On a recent trip to Washington D.C., I visited the Women’s Equality Museum, a modest building that houses the bold stories of brave suffragists who fought for women’s right to vote.

What now seems like an obvious right of a huge group of people wasn’t obvious at all just over 100 years ago. Women were arrested and even force fed on hunger strikes for peacefully using their voices to demand the right to have real decision-making power in a free society.

Among the museum’s artifacts, a tattered cotton banner captured my attention most:

“THE YOUNG ARE AT THE GATES”, it declared. One week after the first picketers were arrested in front of The White House in 1917, this slogan appeared in the publication The Suffragist, along with this declaration:

“What is the potent spirit of youth? Is it not the spirit of revolt, of rebellion against senseless and useless and deadening things? Most of all, against injustice, which is of all stupid things the stupidest? …The old stiff minds must give way. The old selfish minds must go. Obstructive reactionaries must move on. The young are at the gates!”

The woman who wrote this slogan, Lavinia Dock, forcefully asserted her belief that the way to clear the decks of old, bad ideas was to support the youth in rebelling against these “senseless, useless, and deadening things.” In this case, disenfranchisement of women.

The suffrage movement, which eventually broke through centuries of systemic exclusion of half the population, brought women into the formal social power structures that shape their lives and society as a whole. Similarly, I have long wondered: What will it take for adolescents to be welcomed into the formal power structures that shape their lives and our futures?

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The revolution will not be televised, brother.

In February 2026, Laurie Ewert-Krocker gave a speech at the end of the AMI Montessori Experience Adolescent Refresher Course where she recognized that along the way of creating Montessori adolescent programs over the past 40 years, compromises were made, and that we must no longer compromise when it comes to the development of our adolescents.

What does this song from the 70’s about Black Liberation and Laurie’s speech from 2026 have in common?

They recognize a fundamental principle: Revolutionary change will not be celebrated, comfortable, easy, or popular. Compromises were made because to not make them would have made our programs come under negative scrutiny. It won’t make us look “five pounds thinner” to shed the tyranny of Common Core, for example; if anything, it will make people deeply uncomfortable. It will not be “televised” because it will necessarily disrupt the status quo that is barreling our society and world toward collapse.

Montessori envisioned a world of equitable interdependence, where systems of extraction and hierarchy, of destruction and war were dismantled. The moneyed and powerful interests across the globe, who would not benefit from this change, are fighting every day to stop this from happening- painting every step toward the needed revolution as horrendous. The tools they use to maintain the status quo are so common as to go unnoticed: Grade level standards, standardized examinations, grades, and the decades-long pursuit of credentials are a key part of this arsenal. These provide a sense of certainty, of stability, of “I went through it and I turned out fine.”

I think most of us can look out at the world, at our daily lives, and realize that things are not fine.

The revolution in global society that Montessori described is precisely what we need in this moment. It is what this edition of Provocations is inviting you to lean into.

When I began my work as an adolescent guide, I was lucky enough to be mentored by Pat Ludick, a Montessori adolescent pioneer and trainer. Among many lessons I learned from Pat, perhaps the most important was to embody humility. To be humble and honest with my students about when things didn’t go as I had planned, or when I hadn’t acted in a way that I wish I had.

One day, she sent me the following poem that has remained with me ever since:

Humility:

It is not the act of intentionally making ourselves small.

Humility is the task of becoming ‘right-sized’…

To be humble is to be as God made us.

It is to acknowledge all our talents and shortcomings, strengths, and weaknesses

and to turn them fully toward the good!

My ability to be humble with my adolescents is the key personality trait that has made me a successful adolescent guide, because out of my greatest failures emerged opportunities for me to work with adolescents to co-design something better. I don’t want to paint the picture that I am a master at humility; in fact, it’s still quite difficult for me. Yet it is something I remind myself of daily as I act and interact with the young people in my care.

It is in this spirit of humility that I have been asking myself, much like Laurie did in her speech: What compromises have I made in creating adolescent environments, and why did I make them?

I’ve spent much of my career debunking compromises: The five paragraph essay is one that I have railed against for years, not only because it’s a poor tool of writing pedagogy, but because it imports an authoritarian approach to language expression that was explicitly designed to make grading easier.

The more I’ve done this work, and the more honest I become with myself, it’s become clear to me that as practitioners broadly, we have made compromises that we must, lovingly, interrogate and change.

The choice to give grades or standardized tests because “that’s what they’ll have later.”

The choice to teach math via direct instruction because “that can’t relate to our practical work.”

The choice to give a rigid schedule to a 15 year old that would be considered insulting to a 5 year old (remember those 3 hour work cycles?).

The truth is that these choices were likely not made out of malice, or a desire to water down Montessori pedagogy (though I do know some people who have explicitly wanted to do that). The reality is that schools, leaders, and guides are under pressure in an uncertain world to provide certainty. To answer the ultimate question:

“Is my adolescent going to be OK?”

It’s a question that leads us in one of two directions.

The easiest direction is to lean on the metrics that guided our own education and provided certainty, or at least the illusion of it. To say that “your adolescent is in the 90% percentile” or “look at how many skills are checked off on this math list” or “they have all A’s!”

And while this may appease parents, it means that we water down what we offer when we let these aspects of conventional education into our Montessori environments.

We limit true student exploration.

We put Production and Exchange into one 45 minute block per week.

We garden, sometimes, when there isn’t homework due.

This is not to shame guides who have, knowingly or unknowingly, walked ourselves into these situations (been there, done that). This is an opportunity to reflect on the aspects of our program that have walked away from the vision laid out for us in the Appendices of From Childhood to Adolescence and recommit ourselves to that vision.

The reality is that our world needs Montessori now more than ever.

Here’s just a snapshot of the reality of the world we live in:

• By 2030, global freshwater demand will outstrip supply by 40%

• The richest 1% emit as much carbon as the poorest 60%

• The richest 1% own almost half of the world’s wealth

And the kicker: The architects of the collapse of our society and environment went to “great” schools: Yale. Harvard. Princeton. Penn. Stanford. Insert top college or private high school here.

What did that education do for them? It gave them knowledge and “certainty” without inner development or a moral compass. It empowered them to destroy our world.

In Appendix A of From Childhood to Adolescence, Montessori wrote “Schools as they are today, are adapted neither to the needs of adolescence nor to the times in which we live. 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 crisis is certainly connected with the immense progress that has been made in science and its practical applications, but it has not been caused by them. More than to anything else it is due to the fact that the development of humans has not kept pace with that of our external environment” (Montessori 2007, 56).

Jeff Bezos went to a Montessori school. That fact should disgust us as a community- not be lauded as a success of the method.

The truth is, if we continue down this path, there won’t be a world for our adolescents to inhabit. What good will their “preparation to get grades in the future” be if they don’t have any water to drink?

Doing things differently will be uncomfortable. It will not make you look five pounds thinner. It will make your administrators, families, and colleagues furrow their brow and wonder if you’re in your right state of mind.

You’ll get the same looks that Dr. Montessori got during her time.

She had the courage to resist fascism and was exiled in India for seven years as a result of it. I think you can handle an upset parent.

Which brings me back to the design of our adolescent programs. In “Principles and Practices in Education,” Montessori wrote that “the idea that we are conferring ‘freedom’ upon the adolescent when we allow them to work… at mathematics instead of history at a certain hour of the day- this idea is in practice quite absurd… such ideas are an actual caricature of what is really of use to the child at an earlier age… At puberty another kind of intercourse arises, a new kind of social instinct: society is conceived of as work. New real work, work of absorbing interest, work that is worth the effort it costs us is … it requires the collaboration of others, and this cooperation implies association and discipline” (Montessori 2011, 59)

Montessori called on us to do more.

Our world demands that we do more.

How will you be a part of the revolution?

This piece is from our Provocations Magazine, V4: The Revolutionary Adolescent. This introduction is just the tip of the iceberg- check out the full magazine below!

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This edition of Provocations marks one full year of our publication, and I could not think of a better group of authors and provocative ideas to mark this milestone.

At Developing Education, we believe that education should ignite human potential, not extinguish it. It should prepare young people not merely to inherit the world as it is, but to imagine and rebuild it as it could be.

This issue isn’t about making minor adjustments to the edges of broken systems. Instead, our team and a phenomenal roster of authors dive into the fundamental questions:

• What does it mean to truly educate a human being?

• How can education serve as the catalyst for a radical social revolution?

• What happens when we refuse to compromise on adolescent autonomy?

• What surfaces when we ask hard questions about what we offer in our programs, and why?

We are moving past compliance and standardization. We are stepping into a paradigm that honors the active, revolutionary power of young people.

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We must stop tinkering at the edges. We need to stop “doing school.” Our world, and the future of our young people, depend on it.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing the articles here on Substack, with the first one launching this Sunday. If you want to read the whole edition, you can find it at the link below, which is a benefit for our paid subscribers.

I can’t wait to hear your thoughts on this edition- feel free to comment, share, and join in the conversation!

Thanks to our incredible authors: Tammy Oesting, Dominique Mouthon, Kathi Martuza, Taylor Henry, Dana Anderson, Jen Cort, Bob Blecher, Emma Rattigan, and Nour Alhelou!

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The Hypocrisy of “Peaceful” Schooling

Maria Montessori’s work was not born in a garden of serenity; it was born in the wreckage of war. Her classrooms were not retreats from reality but radical experiments in rebuilding it. Montessori believed education was humanity’s best weapon against ignorance, violence, and fascism. She developed her pedagogy amid bombings, political exile, and the collapse of moral order across Europe. She saw what happens when people stop thinking critically, stop questioning authority, and stop seeing humanity in one another. Her vision of peace was not decorative. It was defiant.

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What if the problem isn’t reality but our understanding of if? What if the “ideal environment” wasn’t a state of finality or achievement, but a never ending process that could begin immediately?

In this episode of Breaking the Paradigm, Taylor Henry joins the Two Timers Club for a session recorded live at Bovina Center Montessori School. Over the course of our conversation, Taylor and I trace a thread that starts with the fear adults carry into adolescent environments. Along the way, we wrestle with the tension between giving up control and still being expected to deliver outcomes (and how we might get away from that). We also examine what happens when adults, out of fear, conditioning, and a culture that has socialized imagination right out of us, preemptively control the young people we claim to be liberating.

And while this conversation broke new ground for Taylor and I, many of the threads that came up have been ruminating in our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum, the first global community of practice made up of practitioners and leaders who gather to discuss how we can all live up to our calling to serve adolescent development. If you’d like to join our next session, check us out here!

This is a conversation about patience, about the courage to let development unfold on its own timeline, and about living our ideal as a process, now.

Thanks, Taylor, 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

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The traditional education system had its chance.

Now it’s our turn.

Written in Spring 2024

Last week, I skipped class.

This may come as a surprise, as I am someone who is very invested in my own learning and find great joy in attending my Montessori adolescent diploma course, which is the class that I skipped.

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Yet that’s not always an easy task.

This is why I am so excited to have Dr. Paige Krabill facilitate our upcoming Montessori Adolescent Collaborative (MAC) Forum on “From Inclusion to Belonging: What's the Difference, and Why Does It Matter for Adolescents?” taking place tomorrow (Tuesday) 6/9 at 7:00pm EDT!

Join the MAC Forum

Whether you’ve been a long-time attendee of our MAC Forums, or this is your first one, you are welcome! These are not lectures, but rather conversations among practitioners who are committed to continuous improvement in our work.

You can also check out the podcast episode I did with Paige here!

We cannot wait to see you there!

About the MAC 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.

My guest, Suzanne Yatim, is a Palestinian-American actress, writer, filmmaker, and co-owner of Montessori Thrive. Her directorial debut, Breathe, filmed in Palestine, is currently in post-production. She’s also the bestselling author of Post Pardon Me, a dark comedy exploring motherhood and mental health. And when the genocide in Gaza began, she stopped everything she was doing and turned her full attention to getting people to understand what Palestinians have known their entire lives.

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Suzanne and I discussed the discomfort that solidarity requires and asks a question that we each must ask ourselves: how much are we really willing to change our daily life for collective liberation?

We also dig into why neutrality is a myth and why Montessori herself would never have stayed silent in this moment.

This episode is a continuation of our work with the third edition of Provocations Magazine, which centered Palestine and Montessori’s call for the liberation of all children. If that issue moved you, this conversation will too. Become a paid subscriber for full access to all issues of our paradigm breaking magazine!

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You can find Suzanne on Instagram (@TheActorvist) and learn more about Montessori Thrive at montessorithrive.com.

Thanks, Suzanne, 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.

In an era when teaching about global struggle, identity, and resistance demands more than textbook coverage, educators are challenged to move beyond surface narratives and toward layered, critical, intersectional inquiry. The familiar paradigms—presenting facts, dates, and maps—no longer suffice. We must cultivate classrooms where meaning is actively built, perspectives questioned, images interrogated, and students empowered to peel back the layers of complex realities.

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It’s the question that almost every educator I know is asking.

There’s a massive apparatus of intervention and support built around labels, diagnoses, and deficit-based thinking that was designed for conventional classrooms where compliance and uniformity are the goals. It’s referred to as the medical deficit model.

When that apparatus gets imported into Montessori environments, it doesn’t just fail to help our young people, it actively undermines the very things we know children need: autonomy, competence, and meaningful relationships.

In this conversation, Dr. Paige Krabill and I explore what it looks like to reject that apparatus and to build something in its place that’s rooted in the Montessori philosophy, building on the strengths and gifts inherent in every young person while providing them the support they need to cultivate independence and autonomy.

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Dr. Krabill is a clinical and school psychologist, an AMI-trained Montessori educator, and founder of PDK Educational Consulting. She spent the first chapter of her career working within the traditional intervention and support system, and kept hitting a wall.

It wasn’t until she walked into a Montessori classroom with her own child that she found the language she’d been searching for. That discovery eventually led her to develop the Power of Possibility framework and to begin building something new: the Montessori Institute of Northeast Ohio, a training center dedicated to reimagining what inclusion can look like when it’s rooted in Montessori philosophy rather than layered on top of it.

In this conversation, we dig into the cycle that so many schools get stuck in: how a behavioral manifestation leads to a label, which leads to separation, which leads to disconnection, which leads us to say Montessori “isn’t for this child.”

Paige names the myths that keep that cycle spinning and calls us back to something deceptively simple: presume competence, start with yourself, prepare the environment, and observe.

Montessori can (and should) be for every child, if we are willing to prepare environments to meet their needs.

What would it mean to stop educating diagnoses and start being in communication with the child in front of us? What becomes possible when we trade the language of deficits for the language of aid to life, and when we trust that the prepared environment can do what no checklist of strategies ever could?

This is a conversation about our spiritual preparation as adults; the kind that has to be practiced daily, that works against the grain of enormous systems, and that changes everything when we commit to it.

Thanks, Paige for a great conversation!

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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.

On a morning that seemed no different from any other, the sound of an explosion rose above every familiar noise of life in Gaza. Children were running, women were screaming, and men were trying to hold on to whatever remained of their ordinary day. Here, in the heart of a city that refuses to surrender, the stories of the Palestinian people begin, stories rarely told, stories that almost fade before reaching the light, yet still refuse to die. There were children who had never slept without fear, and mothers who dared to feel at ease only for a brief moment when the door closed behind them, offering a few seconds of quiet. Among the rubble, a woman emerged who realised that her role was no longer simply to teach. Her mission had become to rebuild hope.

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That question led me back through my own journey: into my own childhood and adolescent experiences, some shocking revelations I had while working with 12-15 year olds, and into a hard look at what we might be unconsciously reproducing even in our most beautifully prepared environments.

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I wanted the room to wrestle with the reality that the dominant culture of modernity doesn’t just surround our schools, it lives inside each of us. And that meeting developmental needs, as essential as it is, may only be the starting point of our truly revolutionary work.

Ultimately, this talk is about what’s becomes possible when we recognize the path we’re actually on: when we understand that Montessori didn’t leave us a recipe to follow, but a method to experimenting with. It’s about the new human that each of us is capable of becoming, and the courage it takes to walk that path alongside our students rather than sending them ahead alone.

I’m grateful to the Alabama Montessori community for creating such a warm and generative space. After the talk, multiple participants wanted to share their Montessori origin stories with me. One school leader, who was a Montessori student at her mother’s school, said to me “I realize I am not just carrying on my mother’s legacy, but Maria’s too.”

This is at the core of what I think needs to shift in our Montessori collective conscious: that we are carrying on Maria’s legacy and must act as she did- not as replicators of her end result, but of scientists of human development and radical social change.

I hope you’ll give the talk a listen and share your thoughts. It was a labor of love to create, and so much was left on the cutting room floor. I hope it invites you to revisit your own origin story and consider how YOU are a part of this legacy too!

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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.

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!

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The traditional education system had its chance.

Now it’s our turn.

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