About Us

Your Child Is in Great Hands

Mission

Westabou Montessori School is a registered 501(c)3 charitable nonprofit organization. The mission of Westabou Montessori School is to increase access to world class Montessori education for families most in need.

Vision

• We are a transformative community for young children, where they actively engage their bodies, minds, and wills to become the best versions of themselves.

• We are a diverse community. We are intentionally inclusive with respect to ethnic background, socio economic status, capacity, beliefs, and family composition. We try to balance our classrooms with respect to age, gender, and capacity to achieve an environment where each child may develop his/her fullest potential.

• We are an empowering community. We foster the capacity of each child to engage his/her individual attention toward productive ends, thereby fostering a peaceful school environment and planting seeds for a more peaceful world. Our educational programs help parents in our neighborhood and community improve their skills enabling them to help foster more confident, secure, and capable children.

• We respect nature. We spark a love of the natural world through our outdoor education programs and strive to help each child to understand the natural world, his/her place within it, and to promote good awareness and stewardship of resources.

• We adhere to high standards for preparation. Our indoor and outdoor environments are beautifully curated to spark the interest and advance the development of children at each child throughout the age range of our program. Our materials are real, of high quality, and meet the pedagogical criteria set by Dr. Maria Montessori, which have been used worldwide with great success for over 100 years.

• We adhere to high standards of professionalism. In addition to undergraduate degrees, our lead guides all hold a diploma from the Association of Montessori International (AMI) or the American Montessori Society (AMS) for the levels at which they are teaching. These are the internationally recognized gold standard for Montessori teachers. In addition to education, all the staff at our school are trained in trauma-informed care, CPR/First Aid, and Anti-Bias, Anti-Racist Educational Practices.

Values

Respect, Rigor, Curiosity, Independence, Inclusivity, Diversity, and Joy

Health & Safety

During the pandemic, Westabou Montessori School has operated under the guidelines of a special Health Care Guidance Committee composed of multiple physicians from a range of specialties whose children are enrolled as our students. We wear masks indoors, have set up outdoor classrooms for learning, lunch, and snack times, screen all students and adults each day and have strict illness policies. With their help and the cooperation of all WMS families, we have been able to participate in face to face education this year and have been fortunate to have no positive cases of Covid-19 on our campus since school started.

Our approach to health and safety in non-pandemic times is based on the understanding that children learn best when they get plenty of outdoor time, many opportunities to test and push their physical limits, and adults who help them find joy in movement. Students on our campus try tricky things — they climb trees, they build their own balancing structures, and they push themselves physically. We make sure the environment is safe enough to ensure no one gets seriously injured, but we have a healthy respect for the inevitable bumps and scrapes that are part of a healthy childhood. We keep a well supplied first aid kit for scrapes, splinters, and attending to the spills that are part of a healthy childhood.