2010,.
Speaker 3:He said we will pay you 20 bucks an hour and I'm like OK we do anything for 20 bucks an hour if it's part time and I can still look for other options. But you know what? I started as a sub in their primary class that's the three to six year olds and I went back every day after that for three or four years and they put me through training in San Diego and I got my master's. And when I moved here I kind of stepped foot into every Montessori school that I could find. Having just finished training and my master's, I really wanted my first real, like longterm teaching experience to be perfect. Um, I had already been at this farm school outside of DC and that was kind of my dream job, um. But then when my ex-husband got a job in Virginia beach, I felt like, okay, I have to find that here. That wasn't here, so I made it.
Speaker 3:We started as just five children and we got together over the summers and spring break and some moms who I met at the farmer's market sort of helped me out with being an assistant every other week. Um, and there were enough parents who were coming back every break from school who said you know, if you would just offer an academic school year format, we'll pull our kids out of their schools to just be with you. So that's what we did. We started with five children. Okay, out of this time. What year was that? That was 2018. Oh, wow, okay. We had like a 700 foot, 700 square foot room in a church with a little garden outside and we spent most of the day. We did the morning work period in the classroom and then we spent the rest of the day outside gardening. And you know, coming from the school that I had come from was on a 10 acre campus where each class had their own lot of land with animals to raise and you know, our children went out and collected chickens and the older children had sheep and a cow. I mean this, it was so cool and so that's sort of where the vision started, and then it has just been a couple of baby steps. You know, we did the church classroom and then we moved to happened.
Speaker 3:Maybe being in the vibe was a blessing, but our wait list. I mean we went from five children in one space to 13 children in that space and now we have 140 families on our wait list. Wow, and I attribute that mostly to families who really want their children working in harmony with nature. They want them out in the wild, being able to fall, being able to climb, being able to splash around in the bay. We do beach cleanups, we do neighborhood cleanups. Um, we do beach cleanups, we do neighborhood cleanups, we do all all sorts of um volunteer, volunteer opportunities with the children. They go to the farmer's market and, whatever their profit is, they get to turn their own budget or make their own budget to fund a project of their planning. Um, so it's very full circle and I think um, as soon as parents, other parents, saw us at places like the farmer's market, at places like um first landing all climbing in the trees like a scene out of the sound of music, they're like we want in, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's, it's. I've seen a lot of your videos, obviously, on things like that, so it's definitely intriguing. It makes me think about my own childhood and my own, my children's childhood. How I could, you know, just being able to understand all of those things? Do you feel like when you were in that farm in Virginia or outside of DC, was? It in Virginia. Do you feel like you learned a lot through that process?
Speaker 3:I feel like I, through, just through the training, became a new person. Like going from an industry like music, like working at a record label, to completely doing a 180 and humbling yourself to work with children and just admit, I don't know, I'm growing, I'm learning more than they are probably about myself, every single day, just observing them. Yes, I think being being with children was the first step of like a self-discovery. The training was another huge step and my institute in San Diego was enormously responsible for I mean, our trainer is like one of the best in the world and I totally attribute who I am as a guide that's what we call the lead teachers as a guide. I feel like that's due to her. I think of her every day when I talk to the children.
Speaker 3:But as a business owner, I think of the school. It's called Mountainside Montessori and they offered me the space to practice teach there, but then also they offered me a full time position after the practice teaching and this is where I saw them get to go from this tiny house that they started in and they filled it with children and then over the years they eventually built this 10 acre campus with all the animals and watching the owner sort of evolve through all of that and seeing how well she maintained relationships with the staff and there's zero turnover and the parents are so supportive and you know they're, they're in it for life, for their, for the life of their children's education and then some. So a lot of these children have graduated from Montessori and have gone off to either high school or college and the parents are still working there. They yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's just it sounds like a great like full circle, full circle community.
Speaker 3:Yes, and I, you know, it's been a little trickier being in Virginia beach, a military hub where everyone's coming and going all the time. So we have hub where everyone's coming and going all the time. So we have. We have a lot of families who do need to leave before the three year cycle of their child's class experience is up, but at the same time, on the other hand, we have families I mean this dad who is asking for the middle school program to be set up. I've had his child since she was three and she's about to go into middle school. So, um, yeah, it has been. It has been a really beautiful experience and being in the vibe, being in Virginia beach and not in farm country, is a little tricky because there's so little land, but that's why the emphasis on nature that we have. It's like we go to the park, we go to the beach, we go to the bay. There's so many options here that are so beautiful that it really doesn't matter how big your lot is absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2:If you're getting out in nature, tell me, what do you think is the biggest misconception of Montessori schools or education?
Speaker 3:A lot of people come in saying monastery, they think that it's a church-based program. Definitely not. Montessori is the woman's last name. Montessori is the woman's last name. And I think another thing that can be confusing is most parents will see Montessori schools based out of churches. That's just because churches offer cheaper rent. A lot of what they do, if you're affiliated with the church, is tax exempt. So, yes, you see a lot of Montessori schools in churches, but they're not, the philosophy is not religiously affiliated. So we get a lot of those questions.
Speaker 3:And then I would say the next most common thing is you know families who have a child who is neurodivergent or is on the spectrum. They think, you know, public school is not a good fit for my child. Montessori probably will be, because they get to be who they are and be free with their movements and we really observe each child and their lessons. We have individualized lessons, lesson plans for each child. It's not like public school where one teacher stands at the front of a room of 30 kids and expects everyone to be doing the same thing. That's unrealistic. So I think that's it realistic. So I think that's a that's.
Speaker 3:Another popular assumption is that we are you know, we're going to fit anyone who might be on the. Yeah, I think it's just a matter of spending time in both. If you can, being able to speak with the teachers, like we invite families in every month to open houses, meet our teachers, bring your child, see how they work around the space. If they need more structure, then maybe it's not a good fit, but across the board, I feel like Montessori is a good fit for almost everyone, including adults.
Speaker 2:So you talked about including adults. That's great. You talked about um a three-year, um cycle, yeah, cycle, okay, so let me help a little bit about that so that's, for instance.
Speaker 3:I'm a primary guide, so primaries. Three to six. That means our classroom is evenly balanced, with children enrolled who are between three and six years old, so there's not a heavier burden, a population of six-year-olds who are kind of taking over. I think it needs to be well and Montessori wants it to be balanced, where the three-year-olds can proportionally receive help from the older children. The older children are available to help the younger children, but the three-year cycle is important. So where a child would come in at three years old into a primary classroom, they'll be working heavily on practical life skills, like daily life skills dressing themselves.
Speaker 3:You know we have lessons for everything grace and courtesy, how to greet someone, how to ask someone before you give them a hug, how to pick something up that somebody dropped. I mean, everything is a lesson, because we want to demonstrate the proper way to do it so that they're not. You know, some of these kids are like little linebackers. We don't want them bombarding someone else's space and potentially hurting someone.
Speaker 3:So we really show them like the most graceful example of these things that we assume would come naturally to anybody. But it's a personality thing.
Speaker 2:when it's really, it could be a personality thing, but when you're out in the world, yeah, are you need to be?
Speaker 3:well and you know as a woman, as an adult woman, what I mean. Some people I'm like man you could really use a day, you did not ask my permission a lot of daily life skills. So they learn to dress themselves, they learn to prepare their own food we do like organic fruits and vegetables and a protein every day. The children prepare it themselves, they serve it to each other and then they take care of the environment. So they're sweeping, they're dusting, they, even just for the fine motor skills.
Speaker 3:The three yearolds are like polishing little brass objects in the classroom, wow. And then four-year, four-year-olds will still do some practical life, but they get more into the language, the harder math right lessons, um, sensorial lessons, which is like a refinement of each sense individually. And then five and six, it's like they're sort of finishing out the language lessons. They're studying grammar, they're studying the font, you know, putting sounds together to make a phonogram sentence structure. In math they're doing multiplication, division and really gearing up to make that transition to elementary. So it's like every single year of that three-year cycle is so important. So when a family comes to us, like I said, we're really lucky to have such a long wait list where we can make sure that the family's on board with letting their child get the full experience of the three years. And you know, if they, if they can finish the three years, it's not even a doubt in our minds that they're going to want to continue on to elementary.
Speaker 2:Sure, well, when you've, when you've taught somebody how to do the things you're talking about at such a young age. As a parent, I would love to have my children doing all those things in the house and just right, I mean the responsibility as to take that on their own and enjoy the process, it sounds like, of doing and going through those daily tasks. Sounds like such a beautiful thing.
Speaker 3:We've done these. We have parent education nights where we invite any families from the city or Hampton Roads as a whole to come learn about, and it's not just Montessori specific necessarily, it's more like what's age appropriate for your child at this point. So we have primary parent ed nights, we have toddler parent ed nights, elementary parent ed nights, and everyone is invited. We offer free child care so that parents don't feel burdened by coming. But in just the, in just the staff preparing for these, we did our own little, I guess, teacher education night the other day for a teacher work day where we went through and sort of we said to each other what we would be saying to parents and I'm like I mean, I'm nine months pregnant but I'm I'm like crying.
Speaker 3:It's so beautiful, like how full circle everything is the responsibility and the care that they feel for themselves, for each other and for their environments, not just inside their classroom but by the time they're in elementary where they're planning their own trips. They are writing thank you cards to the places that they visit, and they have to. They have to write out the directions to get there, they have to figure out how much something costs. They have to, like I said, make the thank you card to give the staff members. So if they're going to a restaurant, if they're going to the grocery store to bake something, they have their grocery list written out If they have to ask someone beyond the cashier for help finding something in the store. I mean, it's just a practice of how to treat people respectfully and so we're all in. I mean, I was in the most tears, but you know we all are like just I'm almost resentful that.
Speaker 3:I didn't get brought up this way.
Speaker 2:Oh, it sounds so wonderful. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I know and I'm like to to have like a tangible idea at five years old of what division looks like or like the square rooting of something. If I could have envisioned that physically at the age of five and I remember in the training in San Diego, I'm like it's so unfair that we didn't all learn math this way, you know, like we were just crammed with memorization facts and that's not helpful yeah, it is really beautiful and, and you know, I think like once you see it, you never go back yeah, it sounds, it's the way you talk about it.
Speaker 2:It's with so much passion and it makes sense. It's like I want to. I'm like, oh, I want to go back to school or learn all those things, especially the farm part. We're talking about just being in nature and seeing those things. It's, it's, yeah. So tell me if you could tell our listeners how can they learn more about organic beginnings, about Organic Beginnings, I think if they are well, our website, first and foremost, is organicbeginningsvb, as in virginibeachcom.
Speaker 3:That's like a brief overview of all of our programs and then if you are interested in your child attending, our first suggestion is always come to the open house, come meet us, bring your child, come, walk around the classrooms, like let your child see how beautiful this space is. And because we are traditional Montessori, where you know she, where you know she, she's really just wanting the child to feel trusted. Everything is made of natural materials. There's no plastic. So a two-year-old is going to come into our classrooms and see all this wood and silver and glass, you know, bottles and boxes and mirrors and beautiful things and it's like this is here for you and they feel so special. And, as I feel like, as soon as parents see their children in the classroom, they're sold, which is a blessing and a curse because of the waitlist. But yes, I think, if you want more information, the open houses are once a month, as closely as we can to once a month. Sometimes, like around the holidays, we might skip one because it's overwhelming with parties.
Speaker 2:And your Instagram is very fun so you can see some of the trips and things you guys take weekly things. And then one more question you do a summer program. Is that correct? Yes we have nature camp all summer. Okay, and do those run like Monday through Friday?
Speaker 3:Monday through Friday. We have two camps now. There's a camp based out of the school in the Vibe District by the oceanfront and there's a camp based at first landing state park. So it's sort of you know, some parents don't want their children outside all day, especially in the heat, but we're swimming and climbing in the trees and they're shaded and you know I we've been doing this for six years now. I'm going to say I would choose outdoor every time. But yes, and the summer camps are open to anyone in Hampton Roads, it's not just children who are enrolled with us.
Speaker 2:Okay, and the registration for that is currently open.
Speaker 3:The registration. We just decided on the weeks for this upcoming summer and they will be on the website at organicbeginningsbbcom.
Speaker 2:Perfect. Well, thank you so much, Marie, for being here today and everything you're doing in the community and with the future of our children.
Speaker 3:It's been wonderful, it's been lovely. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor neighbor podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpvirginiabeachcom. That's gnpvirginiabeachcom, or call 757-797-8552.