Stas Kowalski

Review of Waterfront Montessori LLC

I am an alumnus of Waterfront Montessori, and I wo...

I am an alumnus of Waterfront Montessori, and I would like to recommend this school to you by means of the graduation speech I gave at the annual gala in 2017. It is, slightly edited, as follows:

Hello. I m [an alumnus of Waterfront] and I d like to use my allotted ninety seconds to tell you what a great school Waterfront Montessori is and how grateful I am to have been a student here.
I d like to thank [the principal] for founding WFM, and the whole administration for their continued dedication to all the school s programs and students; for giving individual attention to all students - knowing every kid by name, knowing their needs and thinking creatively how to enable students to follow their passions and develop them further, and for clearly not resting on your laurels, but treating the school as work in progress - with a lot of work and a lot of progress.

After my Montessori preschool, I went to a traditional school apparently knowing a lot more math than a typical first grader. I would already know the material we were being taught, so I would quickly complete all the problems and try to continue to the next section or page once I was done. This would be met with instructions such as [...] don t go ahead of the class. So instead of continuing on to other problems once I was done, I would entertain myself in other ways - such as finding crayons on the floor, shaping them into spheres, and exchanging them for other students mechanical crayon parts, which was also penalized. I wasn t even allowed to explain things to other students - again met with comments such as we are not allowed to help others because the teacher needs to know where everyone s at. I still find that ridiculous to this day. At Waterfront, all that changed. If I knew the material, the teachers moved me to a higher level. If I somehow managed to complete all my work for the week, I would be able to work on a personal project. (In my case, this would be a presentation about the chemical elements, which Waterfront helped me find an appreciation for, alongside the broader sciences). And I was definitely allowed to help, and learn from, other students. At my previous school, when asked what my favorite subject was, I apparently could not decide between lunch and recess. If you asked me now, I would not be able to decide between Math and Science.
[bit about my specific teachers which Google thinks is too long]
"I d like to thank all my teachers for teaching well and making me want to learn; for being passionate about their subjects; for being kind and funny; for being creative, flexible, and looking for ways to get to each and every kid.
"Finally, I d like to thank my classmates I hope that my next school will live up to the expectations of what a great school s students are that I formed here: all the students are bright, but, more importantly, they like learning. This means they will often continue learning outside of the classroom and will share their knowledge with their school friends. I know how valuable this is because here during lunch we talk about science concepts we learned, a cool birthday gift is a book, we typically make jokes involving current events or science, and the latest gossip is, Did you hear about the MESSENGER space probe?
"I will really miss Waterfront, because it s a truly great school, and I m grateful for all the things I learned here and all the great times I had. For those of you who are lucky enough to still have a few years left at Waterfront, enjoy them, for they can be a couple of wonderful years. Thank you.