Update: AMI Bold Goal Initiative

AMI’s Bold Goal Initiative, Update

Dear AMI Community,

As you all prepare for the intensity of the final weeks and days of the school year, we are pleased to report that the work groups for AMI’s Bold Goal Initiative have been busy. Following is a summary of the Bold Goal activities that are underway by the three work groups as well as by Kate Hastings, our project manager.

Before I turn to that summary, however, I would like to thank everyone who has responded to the framing questions that we posed in our last communique and at the AGM in Amsterdam.   Your responses have been thoughtful, insightful and informative. We appreciate your taking the time to reflect on:

  1. How did you discover AMI?
  2. Why did you choose AMI training over traditional education or another Montessori training?
  3. How can we strengthen the AMI community?
  4. How can we triple our impact by 2020?

I’d like to share a brief summary of some of your responses:

To question one, the most frequent responses were through a personal connection, through an employer or through research in finding a school for a child. AMI was chosen because of its authenticity, quality, and international scope. Many who responded had not intended to go into teaching but the discovery of Montessori changed their minds.

Suggestions for strengthening the AMI community and tripling our impact include: more support for teachers after training, networking among all of the AMI constituents – teachers, parents and schools, and better and more widespread communication and publishing, and of course more training centers, more trainers!

We will continue to gather the responses to these framing questions, so please continue to distribute the questions and send the responses to me at Jacquie.maughan@gmail.com.

And now to the progress of the work groups for our Bold Goal Initiative.

Surveys have been distributed to training center alumni and current students and training center executive directors/administrators. The results from these surveys will provide data on demographics and trends in AMI training centers and details on AMI trainees and teachers regarding their career choices, employment history and career support. To date, over 300 responses have been received.

AMI has compiled a detailed list of current training formats that are approved or being tested globally.

A survey of administrators and teachers was distributed by the Montessori Leaders Collaborative through the US training and professional organizations and the results have been made available to the Bold Goal Steering Committee.

Attached is a summary of several surveys that have been conducted across the Montessori movement over the past several months. The reports and data from these surveys will be added to the data that the Bold Goal work groups are compiling in order to gather as much information as possible to inform our next steps.

In addition, the Scientific Pedagogy Group commenced preliminary discussions, in April, on the subject of online learning in order to develop a better understanding of the topic and the potential opportunities and challenges that it presents.  This was simply an opening discussion with no specific outcome named other than an orientation and an exploration of best practice in order to assess its relevance for AMI.

We are also continuing to compile the answers to the reflective framing questions described above.  Over 90 people have responded, providing us with a wealth of ideas and personal stories.

Also ongoing and under the direction of Kate Hastings is the collection of data on business management and potential capacity within and across training centers, market research on potential trainees and on parent demand for Montessori education.

Kate, the Work Group Managers, and the Steering Committee continue to work on the above efforts to determine means to collect missing pieces of data that will inform the Bold Goal process.

Kate reminds us that we are still in the Discovery Phase, collecting data on how AMI runs today. We are not ready to make recommendations on how to triple AMI’s presence in the US. We are exploring questions, working together to analyze data, and considering the information that will help us to see the best approaches to achieving our Bold Goal. As we begin to explore strategy options we know that many ideas will come up and the AMI community will work together to determine how decisions will be made and implemented.

The Work Group Managers and the Steering Committee will convene in early November for a close look at the results of this current work. We will meet again with the full leadership group at the AMI-USA refresher course in Austin.

In the meantime, we will send out another update in August and again after the meeting with the Work Group leaders and the Steering Committee in November.

If you have any questions, ideas or suggestions, please contact us. Thank you for your continued support of AMI’s Bold Goal initiative.

Best regards,

Jacquie Maughan

Communications Coordinator

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Surveys Distributed to the Montessori Community – Summary, June 1, 2016

Over the past several months, a number of organizations have been gathering data to determine current needs and trends within the Montessori movement in the United States.   Following is a brief summary of some of the surveys:

In 2014-15, the National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector conducted the National Census project in an effort to get a count of public and private Montessori Schools across the nation – map and data are available on the NCMPS website

February 2016, NCMPS conducted of current trainees – AMS, AMI, IMC, Independent and other for the project, Teach Montessori. The survey was conducted over two weeks and received 311 responses. Data was used to inform the Teach Montessori website and outreach.

February 2016, Montessori Leaders Collaborative conducted a survey to determine landscape of Montessori professional development opportunities. Ten National Montessori organizations participated. Report on that survey has been given to Bold Goal project team.

In March 2016, MLC conducted a survey through the professional organizations. training organizations, NCMPS mailing lists and other contacts to gather data to inform professional development needs and trends in Montessori schools. Data from teachers and administrators were compiled separately. Those reports have been made available to the Bold Goal SC and project manager.

In May, WG1, AMI Bold Goal distributed a survey through AMI-USA to US training centers, administrators, current trainees and alumni of training centers. Over 300 responses have been received providing data on demographics and trends in AMI training centers and details on AMI trainees and teachers regarding career choices, employment history and career support.

Still to come: WG3 is looking at what data is missing and will conduct a survey and/or interviews to get additional data on numbers of schools seeking to sponsor/hire AMI teachers, need for teachers at each level, etc.