A Montessori student for life – Monica Hoffmeyer realizes life lessons learned at Radmoor.

By Michelle R. Munson

Monica Hoffmeyer can’t help but gush at the materials she spots during a recent trip “home” to Montessori Radmoor School.

These materials bring back those lessons learned, from when she was in elementary class with Ms. Margie Jensen and before then, when those building blocks were just beginning.  They instill a hope for the future of Montessori education, and recall a time when she was trusted as a youth to do what she needed to do.

With that trust, comes:

Confidence.

Monica visited her old school in September, and remembered her love of the pink tower from primary,  realizing her enjoyment at the time of building and rebuilding with the cubes led to greater understandings of sequence, order and mathematics concepts like numerical value.  She says, “It feels like a symbol now for how everything just kind of grows.”

She recalls working in elementary with her best friend Kate Gilluly, and “I could learn at my own pace.  It never felt like learning, I just knew that I was learning.  And it still feels like home.”

What else did Montessori education teach her?

She says, “Just being able to be in control of what I was doing then and knowing that if I need to, I can sit  down and I can do something because I have been able to (do it).   People have trusted me in my early life to sit down and know that I am going to do (something) because this is what I should do and what I need to do at work and at school.

“I can trust myself, that I can sit down and I can do it.  It’s helped me in two of my jobs already.”

Monica attended Montessori Radmoor School – starting at “the youngest age possible” –  and continuing through the fifth grade before her family relocated to Tennessee.  She began attending public school in sixth grade and graduated from Cookeville High School in Tennessee last spring.

In one of her jobs she has held, she worked with children, and while communicating with them, she harkens back to her experiences:  “What would Miss Julie do?  Or Miss Susie, what would she say?   It always came back to me, when I was talking to the little kids, why don’t you ask? Or why don’t you do it another way? Or why don’t you do it your own way?  I was able to let them be little mini adults and trust them in a way that I feel like a lot of people don’t.”

During her recent visit to Radmoor, she enjoyed bagel breakfast and remarked that students gained real life lessons while making change and learning about salesmanship and service.  She watched as children added up the sales totals for bagel purchases and commented that the children are learning about real world situations.   “These kids are going to be dealing with money for the rest of their lives.  They are doing this in real life  with their parents.  It’s kids being adults, and it’s so amazing to see it.”

With her Montessori experience, Monica said, “I still consider myself a Montessori child and I still incorporate it into basically everything I do.  It’s never going to leave me.”

Monica is now a student at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville.  She is researching Montessori education for a school class.