Congratulations to The Tribune for bringing into sharper focus factors central to the Chicago public school system`s failing our children and jeopardizing our future. In response to your editorial question, ”What will it take to reform the system?” you suggest several important steps, but you fail to identify the most important of all: changing the way our teachers are trained.
The majority of teachers talk about individual differences but teach the class as though the students have the same learning style, learn at the same rate, have the same experience background, the same ability, the same interests. None of this is true.
Teachers need to be shown how to set up a self-learning environment in which each child can learn at his own rate, at the cutting edge of his development in each area of the curriculum. Teachers need to be taught how to be facilitators of individual learning, enabling students to learn through realizing their respective potentials.
How can this be done? Thousands of Montessori schools (mostly private, but a growing number of public schools) provide an ongoing demonstration that the individual needs of students can be met.
But not unless the traditional system of training teachers is changed. There are 52 accredited Montessori Teacher Training Programs in the U.S., of which the Midwest Montessori Teacher Training Center in Chicago is one.
The how-to-do-it can be observed right here in Chicago.
