Children of the Soil

 

MONTESSORI TEACHES HARMONIOUS BALANCE

Lake Country School (LCS) is an independent, urban-based Montessori school located in south Minneapolis that also provides its students with a rich, rural experience as part of its core program. Founded in 1976, the school serves approximately 300 children between the ages of three and 15 years. LCS was the first Montessori school in Minnesota to offer a program for 9 to 12 year olds, and later, the first to include a Montessori junior high program. In its 20th year, the school realized another goal by acquiring a 160-acre farm in Dunn County, Wisconsin that would become the Lake Country Land School.

“The Lake Country Land School seeks to realize Maria Montessori's vision of adolescents as ‘erdkinder’ or children of the soil,” explains Principal Paulette Zoë. “It provides the ideal setting to teach our students that we are all stewards of the land.”

An active Community Farm is now at the heart of the school's Junior High curriculum. It also serves as a resource for elementary students and a base for summer programs. The Land School embraces the following principles:

 

• We are stewards of the land.
• We are organic farmers.
• We seek a sustainable, harmonious balance between the domesticated areas of
the Land School and the wild areas.
• We use appropriate, low-impact technology.
• We value simplicity, order, and beauty in all areas of the Land School.
• We restore and recycle before we build anew.
• We recognize and articulate the inherent sacredness of the earth and protect the
child's opportunity to experience the holy.
• We seek to realize meaningful relationships between city and rural life.
• We value the work of the hand and create experiences on the land that help the
children discover the rewards and discipline of manual labor.

A well-understood tenet of the Montessori approach is the emphasis on self-reliance. This cultural quality positions the school perfectly to take best advantage of inRESONANCE solutions, which are powerful productivity tools with an easy-to-use interface, so the client can take control.

Assistant to the Principal Brooks Cavin explains the school’s transition to SANDBOX and GENERATIONS this way: “After considerable research, we chose a database we could use easily, instead of being at its mercy. This is the fourth database we’ve had. Two of the previous ones were built for us using FileMaker. We kept adding on, and they became unwieldy very quickly. SANDBOX is well conceived; we’re trying to stick to the conventions of SANDBOX and use the training we received at iRUniversity.”

“We have needed to customize SANDBOX to reflect the Montessori qualities of our school. The original version seemed designed for the needs of parochial schools, and we removed fields that seemed specifically intended for those institutions, so we could add others. For the most part, we have done a good job of training each other with occasional email support from iR.”

The LCS iRU students gained more than an understanding of their solutions during the three-day workshop. Brooks continues, “At iRU, we learned that what might appear to be an issue with the database might actually be more closely related to our own work flow. Since iRU, we have had many conversations about our systems: Why do we do things a certain way? What impact would a change have? These conversations have been useful.”

The Montessori philosophy of global cooperation is a good match for the philosophy underlying the inRESONANCE business model. LCS has offered to share their iR experience with other Montessori schools. “Many schools are in need of a simple solution they can implement with ease,” Brooks explained.

All in all, he says, “We are very happy with SANDBOX and GENERATIONS. We find ourselves wondering, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we could do this or that?' Then pretty soon we’re doing it. We’re getting better at FileMaker all the time.”

 

Click here to learn more about Lake Country School.