Since 1981 the Angela Martin Montessori Training Centre has helped others to make a difference in the lives of children. The accredited Training Centre was a Post Secondary Institution offering Montessori programs at the Early Childhood Education and Elementary levels. The Training Centre provided high quality Montessori teacher education from dedicated enthusiastic Montessorians. Angela Martin Montessori Training Centre offered small class sizes, individualized attention and a long history of successful students.
At the present time the Angela Martin Montessori Training Centre is not offerring teacher training courses at the Early Childhood or Elementary Level.
Montessori Philosophy
The basis of the Montessori theory is an educational theory that shows concern for the development of the whole child. The physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual development of the child is intertwined. Development in one area influences and supports the other areas. It is not beneficial to focus on the development of one aspect in isolation. The focus is on developing the whole child into a well rounded human being who would become a contributing member to society. Montessori believed that the child was not a blank slate which the teacher fills with information. The child is the result of an unfolding spiritual embryo which, nurtured in the proper environment, develops to an optimal state. The child has potentials but needs the proper surrounding in order for the potentialities to develop to the fullest.
The child at ages 6 - 12 has a great capacity to learn consciously and deliberately and also to think and to memorize. This is the time to give the rudiments of the advanced disciplines of higher math, geometry, chemistry, physical and biological sciences, grammar and syntax, for at this time mental energies are clamouring for activity. By the time puberty is reached and adolescence is at hand, these energies will shift and centre on the activities of the endocrine glands to effect biological changes. Mental capacities will taper off and disciplines of the mind will temporarily be set aside. This is not the time for academic curricula.
The period from 6 - 12 years is the opportune time to feed the flame within the child and manifest his God-given potential. Activities involving relationships with the environment such as interacting with friends and the exploration of the ever widening surroundings are very stimulating. Classifications, sequences, and discovering the order in the natural laws provide these children with wonderful sources of experiential learning. They need to know the reason for things. In their years before six, they learned through sensorial exploration, now up to 12 years of age, they learn through imaginative intelligence. To confine the child to abstract or textbook learning is to block the way to self-discovery and the unfolding of "potentialities", thereby extinguishing the Flame, the genius within.