History of Montessori at Barry

How the Program Began

Barry University is located in the Village of Miami Shores in Miami-Dade County, Florida. It is an international, co-educational, Catholic university founded and sponsored by the Sisters of the Adrian Dominican order in 1940. It has built a reputation as an institution where education students graduating from Barry are well prepared to teach.

When Dade County Public Schools decided to adopt the Montessori Method as one of its Magnet Programs to effect desegregation, it realized that it would need Montessori trained teachers who are also state certified. Most Montessori trained teachers available are not state certified -- the logical step to take was to educate state-certified teachers in the philosophy of Montessori Education.

Barry University was approached by Dade County Public Schools Magnet Program to offer a graduate program where teachers would earn a master's degree in connection with receiving Montessori education.

The idea was well received by Barry University. The Adrian Dominican Sisters have already developed and administered two Montessori schools, one in Adrian, Michigan and another in West Palm Beach, Florida . A nationwide search for a program director was conducted. Dr. Ijya C. Tulloss from Chicago, Illinois became the first program director.

Doors opened for the first group of students for Montessori Elementary I-II program in 1992. MACTE accreditation was obtained in 1993. Sister Leonor Esnard, a Montessori educated teacher with twenty years of experience and a religious from the Adrian Dominican order, joined the faculty in 1993. A third full-time faculty, Maria Singer, joined us in 1994.

A year later, through Sister Leonor's initiative, the Early Childhood program was established and was accredited by MACTE in 1995.

Serving Montessori Schools in the Area

In keeping with the Dominican tradition of preaching away from home, the Montessori program has answered calls to teach off campus at school locations. We offered the Early Childhood and Elementary programs for three years at Virginia Shuman Young Elementary School in Fort Lauderdale (18 miles from Barry University) and Rosarian Academy and Northboro Elementary School in West Palm Beach (70 miles from Barry). From time to time, the two institutions send a few students to join the main campus students. Delray Beach Elementary School, a full Montessori school, has sent a cohort of students to the main campus as well.

In addition, we were invited to offer the program in Fort Myers (138 miles from Barry) and St. Petersburg (220 miles from Barry). In 2004, the program reached out to a new cohort in Jacksonville, Florida .

PreK-3 Undergraduate Program

Responding to the state mandate in 1995 to provide a program that will better equip teachers to teach children from three years of age to third grade (PreK-3), the School of Education faculty collectively prepared a portfolio to offer the PreK-3 program as an undergraduate program. The program, which was essentially the Montessori Early Childhood program with additional courses to meet state requirements, was approved by the Florida Department of Education a year later. Graduates of the program will earn a Barry University bachelor's degree, a State of Florida PreK-3 teaching certificate, and an AMS Early Childhood teaching certificate.

Alternative State Certification

A state teaching certificate is required to teach in a public school which pays teachers more than what most private schools pay. Private schools do not require state certification. Public school teachers sent by school districts to our program were already state certified. However, students who had bachelor's degree in other areas and were not state certified could not obtain certification through our graduate programs. Due to shortage of trained Montessori teachers, some of our graduates were hired by school districts to teach in Montessori classrooms with the provision that they take necessary courses and pass required exams to qualify for state certification within two years.

Ironically, the challenge we had in not being able to obtain state certification for our graduate programs is virtually a thing of the past. With severe teacher shortage, the alternative certification program was established by the state in the year 2000. In this program, state certification may be obtained if one fulfills the following three requirements:

• One must hold a bachelor's degree on any field.
• One must be hired as a teacher in a private or public school.
• One must pass the Florida Teacher Certification Exam (FTCE) of the level one wishes to teach.

Alumni

The Montessori Program is proud to recognize some its alumni. Two of our alumni, Lucy Golden and Juliet King, started a Montessori Charter school, Coral Reef Montessori Academy , in south Miami in 1995. Expanding year by year, one level at a time, the charter school now serves 173 children from Pre-K to sixth grade. Another alumnus, Georgina Lopez started a private School, Casa Dei Bambini in Miami Beach . It now serves 60 children from PreK to sixth grade. Georgina passed away August, 2002 but her school is still running smoothly. Fatima Payan, an alumnus, established her school for twelve 3-6 year olds. Jeanne Hudlett and Judy Dempsey already owned their respective schools in Boca Raton and Davie when they came to our program to enroll in the Elementary program.

The main campus serves teachers from the above schools as well as the four Magnet Schools of Miami-Dade County and the many private Montessori schools in the three counties of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach . Students from the Leadership program at Barry take Montessori courses as their elective. Others come to take courses for recertification credits.

Future of the Montessori Program

Several trends point to a bright future for the Montessori Program:

• The increasing number of Montessori Charter schools and magnet schools organized will need more Montessori certified teachers.
• The Universal Pre-K approved by voters at a referendum to be implemented in 2005 highlights the importance of quality early childhood education. Montessori programs have been successful in offering high standard early childhood education for almost 100 years. The need for early childhood teachers to meet this new state mandate will be an opportunity for the Montessori Program at Barry University to prepare teachers for this role.
• The increasing emphasis for our nation to educate children so they can read, compute and understand science is an opportunity for the Program to increase public awareness that the personalized, hands-on, multi-sensory strategies used in Montessori schools have been effective in achieving those goals. The increased demand for Montessori schools will need a greater supply of certified Montessori teachers.