Feature School

Montessori del Mundo (MdM)

Montessori del Mundo is a public bilingual Montessori Charter school located in the Aurora Public Schools boundary..  This year, our fourth year of operations, we serve just over 300 students in Children’s House - Upper Elementary.  The most unique aspect of Montessori del Mundo is our bilingual programming.  The goal of our program is to provide a whole-hearted education experience for children via the Montessori philosophy and curriculum, and to foster their bilingual development so they are able to perform on grade level in both Spanish and English by the time they exit the program after 6th grade.  Our student population is approximately 55% English Language Learners and 45% dominant English Speakers.  Instruction in the Children’s House is in Spanish 90% of the time, which means one circle a day is taught in English and the rest of the day, including Montessori work time, is conducted in Spanish.  Lower Elementary is 55% in Spanish, 45% in English, requiring all teachers to be fluently bilingual in both.  In Upper Elementary students spend 1-2 weeks in an English environment and then transition for the next 1-2 weeks in a Spanish environment.  Our English and Spanish teaching teams work very closely together to ensure consistency of lesson delivery and mastery across classrooms.

Running an authentic Montessori program in a public school can be challenging, we believe we have found success for a few reasons.  Our charter allows us an enormous amount of autonomy in terms of curriculum decisions, schedule, budget, hiring etc.  Montessori leadership on the founding team and administration as well as a robust teacher leadership committee that weighs in on school wide policies and decisions helps us to keep children’s best interests at the forefront of all we do.  We welcome visitors from the Montessori community, please feel free to contact our front office to schedule a school visit if you would like to learn more about our program.
 
       

                     

What makes your school unique?

We believe that all schools, and certainly Montessori schools, should be community centers where families feel known, welcome, and accepted, and where staff feel supported, heard, and valued.  We are proud that so many of our staff enroll their children at our school.  We currently have just over 20 staff children attending our program.  This year we have been focusing on deepening our connection to parents and offering them more meaningful opportunities to interact with our school community, staff, and their children.  We were thrilled with the success of our recent Thanksgiving event.  In a whole school effort, our children prepared the meal, which we served to just shy of 800 people (counting students and staff).  

Our community  building efforts do not only extend to families, we are also very focused on building loving, supportive, and connected communities in all of our classrooms.  Our student population includes just over 65% of students qualifying for Free or Reduced Lunch, which often indicates that these students will be “at risk” in school.  In order to support all of our students regardless of the level of economic or food stability or other stress factors in their homes, we have implemented Conscious Discipline as a school wide discipline philosophy.  We highly encourage all Montessorians to explore Conscious Discipline.  With a few minor adjustments it becomes an excellent road-map towards regulation in the Montessori classroom.  It is also a wonderful support for at-risk students and students who have experienced trauma.  Since implementing it school-wide three years ago we have seen a dramatic increase in regulation across classrooms and with our most challenging students.

   

                                         

Programs Offered: 

Montessori del Mundo currently has 5 children’s house classrooms (ages 3-6), 4 Lower Elementary classrooms, and 2 Upper Elementary classrooms serving 4-5th grade.  We are excited to add 6th graders next year.

We currently offer Physical Education and Music to students in K-5, as well as an after school TaeKwonDo program.  Additionally, we have a robust parent engagement program that brings parents into the classrooms and school on a daily basis to volunteer, host twice monthly parent coffees and other student centered and parent centered social events.

Montessori del Mundo (MdM)
Address: 15503 Mississippi Ave, Aurora, 80017
Phone: 720-863-8629
Website: montessoridelmundo.org
Director: Wendy Sullivan

How to submit your school as a Featured School

We are continuing our “Featured School” section of our website and invite all of our member schools to consider being “featured” on the homepage of our website for one month. 

We are particularly interested in showcasing any aspect of your program that would be of particular interest to other Montessori educators. Do you take your students cross country skiing? Do you have a farm-to-table program? Do you have a well developed art program? A parent- infant program? Have you just added a middle school? What makes your program unique or special?

Please send us the following:

Fill out the Featured School Form

Photos: You may resize them to 300 pixels wide, or we will do that. If photos feature minors you will need to fill out the CMA Minor Photo Release Form.

CMA Minor Photo Release Form

All documents go to coloradomontessoriassociation@gmail.com with the Subject: Feature School Submission or;

Colorado Montessori Association
P.O. Box 473541
Aurora, CO 80047