At Near North Montessori, learning is like breathing.

Here you will not find the traditional lineup of desks in rows, textbooks and mind-numbing rote memorization. What you will find are dynamic learning laboratories – a school alive with students exploring questions about the world around them. Classrooms are vibrant communities, each organized by age levels, where students spend three years learning and growing together. Little ones watch older students as they master new skills. Older ones take the time to mentor younger students as they work through new challenges.

Around every corner is another learning adventure, ready to be explored. Serving as a guide, the teacher carefully orchestrates this journey, with the trajectory of each individual student carefully fine-tuned prior to launch. Here, teachers question students, challenge and inspire them. They look for ways to spark creativity and imagination. They cultivate the three Rs: respect, responsibility and resilience. They help students navigate challenging academic work and celebrate those teachable moments where students stand on the precipice of trying something new.

In the classroom and as a community we take a purposeful, fearless look as ourselves, our difference and our connections. Here diversity can be race, ethnicity, religion, gender, economic status or learning differences. Our commitment to diversity promotes an environment of respect based on equity and inclusion in which students become allies for each other while developing awareness of social and global justice issues.

Near North Montessori is a powerful educational experience, drawing its energy and inspiration from the students, families and teachers who call this school home. Together, we work to create a warm, welcoming community where young hearts and minds take flight.

This is Montessoaring. What a way to learn. What a way to fly.

Land Acknowledgement

Near North Montessori is located on the traditional unceded homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations. Many other tribes such as the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Sac, and Fox also called this area home. Today, Chicago has the third-largest urban American Indian populations in the United States, with more than 65,000 Native Americans in the greater metropolitan area and some 175 different tribes represented.
 
Why this acknowledgement?
This statement is only a part of our continued commitment to indigenous rights, and social justice. We seek to build genuine relationships with Indigenous communities, leaders, and families. It is critical to understand the history of the lands we occupy, and our place within that history. We recognize that what we call the United States today is the product of settler colonialism and the intentional displacement, and sometimes eradication, of Indigenous peoples and cultures. This land acknowledgement is meant to bring awareness to our history, recognize the impact of colonization past and ongoing and to urge reflection, accountability, and to center and honor Indigenous peoples in future relationships with and on these lands.

Sources: https://nativegov.org