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The Place, Space, & Montessori Teaching Program

For Montessori Secondary Educators

The American Montessori Society is proud to offer The Place, Space, & Montessori teaching event. The Place, Space, & Montessori project invites students to identify, research, and design interactive walkable narratives for their own communities.

About the Program

Students will create The Digital Spatial Storylines (DSSLs). As authors of these map based stories, students will learn to communicate local history in ways that challenge taken-for-granted, dominant historical narratives.

Often, history is told from limited perspectives and excludes important lesser known stories, especially in local communities. This way of sharing and learning history leads to a narrow view of history as discipline and perpetuates incomplete stories about the past.

Who can participate?

Montessori schools with Secondary I or Secondary II classrooms are eligible to sign up. Due to limited availability, registration will be on a first come, first served basis.

How does the program work?

Participants will choose 5 class dates to hold the program in their school.

Pricing: $1,800 per school. School registration includes complimentary tickets for 2 teachers to The Montessori Event 2023 in Boston, MA.

Program Facilitators

Catherine McTamaney

Catherine McTamaney, EdD, is an associate professor of the practice and director of undergraduate studies for the department of teaching and learning at Vanderbilt University's Peabody College, in Nashville, TN. She is author of the blog, Montessori Daoshi, and of 2 books, The Tao of Montessori and A Delicate Task: Teaching and Learning on a Montessori Path. Catherine holds an Early Childhood AMS credential.

Andrew L. Hostetler

Andrew Hostetler is an associate professor of the practice of social studies education at Vanderbilt University. His teaching and scholarship is focused on social studies and community engagement for social change. Recently he has centered navigating difficult discourses and leveraging spatial thinking in telling stories of local history. He taught high school social studies in South Carolina and Ohio for 9 years and has been on faculty at Vanderbilt for 9 years. Contact him at a.hostetler@vanderbilt.edu.

Girl on Computer

Program Schedule

Day 1: Listening Session & “Day in the Life” Storytelling

  • Students will contextualize information about time period, themes, and location while familiarizing themselves with use of maps and media to author historical fiction.
  • Students will practice adding notes and a path to a base map to construct their stories.

Day 2: Archival Research to Develop a Storyline

  • Students will sort through archival materials to select items for their stories and begin to link items in a walkable sequence.
  • Students will annotate source media and begin to build an initial narrative, placing locations on digital maps.

Day 3: Storylining

  • Students will travel to the locations of their proposed story to experience walking their narrative and identify if the route is safe and accessible.
  • Students will gather more material and learn about civic engagement across generations and the importance of local history.

Day 4: Following a Storyline

  • Students will visit a story line that has been authored by another team to compare, contrast, and facilitate conversations about counternarratives.
  • Students will be able to refine and assess storylines and give feedback as well as to demonstrate sourcing practices, narrative construction, and historical argumentation throughout this process.

Day 5: Revisiting Storytelling and Preparing for the Walking Tours

  • Students will edit and practice their tours and revisit the tasks from the previous four days.

Final Day: Culminating Event

  • Students in the Boston area will be invited to The Montessori Event 2023 to lead walking tours on Friday, March 17, 2023.
  • Students outside of Boston will have their maps and narratives posted on a collected AMS map available to educators in the Montessori community as professional development resources.