The Hockessin Montessori School

Dr. Maria Montessori founded an educational system based on the belief that children can learn how to learn by themselves.  The Montessori Method was designed with the idea that every child should be treated as an individual.  In addition, the Method encourages a child's creative potential and supports his or her innate desire to learn.  The goal of the Montessori Method was to allow self-direction and self-motivation to children in a progressive classroom atmosphere.  In her method, children were neither punished nor rewarded for what they did in school.   

After graduating from medical school in 1894, Maria Montessori began studying the educational problems of mentally handicapped children at the University of Rome's psychiatric clinic.  She designed educational programs that assisted the classroom learning process by encouraging individual, rather than group, effort.  In 1907, Montessori founded the Casa dei Bambini, or "Children's House",  a school for disadvantaged children.  In this institution, she successfully applied her teaching methods to students of normal intelligence levels. 

Eventually, Montessori opened other schools that taught the Montessori Method.  She traveled worldwide for 40 years, lecturing and establishing training programs for teachers.  In the 1950's, Nancy McCormick Rambusch, dissatisfied with traditional schools, went to Italy to train in the Montessori Method.  Returning to the United States in 1956, she established Whitby School, the oldest Montessori school in the United States.  The new movement spread quickly across the country reaching Delaware in 1963. 

Due to the growing interest in the Montessori Method,  Rambusch founded the American Montessori Society (AMS) to which The Hockessin Montessori School belongs and by whom it is accredited.  In this country thousands of Montessori private schools and hundreds of Montessori public schools attest to the movement's vigor.  Contemporary brain research confirms many of the innovative ideas that Maria Montessori had in 1907.  The year 2007 marks 100 years of Montessori Education worldwide.