Montessori in Action Podcast

Our first episode for Season Seven is a conversation with Jayadev Calamur. Jayadev reached out to me about a book he is writing and wanted to engage in a discussion about the role of Montessori education globally in responding to the times in which we live. He’s currently working on a book  exploring where our ideas about how children develop came from and what happens when those ideas meet system...

We are closing out the sixth season with our annual Summer Reads episode where we introduce books for you to check out over your summer. This summer, we have three suggestions. The first book is Implementing the Montessori Method: Learner-Centered Education From Birth Through Adolescence, co-written by Trisha Thompson-Wilingham and Susan Zoll. It offers readers a look into Montessori classrooms ac...

Our conversation for May is with Isabella Cai, the founder and CEO of Y Montessori, where she leads the Montessori Data Lens program to spark meaningful conversations and empower the community to leverage data in advancing the Montessori movement. Isabella shares the origin story of the Montessori Data Lens program as well as various projects they have done thus far. 

Omkari Williams is the author of Micro Activism: How You Can Make a Difference in the World (Without a Bullhorn) and she joins us for our next episode of Montessori in Action Podcast, to talk about a new course she is running with Montessorian, Kelly Johnson. Together, they are offering a new Trillium course Micro Activism Meets Montessori. Our conversation covers everything from the 6-Principle M...

This episode of Montessori in Action is a conversation with Sue Atkins, the new President of AMI UK and longtime early childhood educator. She shared some reflections on inclusive practices to benefit children on the autism spectrum, their families and educators.

It’s time to hear more about the latest research released this past fall! Dr. Angeline Lillard joins Montessori in Action Podcast to unpack A national randomized controlled trial of the impact of public Montessori preschool at the end of kindergarten. As the lead researcher, Dr. Lillard shares details of the study and insights on the outcomes.

Last month we heard from Dr. Jaime Aquino, the Superintendent of San Antonio Public Schools. Our episode to start out the new year is a conversation with the Principals of the two public Montessori schools in San Antonio- Natasha Akutekwe and Roxanna Montes. Their two schools comprise a Montessori Network and they talk about their experience as part of a network as well as part of a public school...

Our guest this month is Dr. Ian Parker, a career educator and researcher, who joins us to talk about Re-envisioning School: Lessons on School Reform from Montessori District Schools. This research, done with Katie Brown and Annie Frazer, uses Montessori as a focus to investigate how district leaders come to decisions about implementing alternative education models in their schools. Dr. Parker is c...

This month, our podcast focuses on public Montessori programs. Superintendent Dr. Jaime Aquino joins us to talk about his experience supporting public Montessori schools in the district setting. Dr. Aquino has held top leadership positions in several districts, serving as deputy superintendent of instruction in Los Angeles deputy superintendent in Hartford, chief academic officer in Denver, and an...

This month we have a special guest who joins PMAI Executive Director, Elizabeth Slade, to celebrate the launch of a book they co-wrote, titled, Finding Ground: Building Strong Elementary Practice. Allison Jones, a long time Montessori educator, and Elizabeth got together to set down some thoughts about teaching at the elementary level. In this episode, Elizabeth and Allison interview each other ab...

Our guest this month has created a new set of Montessori decodable readers. Hannah Richardson is the founder of Montessori Makers and after years in the primary classroom and as a school leader, she has created a set of books specifically for Montessori children who are emerging readers. Join us to learn more about this new material.

Welcome back to the next episode of Montessori in Action Podcast. Our first conversation of season 6 was our Summer Reads episode where we celebrate authors as they release books in our Montessori community. Fortunately, there are an abundance of new Montessori books coming out and so we decided to add a Summer Reads Bonus Episode. In this bonus episode we welcome Teresa Angeles author of The Mont...

Welcome back to another year with Montessori in Action Podcast! Our first conversation of season 6 is our Summer Reads episode where we celebrate authors as they release books in our Montessori community. This July we welcome Susan Zoll, author of Powerful Literacy in the Montessori Classroom who joins us to talk about her new book, Effective Literacy Assessment in the Montessori Classroom. Susan...

Our final episode of the season is a conversation about rewilding Montessori. Montessori in Action Podcast is joined by two deep thinkers- Lucy Recio and Frank George IV and they share their ideas about the concept of rewilding and how it relates to the moment in history we are in right now. 

Coming up in June is a unique conference opportunity- the first ever Black Montessori Conference will take place June 20th-22nd at Howard University in Washington, DC. This episode of Montessori in Action Podcast features the organizers of the conference: Meisha Perrin and Dr. Ayize Sabater. They share the inspirations and aspirations for the event.

Have you ever wished you had superpowers? In this next episode, meet four people with superpowers who are starting two public Montessori schools- one in Columbus, Ohio and one in Oklahoma City. These two couples envisioned tuition-free Montessori programs to serve their communities and they are bringing them into being! Both schools will open their doors this August. Rachelle and Josh Smith will b...

This episode is a conversation with Dr. Kathy Escamilla, who shares her extraordinary contribution to Bilingual education in the United States. She takes us through her fifty-year career in the field and helps us to understand the developments in Bilingual education that have happened across that time. As a former president of the National Association for Bilingual Education, co-editor of the Bili...

Join guest-host Maati Wafford with Dr. Juanita Imelda Johnson, a long time teacher at Dater Montessori School in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Kristen Smiterman-Voltaire, a parent at Dater, as they discuss their experiences with Equity Impact Circles.

Our episode this month looks at how current neuroscience supports the work we do in Montessori classrooms. Our guest, Veronica Burbano, an experienced Montessori teacher, shares the research she has uncovered that explains why staying true to the pedagogy matters.

This episode is a conversation with some adults who attended Montessori schools as children. They came together to talk about their experiences in their Montessori classrooms, transitioning from Montessori and looking back now on how their early education has affected who they are today. Please join me in welcoming Janyah Bradley and A’Kala Chaires.

Season 5, episode 5 is a conversation with Dr. LaNail R. Plummer, the founder of Onyx Therapy Group a Black, Woman, and Veteran-owned business, dedicated to addressing mental health issues and disparities in communities, organizations, federal government, and individuals in need. We talked about supporting Key children in classrooms and the use of Observation, relationship building and attuning to...

For more than 15 years, Lucy Recio has worked at the intersection of communications, strategy, and organizing. She builds campaigns, programs, and systems in service to community led movements that advance justice and our collective liberation. Anchored by reciprocal, transformative relationships, her work endeavors to inform policy and legislation, enact systems change, shift power structures, an...

Street Data: A Next Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and Social Transformation invites readers to rethink this era of high stakes testing and engage in new ways of ensuring growth in school for all learners. Co-author, Dr. Jamila Dugan joins Montessori in Action to talk about equity traps & tropes, street data, and how it can be used to shift the focus in schools.  “We don’t need improve...

Our conversation this month is with Meisha Perrin, the new Executive Director of the Black Montessori Education Fund, a non-profit project founded to increase access and support diversity and inclusion in Montessori education by investing in Black educators, children, administrators, and researchers in the US and globally.

We launch Season Five with our Summer Reads episode, where we offer you ideas of something to read this summer. This year, rather than an author, we have a conversation with Joke Verheul who works in the Montessori Archives in Amsterdam. Joke has worked there since the start of the Archives and is pleased to share ten years of Treasure Articles .