Yes, dignity is important, yet it seems difficult to talk about dignity when children are being mass slaughtered with our USA tax dollars?

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Probably AI itself.

That was one of the most clarifying moments from our recent webinar with Dana Anderson, Building a Positive Tech Culture at Your School (and Why It’s Not About AI Bans and Phone Policing). Dana, who comes to this work as a Montessorian with experience across all three levels and who is one of the most thoughtful voices on digital citizenship I know, didn’t come to give us another policy template or a tighter phone ban. She came to ask a harder question:

Who actually gets a voice in how your school handles technology?

Because right now, in most schools, the answer is “adults.” And that’s exactly the problem.

The reactive playbook isn’t working

Schools keep reaching for the same tools: ban the phones, block the AI. Write a stricter policy. Print it out. Post it on the website.

But as Dana pointed out, a recent Gallup poll shows that 60 to 87 percent of teachers are already using AI for school-based work. Meanwhile, students in many of those same schools are told they can’t use AI at all, under any circumstances.

This isn’t a policy problem. It’s a trust problem. And the fallout is predictable: young people circumvent the rules, hide their use, and stop bringing their real questions to the adults in their lives.

Dana named it plainly: when students feel a tech policy has been imposed on them rather than built with them, the response is rebellion, not reflection.

In a time when young people need to build discernment and critical thinking, not talking about technology is a disservice.

What happens when we co-create rather than dictate?

One powerful moment in the webinar came from Mara Weitzman, a Montessori educator who ran a service-learning program where her students used 3D printing and CAD design to create real replacement pieces, and entirely new materials, for other classrooms across her school.

The students managed the projects, emailed the teachers, set up the meetings, and iterated until the material was right.

The teachers ended up needing the students’ expertise. The students experienced themselves as contributors, not consumers. And the whole culture of the school shifted, not because someone wrote a better tech policy, but because young people were trusted with real responsibility.

At Bridgemont International School, where Dana teaches, her AI literacy students are currently designing a professional development day on AI for the faculty. The students are teaching the teachers.

That is what a positive tech culture actually looks like. Not surveillance. Not bans. Partnership.

The paradigm we’re inviting you into

As Dana reminded us, Maria Montessori wrote that education depends on a belief that the child has within themselves the capacity to develop into a being far superior to us, and that they will be the only ones who can show us a better way of living.

Comfortable conversations don’t dismantle oppressive systems. Adult-only tech policies don’t prepare young people for a world saturated in technology they’ll inherit from us.

The students are ready. The question is whether we are.

What’s next!

Dana and Developing Education are building something bigger around this work: a full course for educators and school leaders who are ready to stop reacting and start partnering with young people to build genuinely positive tech cultures in their schools.

We want it to actually meet you where you are. If you’re even a little curious, we’d love your voice in shaping it.

Share what YOU want to see in a course here!

The revolution our students need starts with us having the courage to let them in.

What would YOU like in a course?

The traditional education system had its chance.

Now it’s our turn.

In my early years of this work, before starting Breaking the Paradigm, I felt like the only one in my school who wanted to think deeply about education and question the status quo. So where did I turn?

The Human Restoration Project- an organization committed to spreading progressive education and leading systems level change in education around the world!

I used to commute over an hour to school every day, and would listen to their podcasts religiously for years on that long commute. Seeing the work that was being done by Nick Covington and Chris McNutt (Creative Director and CEO) was incredibly inspiring to me, and HRP was one of my inspirations when starting my own podcast.

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Though we had been in many similar online circles over the last few years, I had the opportunity to meet Nick and Chris in LA this year at the Student Power Summit, and the idea came up that we needed to do a “Montessori Myth Busting” podcast, since so many folks in the progressive education space see Montessori as a black box (and vice versa).

The result of that idea is the following podcast episode featuring Ayize Sabater, Kelly Jonelis, and myself talking about the promise and persistent myths of Montessori education. If you like this episode, definitely become an HRP subscriber and check out their other episodes- Montessorians can learn so much from the guests they have on.

Thanks to Nick for being an incredible host and for Ayize and Kelly for a great conversation!

Watch on YouTube:

Listen on HRP’s Website:

Listen Now!

Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum!

Our Purpose:

Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community.

Why join the MAC Forum?

• Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world.

• Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion.

• Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available.

Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST

Join Today and Find Your Community!

Join the MAC Forum

The traditional education system had its chance.

Now it’s our turn.

Tonight, we’re doing something about it.

Dana Anderson is facilitating a free webinar with Developing Education: Building a Positive Tech Culture at Your School... And Why It’s Not About Phone Bans and AI Policing. If you caught our podcast conversation, you already know that Dana brings something rare to this space; she’s deeply rooted in Montessori philosophy, she’s a digital citizenship expert who has worked with Common Sense Media, and she refuses to separate technology from the bigger questions of human development and peace education. And she has real, practical tools to help you use technology as a tool for human development.

Register Now

Two sessions are still available: tonight, Thursday April 16 at 7:00 PM EDT and Sunday, April 19 at 12:00 PM EDT.

This is free! Register for the session that works for you here.

And if there’s someone on your team, in your school, or in your network who is stuck in the cycle of banning, policing, and reacting, send this to them. They should to be in this conversation too!

Register Now

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The traditional education system had its chance.

Now it’s our turn.

Our students are already living in a digital world. The question isn’t whether technology belongs in our environments. It’s whether we’re preparing young people for that reality or pretending it doesn’t exist. And right now, too many schools are choosing fear over preparation. They’re writing rules instead of building culture. They’re policing devices instead of developing humans.

Dana Anderson is one of the people changing that conversation. Dana is a Montessori guide who has taught from early childhood through adolescence, a digital citizenship expert, and someone whose work I deeply respect. We had a fantastic conversation on Breaking the Paradigm about why digital citizenship matters in Montessori environments and why it has to come before any policy gets written. If you haven’t listened to that episode, I’d encourage you to check it out:

And now, Dana is facilitating a free webinar with Developing Education: Building a Positive Tech Culture at Your School... And Why It’s Not About Phone Bans and AI Policing. Two sessions are available: Wednesday, April 16 at 7:00 PM EDT and Saturday, April 19 at 12:00 PM EDT.

This isn’t another conversation about what to ban. It’s about what to build. Register for the session that works for you here, and if you know someone at a school that’s struggling with this right now, forward this email to them. They need to be in the room.

Register Here!

And before the webinar, don't miss this Tuesday's MAC Forum session! Kelly Jonelis is facilitating Making Math Accessible for All Learners (Students and Guides): a conversation about what it actually looks like to meet every student where they are in math, and what it means for us as guides to rethink our own relationship with math instruction.

This isn't a lecture. It's a collaborative dialogue with practitioners who are in the work every day. Tuesday, April 14 at 7:00 PM EST.

If you've been looking for a space where adolescent educators think together instead of just being talked at, this is it. Register here!

Join the MAC Forum

The traditional education system had its chance.

Now it’s our turn.

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Kathy Leitch, executive director of the International Montessori Council, joins Breaking the Paradigm to explore what it really means to carry Montessori forward as a living, experimental method rather than a fixed recipe. With decades of experience in Montessori schools around the world, Kathy makes a case that’s both provocative and deeply generous: Montessori is for every child, even if every school, every classroom, and every guide isn’t yet ready for every child.

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What would change if we stopped treating the album as the method?

What happens when we let fear: of parents, of imperfection, of breaking with tradition, drive decisions that should be rooted in love?

And what does it actually look like to transform our own spirit before we try to transform education?

Kathy names the energy of love as the most powerful and least explored dimension of Montessori's legacy: an organizing force that shows up in highly functioning classrooms and lingers in the adults those classrooms produce. She challenges the protective instincts that keep our movement small: the hierarchy, the gatekeeping, the insistence on perfection. And she calls us back to the inner work that makes everything else possible: the kind of spiritual preparation that doesn't just happen once in training but every time a child triggers something we didn't know we were carrying.

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This is a conversation about courage, energy, and the unfinished work Montessori left us, not as a limitation, but as an invitation. Thanks Kathy for a great conversation!

Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum!

Our Purpose:

Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community.

Why join the MAC Forum?

• Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world.

• Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion.

• Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available.

Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST

Join Today and Find Your Community!

Join the MAC Forum

The traditional education system had its chance.

Now it’s our turn.

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It’s perhaps my favorite trait about myself: that there’s always something new to discover that could reshape my ideas, practice, and view of the world.

With that in mind, I wanted to share these upcoming opportunities for life long learning!

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Upcoming DevEd Webinar: Building a Positive Tech Culture at Your School ... And why it's not about phone bans and AI policing.

Longtime listeners to the podcast will know that I have a particular disdain for phone and technology bans for a few reasons, but in particular because a ban fails to equip students with the dispositions that will allow them to thrive in a world increasingly filled with technology.

In this Developing Education webinar, Dana Anderson, an expert in Digital Citizenship, will be discussing what it takes to build a positive tech culture: moving away from the fear, compliance, and control approach that is our cultural reflex and considering what it means to see technology as a tool to support development.

We will hold the webinar twice: April 16th at 7:00pm EST and April 19th at 12:00pm.

You can register for this free webinar here!

Register Here!

If you want to learn more about Dana and her work, check out her Breaking the Paradigm podcast episode:

The 2026 Montessori Experience: More to Explore! (Virtual)

For those who did not attend AMI/USA’s Montessori Experience: Refresher Courses and More in San Diego, there is still a chance to be a part of the event virtually! AMI/USA is hosting a virtual event on April 11, 2026. The adolescent session in San Diego was incredibly impactful so if you work with adolescents and were not in person, I highly recommend attending.

You can find more information below!

Check Out the Montessori Experience

Upcoming Course: Living in the Metacrisis: A Depth Inquiry for Parents, Educators, and Administrators

This six-week virtual inquiry invites parents, educators, and administrators - particularly within Montessori learning communities - to pause inside a world in transition and examine how modern habits of care and control shape our relationships with the young, with one another, and with the more-than-human world.

Living in the Metacrisis emphasizes reflection, relational maturity, and the capacity to stay present in the midst of uncertainty. Rather than teaching strategies for resilience or reform, this inquiry explores how the story of progress, mastery, and separability - that we have all internalized as “the human condition” - lives through us.

The metacrisis is approached not as an external catastrophe to solve but as a mirror of our collective inner world. Through that mirror, participants explore questions such as:

• How do inherited ideas of goodness, protection, and achievement shape the ways we guide or limit young people?

• What becomes possible when we release the need to appear certain or right?

• How might care become companionship, and teaching become co-learning, in a time when the old maps no longer seem to hold?

This course was created by Raj Chawla and Andrew Kutt who appeared on a recent episode to discuss this important work. If you want to learn more about some of the ideas in the course, check out my podcast episode with Raj and Andrew here:

Register for the course here:

Living in the Metacrisis Registration

Ongoing with Developing Education: The Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum

We have had some incredible conversations with adolescent guides and practitioners from across the country over the last few weeks and want YOU to join us!

Our Purpose:

Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community.

Why join the MAC Forum?

• Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world.

• Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion.

• Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available.

Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST

Join Today and Find Your Community!

Join the MAC Forum

Do you have ideas about what kinds of learning opportunities you’d like to see from Developing Education? Reply to this email to let us know!

Subscribe now

The traditional education system had its chance.

Now it’s our turn.

Here’s the provocation from Tammy Oesting in her third Breaking the Paradigm apprearance: Peace education isn’t about mindfulness exercises or conflict resolution scripts.

It’s not the “kumbaya approach” where we shield children from the world’s hard truths.

Real peace education creates conditions that produce a new human who has embodied interdependence: who knows in their bones that they are part of a web, not standing above it. That’s systems-level work. That requires us to look at what we’re afraid to see.

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And then there’s the question we need to ask about Montessori teacher preparation: Is all our scaffolding: the affiliations, the compliance measures, the rigid fidelity requirements, supporting the rise of human potential, or is it a cage? Why are we so committed to structures that don’t reflect how adults actually learn? And why do we trust children to organize their own time and follow their developmental path, but then demand adults comply with preparation programs that look nothing like the way Dr. Montessori herself taught?

At the heart of everything Tammy is asking us to sit with is this: What happens when we let go of control? What emerges in the chaos? Because from chaos comes emergence.

This conversation won’t give you easy answers. It will give you better questions.

Thanks, Tammy, for bringing the courage we all need right now!

Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum!

Our Purpose:

Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community.

Why join the MAC Forum?

• Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world.

• Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion.

• Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available.

Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST

Join Today and Find Your Community!

Join the MAC Forum

The traditional education system had its chance.

Now it’s our turn.

Mixed-age groupings. The three-hour work cycle. Observation-based curriculum. Teacher preparation rooted in human development. Everything that makes Montessori transformative deserves to be reflected in the laws, funding streams, and regulations that shape what’s possible for schools and families. But when we’re not at the table, the language gets written without us; and that’s exactly what MPPI is working to change.

In this special live episode, Kelly and I sit down with Denise Monnier and Vyju Kadambi of the Montessori Public Policy Initiative: a two-person organization with advocates in 45 states doing the essential work of making sure Montessori has a voice where it matters most. They’re not waiting for a crisis. They’re building relationships with legislators so public policy includes and uplifts our work in Montessori.

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This Thursday, as part of the AMS conference in Washington, D.C., MPPI is leading Montessori on the Move, a day of preparation, storytelling, and over 30 meetings on Capitol Hill. It’s the first time our community has organized something like this at the federal level, and Denise and Vyju want you there! It’s not too late to register. It’s not too late to show up for the afternoon. It’s not too late to be in that group photo on the Capitol steps (and get a cool Montessori hat while you’re at it!).

And if you can’t make it to D.C., this conversation will convince you that advocacy is already something you do, and that the leap from advocating for a child in your classroom to advocating for Montessori in your statehouse is shorter than you think.

You can find MPPI and get connected at MontessoriAdvocacy.org.

See you in DC!

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Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum!

Our Purpose:

Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community.

Why join the MAC Forum?

• Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world.

• Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion.

• Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available.

Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST

Join Today and Find Your Community!

Join the MAC Forum

The traditional education system had its chance.

Now it’s our turn.

Join us to learn more about Montessori advocacy, the current public policy landscape, and how YOU can get involved! You can join here on Substack, on Youtube, LinkedIn, or Riverside!

Join us on your platform of choice!

Riverside: https://riverside.com/studio/andrews-studio-WStAI

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/andrew-faulstich

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Breaking-the-Paradigm

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Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum!

Our Purpose:

Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community.

Why join the MAC Forum?

• Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world.

• Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion.

• Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available.

Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST

Join Today and Find Your Community!

Join the MAC Forum

The traditional education system had its chance.

Now it’s our turn.

This is a special three-part episode recorded before, during, and after the Student Power Summit in Los Angeles: a conference that truly and authentically centered student voice. Students from across the country weren’t just in attendance, they were active participants in sessions, pushing back on what adults were saying, and ultimately presenting their own vision for what education should look like. You’ll hear that in the final segment, and it’s worth the wait.

Part one begins with my reflections on Johann Hari’s Lost Connections and the research showing that depression is not a chemical imbalance to be medicated away, but rather a response to environments that disconnect us from meaningful work, from each other, from our values, from the natural world, and from a hopeful future.

Sound like any institution you know?

Part two is a conversation with Jason Blair, an elementary art teacher from Columbus, Ohio, and Jennifer Goen, teacher and instructional leader at HB Woodlawn, a democratic school in Arlington, Virginia. Fresh off the first day of the summit and inspired by the partnership with Homeboy Industries, Jason and Jennifer dig into what happens when we start from strengths instead of deficits, why the arts hold a key that most schools throw away, and why efficiency may be the single greatest enemy of real learning.

Part three is the students themselves, and I’ll leave that for you to experience firsthand. They share clearly what they need in order to thrive.

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I also want to share some key takeaways I had from the breakout sessions. Dr. Stuart Slavin, while leading a medical school, found that his students had skyrocketing anxiety and depression that only worsened each year. His response wasn’t to offer more counseling. He cut class time by 10%, made all courses pass/fail, freed up every other Wednesday for student-chosen pursuits, and reduced daily homework by one to two hours. Board scores rose. The failure rate was cut in half. Students left their first year of medical school less anxious than when they entered. His metaphor says it all: when the canaries started dying in the coal mines, miners didn’t give the canaries antidepressants. They got out of the mine. Our young people are the canaries. And yet we keep pushing deeper.

Slavin also names the toxic mindsets these environments produce: performance as identity, toxic comparison, maladaptive perfectionism, imposter phenomenon, self-blame, shame, and what’s known as the Stanford Duck: being calm on the surface, but with your feet paddling like crazy underneath. These aren’t personal failures. They’re the predictable outcomes of top-down, compliance-driven education.

I also had the privilege of meeting Nick Covington and Chris McNutt, cofounders of the Human Restoration Project, for the first time in person. Their work using empathy interviews to collect real-time data from students, and then using that data to reshape the experience of school in the image of the young people inside it, is incredibly powerful work. And they’re doing it in public schools that on the surface seem untouchable. When we change the kind of data we collect, and we have the right intention behind the reforms we pursue, remarkable things become possible.

Huge thanks to Mike Nicholson for organizing this truly incredible conference; the first I’ve attended that pushed meaningfully on the systemic implications of our schooling system with this kind of depth and honesty. And a special shout out to Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang for a keynote that I hope to share parts of in a future episode.

There’s more footage from the summit coming. But for now, listen to what happens when we stop talking about students and start listening to them.

Want to hear more? Breaking The Paradigm will be LIVE, this afternoon, at 4:15pm!

We’ll be talking with the Montessori Public Policy Initiative about their upcoming advocacy day as part of the AMS Conference here in DC. Tune in on Substack, LinkedIn, or Riverside! See you then!

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Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum!

Our Purpose:

Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community.

Why join the MAC Forum?

• Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world.

• Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion.

• Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available.

Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST

Join Today and Find Your Community!

Join the MAC Forum

The traditional education system had its chance.

Now it’s our turn.

The purpose of this keynote was to have it be an emergent conversation- initially among the six panelists, and then with questions and ideas from the audience. I was honored to be joined on stage by Dr. Corey Borgman, Dr. Heather Gerker, Dr. Luz Casquejo Johnston, Melanie Thiesse, Dr. Nicole Evans, and Dr. KaLinda Bass-Barlow.

Kelly and I were so honored to meet many podcast listeners and Paradigm Breakers at AIMS! For those that could not be there, I wanted to share my introduction to the keynote panel.

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Good morning and welcome to the AIMS keynote session, The Peace Table Awaits: Building the Interdependent Movement our Times Demand. My name is Andrew Faulstich, and I have the honor of facilitating this panel of six incredible Montessori thinkers and leaders. Before we begin, I want to thank Beth Norman, Reena Morgan, and the entire AIMS board for bringing this all star group together and having the vision for a truly unique and collaborative keynote experience.

We are here, engaging in this dialogue today, because even though Montessori fought for a world of equitable interdependence 100 years ago, that is not the current state of affairs. Rather, we are in a state of destabilization and dehumanization- from the ICE raids right here in Chicago and Minneapolis to the ongoing genocide in Palestine, to the continued destruction of our natural environment in the name of profits and extractive consumption, we are seeing what Montessori described in From Childhood to Adolescence when she wrote that “Society has not only developed into a state of utmost complication and extreme contrasts, but it has now come to a crisis in which the peace of the world and civilization itself are threatened.” The children of our world today are being shaped by these events- indeed, they are often afflicted some of the harshest damage, both physically and psychologically, of these adult-driven conflicts.

In these times, it’s required that we not only remember but embody Maria Montessori’s courage. While she initially entertained Mussolini’s proposal to make all Italian schools Montessori schools, she ultimately refused to be a tool of fascism and was exiled in India for 7 years because of it.

Indeed, we must remember that the purpose of a Montessori education was never to build a better mousetrap- it was NOT to better prepare students to take academic exams, get high paying jobs, or even to read “on grade level” when adults decided that a student should. The goal was always to foster the development of a “new human.” Montessori wrote in Education and Peace that “The new human being must show us how to make all humankind aware of its unity,” and in Education for a New World, Montessori wrote about “…The rising of a New Human who will not be the victim of events, but will have the clarity of vision to direct and shape the future of human society.”

This is what is at stake in our work- and the focus of our panel today. In order to transform ourselves such that we can collectively realize our interdependence and live Montessori’s vision, we must consider all aspects of our practice- from the personal level to the systemic level. The questions we’ve prepared address this range, and were crafted based on the questions and ideas many of you submitted before this event. I encourage everyone here- panelists and attendees alike- to embody Montessori’s courage during this session; to lean into productive discomfort; and to be open to the transformation required realize a world of equitable interdependence.

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Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum!

Our Purpose:

Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community.

Why join the MAC Forum?

• Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world.

• Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion.

• Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available.

Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST

Join Today and Find Your Community!

Join the MAC Forum

The traditional education system had its chance.

Now it’s our turn.

Raj Chawla and Andrew Kutt joined me for a conversation that asks us to slow down long enough to feel what’s actually happening beneath the surface of our world, our systems, and ourselves. What Raj illuminates so beautifully is that the assumptions driving our global unraveling: separation, domination, the compulsion to control, aren’t just “out there” in our institutions and economies. They live in our nervous systems. They live in us.

This is not a comfortable conversation. It’s not meant to be.

What does it mean to truly unlearn something that has been passed down through generations of conditioning?

What do we lose when we let go of control, and what becomes possible when we do?

And what does any of this have to do with how we educate young people in a time of collapse?

Raj doesn’t offer answers. He offers something rarer: a slowing down, a bearing witness, an invitation to compost what modernity has accumulated in us so that something new might emerge in the clearing.

This is one of those episodes that will sit with you long after you’ve finished listening.

Thanks Raj and Andrew for a great conversation!

Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum!

Our Purpose:

Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community.

Why join the MAC Forum?

• Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world.

• Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion.

• Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available.

Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST

Join Today and Find Your Community!

Join the MAC Forum

The traditional education system had its chance.

Now it’s our turn.

To say I got lucky was an understatement.

Pat did two incredible things for me: she shared the materials she created over her 40 year career and she created space for me to process, question, and transform as a prepared adult. Through our conversations, I was able to dig into my spiritual preparation as I negotiated my new role as a protector of development.

That dialogue changed everything for me. Yet for years, I’ve been bothered by this simple truth: the success of an adolescent guide shouldn’t depend on luck. It shouldn’t depend on finding that one mentor who gets it.

I’m excited to announce that in just over a week, we are launching the Montessori Adolescent Collaborative (MAC) Forum, which is our way of paying forward the gift of dialogue and transformation.

The MAC Forum is a bi-weekly gathering for adolescent practitioners and school leaders. Every other Tuesday at 7pm EST, we gather virtually for transformative conversation, facilitated by practitioners who spark discussion, then step back. The goal is for each member to grow through conversation, vulnerability, and a willingness to question even our most common practices.

Join the MAC Forum

After dozens of podcast conversations on adolescents, and attending Montessori conferences across the country, I’ve come to the conclusion that we don’t need more information. We need space to make sense of our experiences together. We need dialogue that transforms us.

Starting March 3rd, we’re building the community of practice the adolescent work has always needed.

Our first sessions explore:

• Who is Your “Inner Adolescent?”: How Transforming Ourselves Can Transform Our Environments

• Breaking the Adolescent Schedule

• Holistic Assessment in the Adolescent Environment

• Building an Adult Team to Support Adolescent Development

• The Micro-Economy: Wins and Challenges

• Beyond Discipline, Towards Justice

We will be featuring an all-star lineup of facilitators, including:

• Justin Tosco

• Kyle Wagner

• Dana Anderson

• Dr. Paige Krabill

• Bob Blecher

• Kelly Jonelis and Andrew Faulstich

• And many more!

Register below to join us March 3rd!

Join the MAC Forum

Below, you’ll find a selection of adolescent-focused podcasts and blogs from the last two years. We look forward to seeing you at the MAC Forum!

Join the MAC Forum

Subscribe now

The traditional education system had its chance.

Now it’s our turn.

“A teacher-framed, teacher-centered classroom, I have come to realize, may be well intentioned, but it misses the point; to deliver information is not necessarily to build knowledge or understanding… My present practice is based on several fundamental insights:

• Learning is a personal journey, guided by each individual’s unique way of thinking, and colored by each individual’s unique perspective.

• When we understand something, we own it, and the pleasure of ownership is visceral- not merely intellectual.

• The ideas that are dearest to us, ones that become internalized and useful, are the ones we have struggled personally to build.”

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Over the last six years, I’ve used the Harkness method of discussion in 12-15 and 15-18 Montessori environments. I have found that it is a better fit with Montessori philosophy than a Socratic seminar because it removes the adult completely: Students in a Harkness seminar are responsible for leading their discussions entirely on their own. The guide prepares students in advance of the seminar and helps the group reflect afterwords, but ultimately allows the students to self-direct during the discussion.

I utilize the Harkness method because I seek to prepare an environment which empowers my students to discover and negotiate meaning, truth, beauty, joy, morality, ethics, and understanding on their own through the habits they build around the table. This process is aided by a guide but should ultimately continue without me as an aid to life.

The prepared environment for the Harkness method is both physical and intellectual. Sitting around one table, facing each other, with the guide stepping back to allow the students to lean in, is the most visible part. The intellectual environment, however, is just as important: the seminar table tracker, the student self-evaluation, the pre-discussion preparation, and the post-discussion reflection.

Like Montessori education, Harkness is designed to be a holistic, humanizing method.

Rather than just an academic exercise, Harkness is an experience in independence and interdependence.

The students will need to be able to self-direct their own learning by completing the reading, seeking help if needed, and preparing adequately for the discussion. They must also work interdependently with their peers, in order to make the text “bigger” than it was when they arrived at the table. Only through interdependent dialogue can the community dig for deep meaning. In order to achieve such results, the following four “concentric circles” should be given considerable attention by the Harkness guide. These concentric circles are adapted from the excellent book Street Data and applied to the Harkness method.

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Identity:

Identity is the first concentric circle, because without students being comfortable with themselves, their beliefs, and their values, the vulnerability needed for a successful Harkness discussion will not emerge. This identity work is happening across the curriculum and also within the Harkness space. Sharing with students that equity of voice is the goal means that each person needs to bring their unique self to the conversation to be as rich as possible.

The space should be curated, by both the guide and students, so that each participant is confident in who they are and their emerging sense of values and opinions.

Belonging:

For adolescents, belonging in their community is essential to their learning and wellbeing. The prepared environment, including the seminar preparation, rubric, and group evaluation, are designed to coach the students to create a community for themselves where they all belong.

This is not something the guide can simply create create.

In this sense, belonging and efficacy are two mutually reinforcing elements: each student must feel a responsibility to make sure that everyone belongs at the table, and through the efforts of their peers, each student feels more comfortable and vulnerable.

Mastery:

Mastery, predicated on the other concentric circles of the method, is where the academic magic happens. While students may not follow your line of inquiry as the guide, they will be challenging each other to use the Harkness skills and habits that have been reinforced by the prepared environment on their own terms and toward their own line of inquiry. This does not mean that you cannot modify the prepared environment to make sure that students understand certain concepts and discuss certain ideas. However, respecting the students’ inquiry is of paramount importance for mastery to truly emerge. In order for the discussion to truly be theirs, they must have the freedom to discuss their ideas as they see fit.

Efficacy:

The reason that the guide steps back from a Harkness discussion is so that students can take responsibility for their learning. Much like the Montessori environment, students do not “do the reading” for the guide; they do it because they have an intrinsic desire to learn and create new knowledge with their peers.

In a Harkness discussion, students are also responsible for each other. Adolescents are social beings, and the Harkness method taps into that developmental task, which is where the independence of working toward your own identity, belonging, and mastery meets the interdependence of the table. Students quickly learn that a seminar where only one or two students speak, no matter the depth of contributions from those individuals, is not a successful seminar. This experience in interdependence through Harkness reinforces Montessori’s ideal of a community of adolescents that must learn to live and grow interdependently together.

Want to hear about my own personal story of adopting Harkness? Check it out below!

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The traditional education system had its chance.

Now it’s our turn.

We are a collective of educators, thinkers, and leaders who have left the realm of easy answers to wade in the emergence of deep questions.

We hail from a variety of backgrounds: Montessori, progressive education, public, private, and international. What binds us is our belief that education isn’t just about children in classrooms. It’s about a radical reorientation of the systems that shape all of us, human and more-than-human, toward the world Dr. Maria Montessori envisioned: one of equity, interdependence, and collective flourishing.

Cultivating such a world not only takes knowledge and action, but deep inner reflection as we change our ways of being needed to live in this new world. At Breaking the Paradigm, we’re here for all of that.

If you’re ready to move from isolation to collective, from reform to revolution, you’re in the right place.

Who We Are

Breaking the Paradigm is hosted by Andrew Faulstich and Kelly Jonelis. We both bring a myriad of interests to the podcast and to our work- from math to morality, guitar playing to spoon carving.

Want to learn more about our origin story? Check out our special Anniversary Episode!

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Podcast: Live every other Sunday. Conversations with educators, thinkers, and leaders across education, culture, and society.

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Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum: The Montessori Adolescent Collaborative (MAC) Forum brings together Montessori adolescent practitioners from around the world every other Tuesday at 7pm EST starting in March 2026. The purpose of the forum is to support the transformation of adolescent guides through emergent dialogue.

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Death and destruction, schools and universities flattened, children orphaned, left without limbs, suffering, buried under rubble.

And then came the silence.

The silence in the news media, the silence from education organizations, the silence of people for whom this issue was uncomfortable. While public discourse on this issue has increased, there is still significant censorship and a reluctance by Western media to talk about Palestine in clear and honest terms.

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Our third edition of Provocations Magazine is proud to stand with other brave organizations who have amplified Palestinian voices and shared honestly about this genocide. We are working to break this silence.

The theme for our third edition is The Prepared Environment Under Siege: Palestine and Montessori’s Call for Children’s Liberation. The core of this edition is a belief that to truly call ourselves Montessorians, we must not only oppose the genocide in Gaza, but we must also call for the liberation and self-determination of the Palestinian people.

The genocide in Palestine has unearthed a range of inequities in the education status quo- many that already existed but went uncovered among the mainstream. Within a few months after October 2023, all Gazan universities were reduced to rubble by the Israeli military. Israel has systematically targeted schools designated as safe zones. Children have been systematically starved and traumatized, with many left as orphans.

The shadow of this genocide has also found its way into education systems around the world. The Harvard Education Review was prepared to publish an edition on this genocide as it related to education, but it was cancelled at the last minute. Universities across the United States sent violent police to break up student demonstrations for peace and an end to the genocide. Teachers in K-12 schools were doxed and harassed for teaching the true history of oppression in Palestine, often with little to no support from their administrators.

This edition of Provocations brings together diverse voices from around the world who not only want to stop the violence in Gaza, but who also want to bring us toward a better world. A world without occupiers taking over indigenous land. A world not based on extraction and material gain. A world where companies cannot profit off of death and destruction.

I want to take this moment to thank our incredible authors: Noor Ahmed Alhello, Charlotte Awdry, Dominique Mouthon, Hannah Richardson, Abeer Ramadan-Shinnawi, and Ayize Sabater. The work of each of these authors is critically important- whether working with Palestinian refugees in Egypt, uplifting liberation for children around the world, or decolonizing our Montessori curriculum, these authors are demonstrating what it means to truly follow in Montessori’s revolutionary footsteps.

I am also excited to share that for the first time, this Provocations edition includes original artwork and poetry. The cover art and select pieces within the magazine were created by Smita Mahmud and the two poems that bookend the magazine were written by Unayza Bussawon. Both of these additions convey the sadness, grief, hope and perseverance felt in Palestine and around the world as a result of this genocide.

In addition to our writers, I also want to recognize our small but mighty team who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to create this edition of Provocations. I would like to give a major thank you to Ilhaam Ladha, our Media and Content Specialist, who is responsible for the operations of our magazine and for curating the design and layout. Without her tireless efforts, Provocations would not exist.

I also want to extend my deepest gratitude to Developing Education Co-Founder Kelly Jonelis, for her editorial support and partnership in this work. Her insight is invaluable to everything we do at Developing Education and I am so grateful to work alongside her.

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Maria Montessori envisioned a world based in equitable interdependence; one without the violence and horror she witnessed during World War II. And while it’s true that she called on us to prepare our children to lead us from the labyrinth, to be our guide out of our current social and political struggles, we also cannot wait for our children to fix these problems.

My hope is that this edition of Provocations invites you to sit with difficult questions, to consider your own role in fostering an interdependent world, and to provoke you to take on the small, daily, revolutionary tasks that will not only stop this genocide, but that will bring about a world where such a thing never happens.

To that end, I strongly encourage you to support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement, which helps people not purchase products from companies that are based in Israel or benefit from this genocide. You can learn more about them on their website:

https://bdsmovement.net/

Additionally, if you are in the US, I urge you to write to your representatives so that the US stops sending military aid to Israel. You can do so here:

https://www.blockthebombs.org/?source=email&

It takes courage to speak up for those who are marginalized, especially when there can be personal and professional consequences. The pieces in this edition continue to inspire me and give me courage to keep discussing this issue, and I hope you feel the same.

In Solidarity,

Andrew Faulstich

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What are we really afraid adolescents will do when left unsupervised?

The answers people give, ranging from mischief to far more absurd fears, reveal something deeper about how we view adolescents: That there is a fundamental mistrust that erodes our ability to truly see them for who they are.

Kelly and I dug into why we feel the need to surveil adolescents constantly, even in prepared Montessori environments where we claim to trust development.

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Here’s what we explored:

When we create environments of control and compliance, we get exactly what we’re afraid of: adolescents who will act outside of the tight boundaries we try to draw. But when we prepare environments rooted in trust and autonomy, adolescents rise to meet our highest expectations and demonstrate meaningful, positive, and engaged citizenship. The question isn’t what they’ll do, it’s what our need to watch them reveals about our own inner preparation and reflection.

We also talked about the impossibility of power struggles (spoiler: you (the adult) always lose) and what it actually means to be the prepared adult in relationship with adolescents.

This episode launches our new Montessori Adolescent Collaborative (MAC) Forum!

Bi-Weekly Dialogues for Practitioners and Leaders.

MAC Forum Purpose:

Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as adolescent practitioners, transform through dialogue and community.

Why join the MAC Forum?

• Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world.

• Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion.

• Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available.

Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST in March

Join Today and Find Your Community!

Join the MAC Forum!