Children at Gateway Montessori Preschool choose what they learn, prepare their own snacks and decide when its time for a break, but chaos doesn’t ensue.
The alternative preschool is offered at Schenectady County Community College in a building separated from the main campus. There are children as young as 2-and-a-half years old learning in the same room with children up to 6 years old.
There is also an individualized kindergarten component for 5-year-olds promoting literacy, social studies, science, math and the arts. The preschool features authentic Montessori materials and presentations.
Maria Montessori founded Montessori education in 1907 in Italy based off of scientific observation of children’s learning processes.
“It is philosophy where you look at following the child, so it is very individualized,” said Educational Coordinator Deb Ahola. “We try to guide the child into what it is they are really, really interested in and focused on at that time.”
Ahola said children work at their individual levels in the focused area. The Montessori discipline leans on the child to tell the staff what they want to work on.
“We trust that the child is going to tell us where they are going, because there is some innate stuff that goes on with the child,” she said. “In a lot of education system they just kind of try to override that … there is never a coercion for children to participate in anything.”
She said activities are made as inviting as possible to gain the child’s interest.
Also, Ahola said she isn’t referred to as a “teacher,” but rather is called a directress, which is part of the educational philosophy since they are guiding children instead of teaching them.
“I was hooked on Montessori a long time ago,” said Ahola. “What I like most about Montessori is it values and it encourages and it fosters the natural curiosity and creativity and love of learning that children have … you see the children love to be there and love to learn about new stuff.”
She said in the school’s program she implements the “best practices” from other philosophies of learning too.
The school was started in the spring of 2002 and it has college students working with the children, which Ahola said provides an enriching experience for the students as well and exposing them to a different kind of learning.
There are six students in the program, which is unusually low, but Ahola believes the economy has started to take its toll on the number of parents registering their children.
“We have been on a waiting list every year except this year,” she said. “Up until this year we have had 20 children all the time.”
She said this is one of the worst economic climates she has seen and the programming is affected because it is purely a choice for parents. She said a lot of students’ parents were stay at home mothers, which allowed them to simply keep their kids at home when the economy took a turn for the worse.
“We are looking at trying to get us into a full-day situation,” she said. “If we could take children full-day we would probably get more.”
She said there were two reasons she and college officials sought to start the preschool.
“It would be great for our students, but also the community because we are on a sliding rate scale, so students here pay a very, very low fee to send their children,” she said. “Even our community rate is lower than any other Montessori around … we want the people from this community to be here.”
Tuition for the preschool is $260 per child per month for community members, with lower rates for students, faculty and staff. Additional SCCC daycare is available at the on-site YWCA Children’s Center.
For more information, contact Educational Coordinator Deb Ahola by calling 381-1402 or emailing [email protected], or contact Program Administrator Tammy Calhoun by calling 381-1395 or emailing [email protected].
