Update: Building the Pink Tower

Building the Pink Tower
Coming Soon to the IMC in Prague

As the AMI community knows, schools throughout the country are bound by the common vision of offering a high-quality, Montessori-based education that is designed to allow children to achieve their full human potential. These schools are transformative environments for children, their families, and even their communities. The documentary film project Building the Pink Tower (working title) will shine a light on how Montessori schools demonstrate what is working in education right now.

Through the power of storytelling, our film will invite viewers to enter a range of Montessori classrooms designed for toddlers through high school seniors to experience and be inspired by ideal learning in action. Viewers will hear from experts leading education innovation across the country and learn how Montessori education is leading innovation in a broader context, addressing issues relating to poverty, racial justice, and social justice.

The school communities featured in the film include:

• – Lumin Education in Dallas, where starting early with home visits to families with infants and offering education through third grade has transformed a community and resulted in long-term school success.
• – Cornerstone Montessori and the Montessori Center of Minnesota in St. Paul, where a culturally grounded and community focused school works in partnership with a  Montessori training program. Both are catalysts for expansion of Montessori throughout the Twin Cities.
• – City Garden Montessori School in St. Louis, where a school community’s commitment to ending racism intersects with Montessori education through grace, courtesy,  and development of executive function skills.
• – Lake Country School (Minneapolis) and the Lake Country Land School (Glenwood City, Wisconsin) where students, including adolescents, are immersed in a  comprehensive Montessori program and experiences like working on a farm and 100-mile bike trip that foster development and independence.
• – Milwaukee Public Schools which is home to the largest district Montessori program in the country, with seven schools serving students from pre-school through high  school. The MPS district illustrates how Montessori education can become part of a district-wide strategy, including leading in making early childhood education more  widely available.

Co-Producers and Co-Directors Vina Kay and Jan Selby have shared a directors’ vision in a short video available here. See an example of a story at Lumin Education here.

Jan and Vina hope members of the AMI-USA community will join them in Prague for the opening night of the International Montessori Congress, where they will share a rough cut of the film for the first time. Look for more news about other ways to see the film in the coming months.