International Faculty: Talking India With Kalpu Shah By Al Daniel Through Kalpu Shah, the historic ties between India and the Montessori method keep going strong. The Montessori Community School’s current Upper Elementary Program Director admits that “teaching was never a plan for my future” when she grew up in Mumbai. She has long since come...
Relationship Building Looms Large With Musical Actor Ryan Widd ’11 By Al Daniel Correlation or not, separation from Montessori Community School nearly derailed Ryan Widd’s ’11 theatre career. That was until an MCS connection put his spirits back on track. Now fresh out of the University of Tampa, and uprooted to Broadway’s neighborhood, Widd has...
Amy Hicks ’11 Getting Handier With Cameras, Travel Docs By Al Daniel For several close-ups in her latest and, to date, longest film, Amy Hicks ’11 makes Sean Ruttkay and Ian Balding her hand models. Riding Wrightsville, Hicks’s senior capstone project at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, captures a day around the surfing scene at...
International Faculty: Talking Colombia With Ingrid Caudle By Al Daniel This Saturday, July 20, marks Independence Day for Ingrid Caudle’s homeland. Much like the United States from Great Britain on July 4, 1776, Colombia declared itself a separate nation from Spain in 1810. Besides their July birthdays, the U.S. and Colombia have a penchant for...
Ned Dibner’s Conception Builds Brighter, Higher-Tech Futures By Al Daniel Sometimes the Montessori Community School’s greatest effects come to fruition on other campuses. Ned Dibner was merely 13, and one year removed from graduating the Upper Elementary program, when he witnessed what is commonly called “the digital divide” as it relates to American education. During...
Impulse to Improve Drives Educator Ben Harris ’03 By Al Daniel At Camp Riverlea, Ben Harris ’03 epitomizes the give-and-take dynamic. For roughly three quarters of his existence, he has been there in one capacity or another. Based in the Durham County community of Bahama, the camp caters to children between the ages of five...
Elizabeth Burch-Hudson: MCS ‘The Kind of School You Bring Home to Your Parents’ By Al Daniel Through its tagline, Elizabeth Burch-Hudson’s award-winning short film, A Service to My Gender, poses a basic but deep question. “Can you trust someone you’ve only just met?” Though implicitly rhetorical and cautionary in the context of the story, the...
International Faculty: Talking Canada with Sabine Howe and Melanie Leyden By Al Daniel The first week of July packs a double dose of North American national festivals. Besides our own country’s Fourth of July, the first of the month marks the anniversary of Canada establishing its modern identity. Besides their near-simultaneous celebrations of forming their...
MCS Families – Jen Tobolski By Al Daniel If any schools are going to have faculty members looking up to their peers the way newer and younger students are expected to shadow theirs, a Montessori setting is bound to be one of them. In the early phases of her now 13-year tenure as a Lower...
Mindfulness in Nature By Melanie Leyden Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds blow their freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off you like falling leaves. —John Muir, Nature Writings Nature can awaken us. The...
