IMS teacher education aims to help students learn how to effectively apply the unique type of scientific education that led Dr. Maria Montessori to discover the child’s true nature in 1907. In her first Children’s House, this discovery arose from the prior research and experience conducted by Dr.’s Itard and Seguin in their observation of mentally deficient children given freedom to use various self-teaching learning devices.
Using this scientific education, along with the self-teaching Seguin materials, Dr. Montessori’s research was conducted with preschool aged children, which brought about a revolutionary change in their behavior. From a state of ordinary inattention, disorder, and misbehavior, each child came to concentrate on some specific piece of work, which somehow shifted their whole state of being to one of order, spontaneously self-discipline, precocious intelligence, peace and harmony that she later concluded must be their true “normal” nature. She described this transformation of being as “normalization”, and the new emerging children as “normalized”.
From 1907 until her death in 1952, Dr. Montessori offered training in this approach, which soon became known as simply the “Montessori Method”. However, this Method represented only the broad outline of scientific education, so that it’s application was only partially successful in achieving her original results of the child’s true natural being.
The key “secret” to scientific education did not arise until 1979, when Lee Havis, experimenting with the Montessori Method, discovered a specific “individual child” framework for scientific education. In this framework, the individual child is the “hub” child, surrounded by an environment consisting of “other children”, “physical objects”, and the “adult personality”. Within this framework, the function of scientific teaching is to remove the disorder of these three elements, until only the influence of laws of nature remains. It is is this new “scientific environment”, committed to laws of nature, that allows the child’s true nature to fully emerge of itself. Based on this amazing breakthrough, Lee founded the International Montessori Society to offer this insight and knowledge through training, through such means as distance learning and workshops he conducted around the world.
IMS teacher education is distinctive in the field because it represents a scientific way of being committed to laws of nature with children, rather than conventional Montessori teacher education, committed to personality or culture. Only by following laws of nature, using the unique “individual child” framework, can scientific teaching be conducted in a truly scientific, objective manner to bring about the results of the child’s true nature.
Since 1979, the IMS teacher education program has gradually been improved and updated as related to specifics of practical guidance. For example, through this process of continuing research and dialogue with teachers, a comprehensive body of practical knowledge arose which is now referred to as the technology of scientific education. And this technology has been fully integrated into all IMS teacher education.
IMS Technology
The IMS technology is breakthrough practical guidance for following laws of nature, serving as the functional equivalent for this type of pure scientific teaching. So, knowing and using the technology allows you to create the unique conditions for the child’s true nature to emerge in a scientific manner that was never possible before. In 2006, this technology was made available through IMS for home self-study in a Danbury audio cd and study guide, which provides an excellent introduction to this technology.
Distance Learning
IMS teacher education is provided in its most comprehensive, fundamental format through two distance learning courses, one at the primary (2-6) level, and one at the elementary (6-12) level. In these courses, the student gains skill and understanding in the use of the IMS technology through a sequence of 22 lessons that are set forth in a 200+ page study guide. Each lesson is related and coordinated with specific text reading and various assignments that highlight its specific content.
The student submits each lesson, one at a time, in sequence, to an IMS course evaluator who carefully reviews and comments on each one. In both courses, the IMS technology, consisting of ten techniques, twenty protocols, safe words, and 3 lesson presentations, is described and demonstrated in its use as applied to various practical situations with children. IMS distance learning provides the student with inner preparation and practical knowledge that enables the student to conduct scientific education in an objective, reliable manner, that before with the Montessori Method was limited to essentially guesswork, insight, and intuition.
Payments to IMS for course registrations, fees, and tuition can be made here. Specify the fees and tuition amount to pay with credit card. .