Q&A Melissa Rohan Ep. 7 | What Most Parents Get Wrong About Montessori & Faith

Is Montessori education Catholic? Is it a good fit for homeschooling? In this Q&A, Waterfront Academy founder and Head of School, Melissa Rohan, clears up the biggest misconceptions about faith, the Montessori method, and how they intersect.

Whether you're a current parent or considering Montessori for your child, this deep dive explores the spiritual heart of the "dignity of the child."

💡 Key Takeaways for Parents:
Respect the Child: The "dignity of the child" is a theological and pedagogical cornerstone.

You are the Guide: Homeschooling with Montessori isn't just about the "toys"—it’s about the philosophy.

Ask Tough Questions: Melissa encourages parents to visit schools and see firsthand how faith and education are integrated.

🏫 About Waterfront Academy:

Located in Washington, D.C., Waterfront Academy has spent over 13 years serving primary, elementary, and early adolescent students. We are dedicated to providing an education rooted in the Montessori methodology and the Catholic tradition.

🔗 Learn more at: waterfrontacademy.org
📩 Have a question for our next Q&A? Drop it in the comments below!

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Timestamps:

00:09 Introduction to Waterfront Academy
01:25 Can I teach Catholic religion at home in a Montessori way?
01:52 Addressing the myth: "Montessori is not supposed to be religious"
02:40 How Montessori methodology is based on Catholic teachings
05:18 Catechesis of the Good Shepherd: The Montessori way of religion
06:52 Key elements: The prepared adult, the environment, and materials
08:44 Tips for religious education at home (Nomenclature, Liturgical Calendar, and Narratives)
10:46 Can you use the Montessori method for homeschooling?
12:24 What does "In the Catholic Tradition" mean in our mission statement?
13:43 Understanding different tiers of Catholic schools
14:18 Waterfront Academy’s status as an independent school
15:52 Advice for parents: Visit schools and ask questions


#Montessori #CatholicEducation #Homeschooling #WaterfrontAcademy #CatechesisOfTheGoodShepherd #MariaMontessori #ParentingTips #EducationQA #FaithAndReason

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to Waterfront Academy. Today I am doing a QA with Melissa Rohan. I've got a few questions that came across either my feed or in conversations with parents and whenever these questions, and I think they're really great. I like to write them down and try and present this. Of course, if you ever felt like you needed to ask a question and wanted an answer to it, you can always submit it. This is Waterfront Academy. My name is Melissa Rohan. I am a founder, the head of school here at Waterfront Academy. We've been doing this for 13 years, a long time. And uh we've got children as we've had children as young as toddlers. We currently don't. We have primary, elementary, and early adolescence. Um let's see. So we and I just love these questions at this point in my life. I love that I get to give back. Um so here's a couple that I collected here. Um so the first one is how can I teach Catholic religion at home in a Montessori way? This was actually on this kind of hit my feet. And this was a question that I saw, and the response to the question just was so alarming to me that I had to bring this to Q ⁇ A with Melissa. And the response that I saw was not Montessori's not supposed to be religious. Okay, so that is not true. Categorically untrue, false. Um, and so I wanted to bring this here. Now, Dr. Montessori herself was uh was Catholic. She was. She was Catholic, and if you read her writings, you know she's Catholic through and through because it's all over her writings. So this is somebody who clearly had not read Dr. Montessori's writings. That's okay, we all make mistakes and uh and then we learn from them, hopefully. Uh so Dr. Montessori is herself Catholic. One. Two, a lot of this methodology is based on basic Catholic teachings. For example, the dignity of humans. One of the big, huge um uh parts of Dr. Montessori that was very, very controversial at the time and still controversial today, is that she believed that at birth or at conception, the child was deserving of dignity. And so that is one of the big things that she wrote all over her books, is just the dignity of the child, and that is really hard in uh for a lot of adults to accept, and uh, and that is that is a core belief in the Catholic faith. Okay, so also the way that she had done so that you know, so discipline and independence and freedom, all of that that we offer in the primary classroom, that's all based on Dr. Mana Sori, and all of it based on her faith. Okay, one, two, the way that she did talk about um in elementary the great lessons, okay. Her words in the great lessons were very much part of her faith, the Catholic, okay. So I just wanted to really highlight how it it would be very hard to separate that. Just like if somebody was uh practicing any kind of religion, everything they're going to do is in their decision making and their thought process, like you couldn't separate one from the other. It's just it is, it it is, it's just that's what it is, right? Um, it is part of their perspective, it is it's part of the decision making, it's just it's it's there. Um and so you really couldn't divorce it. One, two, um the other thing that I think is important is that after so um they didn't really they weren't really contemporaries because by by the time Dr. Massori died, Sofia Cavalotti would have been like really young. So I don't think their paths ever crossed in Italy. Um, and I don't even like I don't even know if they would have been in the same place at the same time. Anyways, I say that because like Sofia Cavalotti, she took Dr. Messori's work and created Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. And that would be the Montessori way of doing religion. Um I know that there are um in the United States, I have seen um the Catholic version of Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, and I have seen people using Catechesis of the Good Shepherd in a prod in the Protestant churches or even I'm not very familiar, so I couldn't speak intelligently on that, but I've seen it in different versions of Christianity. Um, and so I um I did want to say, like I just felt like that that question that was answered, I really felt like I needed to like really dispel any myths or misunderstandings on on that. Dr. Montessori herself was Catholic. The whole premise of her method is based on Catholic teachings. You really can't divorce this, it's just it's there. Um, so that, and there is this additional thing that was based on Montessori that could be used if you wanted to teach Messori at home, or excuse me, religion at home in the Montessori way. Now, I do feel like it's important to understand a couple of things. So, like in Montessori, um I feel like there's one, the prepared adult, there's the environment, and there is the materials. And a lot of times what I've seen, again, like no fault, just like misunderstanding or not having enough information, the uh the parent may not be intentional in her or his preparations or their preparation, right? Mom and dad, mom, dad, in their preparation, they may not be fully prepared, right? And intentional in that preparation. Um one. So they might go and buy all the Montessori materials, but if you don't, if you yourself are not the prepared adult, then like you're not really doing it well. I mean, I guess something's gonna happen, and I think that something's going to be positive. It's just not gonna be fully. So, one prepared adult. Two, um, you would need to have the materials like I discussed. Now, you don't have to buy the most expensive materials. I don't think that that is, I mean, Dr. Montessori herself handmade all of the materials, right? So it doesn't have to be the flashiest, most expensive. Um, but you do need the materials. And then the third thing is um the what I say, the the environment. So making sure the environment is good for the child. So I think that that has to happen. So that's in Monsory. Now, when we're talking about the Catehisus of the Good Shepherd, there are some things to consider. Um, one, that um you understand how to do it, right? So, and a lot of that's not really available. It's almost like a mystery. But I would say there's a couple of different things that you need to do, like just the mass and the nomenclature, right? Um, so parts of the mass, all the articles of the mass, right? You got nomenclature. Um, and then an understanding what they are, like the different, like the liturgical calendar, understanding the different seasons and things like that, and the colors that go with the seasons that you'd see on the chasable, right? Things like that. Um, two, um, so like the mechanics of the mass. Okay. So, two, um, you would want to know, so we don't really do a lot of like Old Testament. This is kind of scary, really, for a child that's really young. Like, we don't really want to talk about floods. So, so um, we do do the infancy narratives, right? And we really talk about in the Passion of Christ, it's really more of a geography where we get to kind of introduce this is like the really young, it gets different the older they get, but like starting out, and you might be starting out, okay. Um, so those are the big ones, and then you got the parables, those are great. Um, and then you got uh some of the from the old testament, you got some of the prophecies that you might want to talk about, like of of of Jesus coming and of Mother Mary, right? Those are beautiful. Um, oh, and then the kingdom of God, right? So there's a lot of things that you can do, right? And um, and then there's like a lot of really great vendors who sell things that are very similar, not quite, but similar enough where you can really have something that looks very similar to what Catus is the Good Shepherd is. It it's very reasonable. Maybe I should do a podcast on that specifically. I might I actually will do that. I'm gonna do that. Coming, coming soon to a podcast near you. Uh so, anyways, I I'm spending a lot of time on this, but I think it's really important. Dr. Montessori was Catholic. Uh the second question. Here we go. Can you use the Montessori method at home with homeschooling? Oh, it kind of works with the last one. Yes, yes, you can. Dr. Montessori herself didn't want to invent the Montessori method to replace mothers. That was not the idea. It was to really supplement what the mothers are doing and to give mothers the ability to go to work if they had to. Um, and but she didn't want to replace it. She always felt bad for mothers who couldn't be there with her child. Um, and so it was that was that's evident in her or in her writing. Um, and so I felt like, you know, yes, you can do because it's modeled off of the home, right? Um, so absolutely you can do mama source at home for homeschooling. That absolutely is a thing. Um, there's a lot of resources out there to help homeschooling moms. Um, just I would say big tips: make sure you're a prepared adult, make sure you have the materials, and make sure your home is meant for uh children to be there and learning. The third question I have is oh, this is this is one that I get all the time. Okay. And then I was at an event uh and people were talking about it. And I'm like, oh, okay, so we gotta let's go ahead and like let's have the conversation. Um, the elephant in the room. What does in the Catholic tradition mean? Okay, good question, because that is uh in our mission statement, we are in the Catholic tradition. What does that mean? And I will have people come and uh and they'll say, Oh, you guys are gonna be Catholic light. No, we we are not Catholic light. Let me just dispel that one right now. And that doesn't mean it always is. It just means for us, it doesn't mean that. It does not mean that we are Catholic light. Um but um it does mean that here's what it means. So you can't just say that you're Catholic, okay, um, as an organization. You just you just can't. Um because the Catholic Church really has to protect what is theirs. And again, this is not it's not a comment, it's just this is how I understand it. Um and and rightly so, right? I no issue there. Um so what does that mean? Well, um it could mean any number of things. So in I and I don't know this to be true in all dioceses, um, but in the Archdiocese of Washington, there are tiers for Catholic schools, right? Um, and so you could be a tier, you could be um basically uh a diocesan school. So this would be one that's attached to a parish, and um, and so that would be a diocesan school. And then you have um schools that are blessed by the cardinal in our case, um, saying that they are a Catholic school. So they could call they could also call themselves a Catholic school. Um we are independent. Um, we had talked to the diocese, uh, the archdiocese of becoming um a Catholic school. It was at the moment in our history as well as what was going on in the archdiocese, it didn't work out for us. It wasn't it was a decision that um as a board we made that made sense to us. Um I've actually recently been considering going back to the Archdiocese and like revisiting it because I think it would be interesting um to explore. But I with no promises or expectations. Um it, you know, we have grown a lot as a school over the you know, over a decade. Um we've seen people, um staff, uh parents, board members come and go um as life, you know, life. And um so uh, you know, it'd be interesting just to explore. And same thing over at the diocese, you know, things have changed over at the diocese as well, obviously, the archdiocese, excuse me. So um it'd be interesting, but it doesn't mean that we're not living Catholic lives and or teaching what is true um in Catholic teachings, um, or or being anything that isn't Catholic. It just means that as a parent, you would need to come and see for yourself, right? Like in any other school, right? So even a diocesan school, I would say, go and see for yourself. I think it's important. I think it's important as a parent when you're making these decisions to go to the school before you make the decision and see for yourself and ask questions. I think that's really important. So it doesn't really mean anything about our school, it just means that we made a decision at some point as to whether or not we were going to um to move forward with a blessing from the archdiocese. Um and it's it really isn't a comment. It was just a a time in life, really. And um, and so I so I just you know ask parents, excuse me, I ask parents to like when they do to ask questions, like absolutely you should ask ask questions. I that is something I would expect. Um then you come up with your own uh your own conclusions on that. Um, but I think that like that is one thing that I have seen over and over. And then I was at a meeting uh among Catholic um uh heads of schools, and this question came up, and so I'm just like, okay, you know what? I gotta, I gotta have this, I gotta add this to my Q ⁇ A's in Melissa Rohan because it it is important and it's not a secret. It's and it doesn't need to be anything other than like what it is. And so I just wanted to to put that there, and uh, and and and if I've got this pond, just let me know. Because I I it's just the way I understand it. Um and uh and hopefully and hopefully we can all grow and learn. And with that, I end today's uh QA with Melissa Rohan.