27th November 2020

Do you share the dream of establishing an online Montessori school in your community?

If yes then you are boarding on a great adventure!

Starting an online Montessori school or classroom will need careful planning. This is quite comprehensible that the COVID-19 pandemic has forced a number of people to look at how they can take their teaching skills online with the training from the Montessori teacher training course. COVID-19 put most people into a state of emergency. Well, the Montessori education program was established by Dr Maria Montessori in 1907. The Montessori school program basically comprises self-paced learning, some certain hours of nonstop work periods and the method also encourages mixed age group learning among other things.

So, have you decided to start a Montessori school or program online?

If it’s a YES… then this guide will help you to understand well your dream of opening an online Montessori program/school.

Well, before anything, we would like to let you know that if you consider that you have an effective skill for teaching then there’s a great chance you can do well. Also, we all can understand the fact that an online school is one of the inexpensive businesses which you can twitch with an amazingly high earning potential.

NOW Is The Apt Time To Start An Online School

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted pretty much the educational industry you can think of! All over the world, most of the countries have experienced the major lockdown and teaching-learning practice has been moved to online mostly.  The pandemic has pushed more students to look online for learning and the supply of online schools is still pretty low-slung.

This means the demand for online learning is high right now!

Well, the old methods cannot be used to educate this generation and teachers need to discover innovative conducts of using technology.

You Perhaps Thinking What is a Digital Classroom?

A digital classroom makes use of the technology to provide the advanced learning experience to the apprentices. A digital classroom is where a corporal classroom encompasses a digital space. These digital classrooms rely on different kinds of educational apps besides websites to improve student learning. Feedback loops also with technology are also significant parts of a digital classroom.

Advantages of Using a Digital Classroom

Now 99% of institutions are implementing this digital technology as a solution while face-to-face teaching is put off — so what are the profits of digital learning?

1. Your classes will be recorded, if your learners miss something, or they realise later that they don’t understand a specific topic, they can go back and watch the class again to get the answers.

2. Your students will be able to access your learning materials online any time from the comfort of their own home!

3. As a connected community, in digital classrooms, tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams can connect you with your learners to find the answers right away.

4. Self-directed study that can be very empowering!

5. Digital classrooms could help to improve the written language skills that are clearly understood.

6. Your students will become tech-savvy.

7. Digital classrooms help teachers to track the progress of their learners too by identifying the strengths and weaknesses.

8. Digital classrooms are customizable and suited to personal needs.

9. Digital classrooms provide students as well as a teacher worldwide exposure.

10. Digital classrooms can be accessed to everyone equally from anywhere and at any time.

Confused about the first step of opening an online Montessori school or classroom?

Look no further…

Get Authorizations

Well, the first thing that you need to do is get authorizations as well as permits to legitimately operate. This will be different according to the state plus local metropolis, so check the department of education website locally to get in progress. Moreover, background checks should also be done on all of your potential online Montessori teacher-hiring processes. Try to confirm teaching credentials as well as another personal history, we would suggest you to acquire certified Montessori teachers.

Mission and Vision Statements

Most of the time, people have a tendency to trust more on well-known brands than an individual player when it comes to the educational aspects. We also do that, don’t we? Therefore, it is necessary to try really hard to make your audience trust you and it will take a very long time! Here comes the need of your mission statement that explains why your school does what it does! Your vision statement should be aspiring and your values will set the culture of your school community. These will lay a foundation for all of your target audience.

Recruitment

Well, to run your online school accordingly, you need to think about the basic staffing considerations. Remember hiring teachers with 21st-century Montessori teaching credentials for the next-age level will be the central force to the quality your school will provide.

If we are talking about the recruitment, then we also need to think about catering your target audience – children! You need to market your online school in different kinds of potential social media platforms along with all the other possible resources. These can be local newspapers, radio, the internet, phone directories, doctors’ offices, and community bulletin boards, etc. Advertise yourself well!

Outreach Effectively

You need to think about how to find potential clients, how to contact them and lastly how to convert those potential clients into paying ones. The services should be applicable for a long time that need nominal updating.

Don’t Just Deliver the Online Program

Next, in order to start an effective online Montessori school, you need to think of offering more than just the access to a one-off online program with frequently developing a library of course content. The course content should be easy-to-managing chunks with initial low pricing! The course curriculum is very essential as this will lay the foundation of the kid and nowadays the parents are also quite demanding.

Organizing The Digital Classroom

“Digital classroom” is the buzzword in the education sector at the present time. Well, have you ever had many tabs open at once and you can’t even tell which tab is which? Yeah, it happens (cough)! Trust us, an online classroom also needs the same cultivation just like a traditional one!
 

Set up your online digital Montessori classroom with these following suggestions:
 

• Choose a platform to help you take your school online. Offer an inclusive array of payment options.
   
• In delivering the lessons via online, instead of posting different assignment details in the Google Classroom stream, you can create an ongoing calendar for students. The calendar can be connected to the learning management system.
   
• Also decide on your ideal way of communication, do you want your learners (also parents) to email you? A clear subject line helps you to rank when skimming your inboxes. You can also keep a running doc where students can ask questions, and you can respond to them. Also add headings and activate the outline feature on Google Docs.
   
• Create a short Google Form and fill it out every time you touch base with a parent or guardian if your inbox is full of parent-teacher communication!
   
• Video lessons are a way for online classrooms and you can incorporate lessons on alphabets, fluency, and ideas, etc.
   
• You can also try these free and open-source classroom management software –

1. Veyon
2. Edmodo
3. Eliademy
4. TeacherEase
5. Insight
6. LanSchool
7. NetSupport School
8. Netop Vision
9. OpenSIS
10. Blackboard Classroom

Education today is much more collective and interactive than before.
 

• Plan your lessons well before you launch. You can include elements like PDFs, audio tracks, printable worksheets and so on to add more depth.
   
• Upload a variety of supporting study materials and host your core curriculum video content.
   
• Lastly, market your online school to potential students.

Well, the combination of COVID-19 along with the continuous growth of self-paced online education has shaped the perfect opportunity to start an online school. Create a strategy to promote your school to your audience and understand the nature of Montessori education with the help of a Montessori teacher training course. In the current situation, we are extremely using technology in each province, education should not be left behind. A good combination of technology with education can do lots of positive things –

1. Make the learning practice more and more interesting for the students
2. Reassure students to learn at their own pace without any interruptions
3. Help teachers to collaborate with the students promptly
4. Allow students to advance their research skills at a very young age
5. Deliver access to a surfeit of learning resources to the teachers and students both
6. Parents can take part in the learning practice

AND MANY MORE…

Gone are the days when learners used to sit silently on their desks and listen to what the teachers are saying.

Written By: Rimpa Ghosh