The Berkeley School

About The Berkeley School

Formerly Berkeley Montessori School

Philosophy
\"If you're not Berkeley Montessori School anymore, what are you?\"

We've heard that question more than once since we changed our name last year. After all, alternative pedagogies like Montessori or Waldorf give a clear sense of identity, mostly in reaction to mainstream practice. But all of those pedagogies make assumptions about teaching and learning that don't always stand up to research which is now readily available, but couldn't have been known in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

At TBS, our focus is to educate children for their future, which many leaders across fields believe will continue to require competencies in all the literacies (math, written & oral communication, technology, media), with a focus on the development of critical inquiry, imagination, creativity, and collaboration. We have intentionally put this kind of high-level learning and understanding at the center of our pedagogy. Millions of students come out of school without having really developed a thirst for ongoing learning or embedded productive habits of minds and heart; worse, they have been turned off to school and learning. Most schools cannot explicitly articulate what they think learning looks like, and have not connected the motivation, relevance, student interests, and social networking that students crave. Learning what? How do we decide what is worth learning? How do we know when students (or teachers, for that matter) are learning? What are the underlying processes and skills that are most likely to lead to learning?

These are the questions we always, and explicitly, seek to answer, in order to determine the most effective teaching practices, and how to train teachers to utilize them. The programs TBS chooses to adopt, growing out of solid research about children's understanding and how to meet the needs of a range of learners, are programs that have been proven to work. This is the best way we know to create lifelong, internally motivated, inquisitive learners, interested in the world and the people around them, as well as themselves. This is the best way we know to fulfill our mission: to ignite curious minds, awaken generous hearts, and engage a changing world.