For years, these weekly memos have been a way for our team to connect, celebrate wins, summon courage to face challenges, and share our vision of a new and better kind of education with the world.| Higher Ground's Friday Notes
This week brought big changes to Higher Ground. As we reflect on our journey - our challenges, growth, and unwavering mission - we recommit to the work ahead, together.| Higher Ground's Friday Notes
”A lady of high rank once paid the school a visit and, being old-fashioned in her views, she said to a little boy, ‘So this is the school where you do as you like?’”’No, ma’am,’ said the child. ‘It is not that we do as we like, but we like what we do.’”| Higher Ground's Friday Notes
In Montessori, structure is seen as a powerful aid to life and development, allowing the child to go further, learn more, and do so more freely than they could do on their own... but only if it’s a particular kind of structure.| Higher Ground's Friday Notes
Can AI be helpful for our parenting and educational goals and how do we address challenges like the temptation to cheat on assignments?| Higher Ground's Friday Notes
This is a common refrain in many educational contexts, most commonly in the humanities, such as history and literature, and most commonly during discussions. But it also just comes up in exploratory, conversational contexts with children, which can happen very young.| Higher Ground's Friday Notes
In a typical school, the question as to what to do with children who are exceptional, children who push the upper bound of some desirable characteristic or skill, is fraught.| Higher Ground's Friday Notes
Pushing learning too early is often a recipe for misery (for the child and us) and incentivizes mimicry over true understanding. But how do you know when a child is ready to learn?| Higher Ground's Friday Notes
The purpose of practical idealism is to keep idealism alive in our minds when we’re in the midst of challenges.| Higher Ground's Friday Notes
What is the purpose of education? For over two millenia, the dominant purpose was to develop the child into a certain kind of person. Education was to instill the intellectual and moral virtues a child would need to be a good person.| Higher Ground's Friday Notes
One of my favorite Montessori sentiments is that the child is both the hope and a promise for mankind. Montessori’s focus is on actual children, but she often extends the same attitude more generally to the new.| Higher Ground's Friday Notes
Happy Friday, everyone—and, as my four-year-old daughter would say, carefully counting on her fingers: happy Christmas Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve.| Higher Ground's Friday Notes
Sensory education is a foundational part of a Montessori Children’s House. But what’s the point? Do children even need help developing their senses?| Higher Ground's Friday Notes
As a trainer, I focus a lot of my work on how we, as guides, can maintain harmony and balance between concentration, silent work, spoken language and joyful social cohesion.| Higher Ground's Friday Notes
On the occasion of Thanksgiving, here are some thoughts on Montessori’s view of how important it is to develop an attitude of gratitude towards humanity.| Higher Ground's Friday Notes
Practice is not just about learning math, learning to draw, learning to drive, learning to speak a foreign language. It’s also core to learning to be a parent, learning to have a friendship, learning to be brave—to learning anything at all, up to and including living life itself.| Higher Ground's Friday Notes
We gave our 4-year-old daughter a highly designed and enticing learning material, observed her using the material under conditions of freedom, and adjusted the material accordingly. The learning material was an iPad.| Higher Ground's Friday Notes
A common critique of Montessori is that it neglects creativity. Creativity does not mean creating ideas out of thin air; it means rearranging the elements of reality in new and valuable ways.| Higher Ground's Friday Notes
Mentorship is one of the oldest forms of education.Mentorship is also universally regarded as one of the most effective ways to teach. The challenge to mentorship as the educational model of choice is scaling it.| Higher Ground's Friday Notes
We don’t just want to fill roles—we want to create an environment where team members can show us what they’re made of and where their potential has space to shine.| higherground.substack.com
Broadcasting the weekly internal memos of Higher Ground Education. Click to read Higher Ground's Friday Notes, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.| higherground.substack.com
Happy Friday, everyone. A few weeks ago, I posted on what I called “Fair Weather Idealism”, and in that post I referenced my essay on Practical Idealism vs. Cynical Idealism. Many of you asked for a copy of that essay, so I thought I’d share it here. Enjoy!| higherground.substack.com
Happy Friday. The Montessori curriculum is unreasonably effective. The materials not only allow children to learn more earlier, and not only allow children to learn more effectively, but they also allow children to learn more deeply—to acquire knowledge in a way that allows for the formation of deep character traits.| higherground.substack.com
