The Durango Montessori School has offered hands-on, child-led education to the region for 20 years – and according to Durango branch founder Mary Polino, the school has no plans to slow down.
The school offers preschool to sixth grade, with mixed-age classrooms that allow students to work across grade levels and learn from one another as well as from their teacher.
The classrooms hold 20 students and have two teachers per room. Grade levels include early education (ages 3 to 6), lower elementary (grades one to three), and upper elementary (grades four to six).
The school would like to expand to middle school grades as long as it can maintain its intentional programming and a 10-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio, Polino said.
Second grader Sydney Harrison, a third-year student at Durango Montessori, said she enjoys the mixed-age classroom with first and third graders because she can help guide the younger kids and learn from older ones.
Her favorite activity is reading, she said.
“It’s my favorite subject, because it’s nice that you can just sit anywhere with a good book, and it kind of takes you somewhere, even though you’re just sitting there,” Sydney said.
Classrooms are designed to be cozy, minimalistic and child-accessible. They follow Montessori standards and individual teacher preference, said Assistant Director Emilie Kershaw.
Students can choose where to learn in the classroom – at a desk, in an armchair or on the floor. Independent decision-making and problem-solving are encouraged, Kershaw said.
Assignments range from raising tadpoles and researching world cultures for International Day of Peace to using Montessori tools for math and science and writing slam poetry.
Fifth grader Donovan Frazer, a seven-year student at Durango Montessori, said he is working on a poem to share with his class.
“It’s like a rhyming poem,” he said. “It’s like, ‘The cat ate the fly, and lied on the pie, with a guy, and said, bye!’”
Donovan said he enjoys when his class goes outside to “explore the wilderness” during physical education class.
The free-flowing nature of Montessori education does not mean academics are sacrificed, Polino said.
Though students are able to pursue the subjects that interest them, teachers serve as active and attentive guides, she said. They follow a curriculum map aligned to meet standards in English, math, science, art, physical education and language. The school also collaborates with local nonprofits such as Stillwater Music and Seed Studio for additional programming.
Upper elementary teacher Vivienne McIntyre, a three-year staff member at Durango Montessori, said the ability to focus on individual students is a highlight of the Montessori approach.
“I really love the individual approach,” she said. “We’re able to support students where they are in the classroom. The small class sizes help with that, and the Montessori materials just really enhance the students’ knowledge of curriculum concepts.”
Anna Layden, a Montessori-certified teacher who previously taught at Durango Montessori, has two children enrolled: Birch, a second grader, and Robin, in pre-K.
Layden said she values the low student-to-teacher ratios, hands-on learning, the Montessori philosophy of “following the child” and the multiage classrooms.
“DMS has helped my kids to be seen as individuals, to go deeper with their interest areas in learning, and has also honored and supported my younger son with a speech disability,” she said. “His peers and teachers love him and encourage all of his successes, and he is not treated differently because of his disability. DMS has also helped my older son to problem-solve with friends and teachers and become more independent through the autonomy of the model.”
Layden said she hopes to enroll her children at Mountain Middle School or Durango School District schools after they graduate from Durango Montessori.
Students who have graduated from Durango Montessori and moved on to traditional middle and high schools have transitioned well, Polino said.
“Since we’ve been here for so long, we have kids that have graduated college,” she said. “A lot of my alumni who come back say, ‘Oh, I knew more than everybody else,’ or, ‘I was ahead of the game.’”
Third grader Ella Godard, a student since preschool, said she was studying word classes such as nouns, verbs and adjectives. She said her favorite part of Durango Montessori School is how kind the teachers are – both in class and during the regular check-ins to monitor progress.
Jessica Miller, director of the Durango Montessori and a former public school educator, said her time in Montessori has shown her the value of unconventional approaches to learning across age groups.
“It has helped me to understand that experiential education, and any sort of unique mode of education that kind of breaks the structure of what the public school has in place, is possible for all ages – not just for teenagers on summer break, or college kids for a semester,” she said. “An experiential education and a unique model is possible, and it’s meaningful and it’s impactful.”
Polino said the school’s main goal – now and in the future – is to provide high-quality education during students’ formative years and to keep the school’s mission and purpose front and center.
Looking back on 20 years at the helm, she said the school’s growth happened before her eyes – and she sees no end in sight.
“When we started with 12 kids, (we) didn’t know where (we were) going,” Polino said. “I knew that the classroom part was going to work. (But) was all the other stuff going to work? The community part? And (then) it was like, ‘Oh, this is really working.’ Then another year passed, and another year passed ... and before you know it, here we are.”
epond@durangoherald.com
