montessori integrative learning
Montessori Emphasis Areas
Follow the question that matters to you.
Your Emphasis. Your Inquiry.
Every student in the M.Ed. in Montessori Integrative Learning chooses an emphasis area: an opportunity to explore something that genuinely matters to you within the larger context of your studies.
Your emphasis might grow from your work, your community, a question you’ve carried for years, an interest that resonates deeply with your core, or something newly awakened through the program. Students have explored systems thinking, peace education, Cosmic Education, sustainable leadership, ecological literacy, parent education, spirituality, human development, and the relationship between education and the natural world. The possibilities are intentionally broad.
TIES also offers three newly developed emphasis areas for independent study: Deep Montessori, Teacher Formation, and Transformative Aging & Dementia Care. Each offers a focused pathway for exploring an area of inquiry while remaining fully integrated within the larger M.Ed. experience.
There is no predetermined list from which you must choose. You bring the interest; our faculty helps you shape the inquiry and find the resources to explore it deeply.
Students enrolled in a Montessori teacher education program or new graduates choose teacher preparation as their emphasis area.
Your Emphasis. Your Inquiry.
Every student in the M.Ed. in Montessori Integrative Learning chooses an emphasis area: an opportunity to explore something that genuinely matters to you within the larger context of your studies.
Your emphasis might grow from your work, your community, a question you’ve carried for years, an interest that resonates deeply with your core, or something newly awakened through the program. Students have explored systems thinking, peace education, Cosmic Education, sustainable leadership, ecological literacy, parent education, spirituality, human development, and the relationship between education and the natural world. The possibilities are intentionally broad.
TIES also offers three newly developed emphasis areas for independent study: Deep Montessori, Teacher Formation, and Transformative Aging & Dementia Care. Each offers a focused pathway for exploring an area of inquiry while remaining fully integrated within the larger M.Ed. experience.
There is no predetermined list from which you must choose. You bring the interest; our faculty helps you shape the inquiry and find the resources to explore it deeply.
Students enrolled in a Montessori teacher education program or new graduates choose teacher preparation as their emphasis area.
Deep Montessori
What lies underneath the method?
Deep Montessori reaches beneath familiar practices to explore the ideas, experiences, and thresholds that give them meaning. It invites us into what might be called the underneath of the underneath: the evolving essence of Montessori’s vision.
Through the initial thresholds of observation, the prepared environment, and peace through education, students enter into an exploration of Montessori’s insights from 1935 to 1952, including Cosmic Education, the New Human, Cosmic Love, Cosmic Consciousness, the Psychosphere, and Syntropy.
This is an invitation to encounter Montessori not simply as a method we practice, but as an evolving vision of the child, humanity, and our place within the cosmos.
Deep Montessori
What lies underneath the method?
Deep Montessori reaches beneath familiar practices to explore the ideas, experiences, and thresholds that give them meaning. It invites us into what might be called the underneath of the underneath: the evolving essence of Montessori’s vision.
Through the initial thresholds of observation, the prepared environment, and peace through education, students enter into an exploration of Montessori’s insights from 1935 to 1952, including Cosmic Education, the New Human, Cosmic Love, Cosmic Consciousness, the Psychosphere, and Syntropy.
This is an invitation to encounter Montessori not simply as a method we practice, but as an evolving vision of the child, humanity, and our place within the cosmos.
Teacher Formation
Who are we becoming as we prepare others?
Teaching others asks for more than mastery of method and materials. This emphasis explores the intellectual, relational, reflective, and inner qualities required of those entrusted with the formation of others.
Through observation, scholarship, dialogue, personal story, and reflective practice, participants explore their own continuing formation while developing ways to create learning environments that invite discovery rather than simply transmit knowledge.
At its heart is an exploration of our own continuing formation as we prepare others to participate in the unfolding of human potential.
Teacher Formation
Who are we becoming as we prepare others?
Teaching others asks for more than mastery of method and materials. This emphasis explores the intellectual, relational, reflective, and inner qualities required of those entrusted with the formation of others.
Through observation, scholarship, dialogue, personal story, and reflective practice, participants explore their own continuing formation while developing ways to create learning environments that invite discovery rather than simply transmit knowledge.
At its heart is an exploration of our own continuing formation as we prepare others to participate in the unfolding of human potential.
Transformative Aging & Dementia Care
What becomes possible when we see aging differently?
This emphasis explores aging as a continuing process of human development, possibility, and transformation.
Moving beyond approaches centered primarily on decline and loss, participants examine how relationship, prepared environments, observation, creativity, meaning, and respect for the whole person can support well-being throughout later life, including the experience of dementia.
Along the way, participants are invited to reconsider their own assumptions about aging, dependency, memory, and human potential while exploring new ways of understanding and accompanying older adults.
At its heart is a different way of seeing later life: not simply as something to manage, but as another profound stage in the unfolding of a human life.
Transformative Aging & Dementia Care
What becomes possible when we see aging differently?
This emphasis explores aging as a continuing process of human development, possibility, and transformation.
Moving beyond approaches centered primarily on decline and loss, participants examine how relationship, prepared environments, observation, creativity, meaning, and respect for the whole person can support well-being throughout later life, including the experience of dementia.
Along the way, participants are invited to reconsider their own assumptions about aging, dependency, memory, and human potential while exploring new ways of understanding and accompanying older adults.
At its heart is a different way of seeing later life: not simply as something to manage, but as another profound stage in the unfolding of a human life.
Montessori School Leadership
What does it mean to lead from within the values we seek to cultivate?
Montessori leadership asks something different of the adult. Beyond the practical responsibilities of leading a school or community lies a deeper challenge: creating coherence between how we lead and the values and vision inherent in the Montessori approach.
Designed for lead teachers, heads of school, principals, board members, and others interested in advancing Montessori ideas, this emphasis explores leadership as both an organizational and human undertaking. A Montessori teaching credential is not required.
Participants consider how Montessori principles can inform relationships, decision-making, community, and the environments we create for adults as well as children.
At its heart is an exploration of congruence: how might the way we lead become an expression of the education we believe in?
Montessori School Leadership
What does it mean to lead from within the values we seek to cultivate?
Montessori leadership asks something different of the adult. Beyond the practical responsibilities of leading a school or community lies a deeper challenge: creating coherence between how we lead and the values and vision inherent in the Montessori approach.
Designed for lead teachers, heads of school, principals, board members, and others interested in advancing Montessori ideas, this emphasis explores leadership as both an organizational and human undertaking. A Montessori teaching credential is not required.
Participants consider how Montessori principles can inform relationships, decision-making, community, and the environments we create for adults as well as children.
At its heart is an exploration of congruence: how might the way we lead become an expression of the education we believe in?
