Montessori Country School debuts expanded campus on Bainbridge

Bainbridge Island’s long-running Montessori school has expanded its iconic Arrow Point Drive campus, a more than year-long redesign which is now in use and slated to be unveiled to the public as part of an open house marking the educational institution’s 45th anniversary later this month.

The Montessori Country School, formerly split between two sites — the elementary school campus on High School Road and the previously preschool-only campus on Arrow Point Drive — is now reportedly the most comprehensive such facility on the West Sound.

“Certainly in the West Sound region, there’s one in Burien that also has toddlers,” Head of School Meghan Skotheim explained. “I think we’re the only parent/infant Montessori in the area.”

The parent/infant class is held once a week, during which time parents attend class with their infant. There are 145 students, including the parent/infant class, attending Montessori Country School, ranging in age from infant to 12 years old (sixth grade).

Including the four newly constructed buildings, the Arrow Point Drive campus now boasts five separate buildings, including classrooms and shared spaces, like an art room and a communal large group instruction space, often the stage for student plays and concerts.

Montessori Country School has been teaching Bainbridge youngsters since 1972. The Montessori instructional model is an alternate approach to early childhood education and places a focus on the child’s receptiveness during so-called “sensitive periods” in their development. It is believed that children are more predisposed to learning during these periods. This philosophy encourages children to take an active role in their learning and also fosters collaboration between students of different ages.

Skotheim said that the benefits of a single, unified campus were many — for students and teachers, both.

For the students, she said, the new facilities helped foster the student-to-student interactions essential to the Montessori model.

“The thing that we’ve been able to do most of is the interaction between all of the kids,” she said. “It’s a lot easier for our older children now to go … every Wednesday to the younger children’s classrooms.

“When our older kids put on plays or concerts … the younger children can come and watch,” Skotheim said. “Part of that intrinsic motivation that’s key to Montessori is seeing what older children are learning and being inspired by that as the thing that pushes you.”

For the staff, too, Skotheim said, more regular interaction and the chance to meet face-to-face is a boon in terms of planning and philosophical consistency.

“We can all have lunch together and they talk,” she said. “We believe really strongly in conflict resolution, so to [be able to] have a model that goes all the way through, that everyone is talking about on a regular basis: ‘Here’s how I do this’ or ’Here’s how I would solve that.’

“There’s a way that we talk about it, there’s a whole conversation that just carries all the way through. And being here together we can make it that much more consistent.”

The new and improved Montessori Country School is slated to celebrate its 45th anniversary with a public open house, unveiling the new facilities from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday, June 23.

“We’re just going to give tours; anybody that wants we’ll walk them through all the spaces and just celebrate the new campus and celebrate our anniversary all at the same time,” Skotheim said.

A lot has changed within the national conversation about education since the school was founded, and as it nears the half-century mark, the island institution has begun to see its second generation of Bainbridge pupils coming through the door.

“There are a lot of people on this island who went to this school,” Skotheim said. “We now have about five families who came here as children who have now moved back and are enrolling their kids, so that’s a fun thing to start to happen.”

Several of the minds behind the recent expansion are, in fact, alumni — or at least parents of grads — themselves.

“We were lucky … our architect and our engineer and our contractor and our landscape architect were all alumni parents,” Skotheim said. “It was a lot of fun to work with them and it also really felt like they had a lot of heart in it because they had those fond feelings so it was like working with old friends.”

The Montessori Country School is located at 10994 Arrow Point Drive NE. Visit www.montessoricountry school.org to learn more.