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Montessori: The New Science behind the Century-Old Methodology (part II)

“Freedom in intellectual work is found to be the basis of internal discipline” (*Montessori, 1917/1965). This quote highlights a notion which goes completely against our conventional wisdom. Internal discipline is to be instilled externally. Students develop discipline through following top-down



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Montessori: The New Science behind a Century-Old Methodology (part I)

Maria Montessori described observing children in a traditional classroom as being tantamount to an entomologist observing dead insects pinned to a board, “where the spontaneous expression of a child’s personality is so suppressed that he is almost like a corpse,



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Emotion: Cognition’s Rudder

We are not rational beings. In fact, many aspects of our cognition are inherently emotional. When one’s emotional well-being suffers, so does her cognition. Because of the inseparable nature of emotion and cognition, the way we feel has a profound



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Head Start: Right on Time

“Children who grow up in poverty often exhibit delays in academic and social-emotional school readiness that undermine their school progress at kindergarten entry and initiate a lifelong trajectory of underachievement and underemployment.”   What a powerful concept — a lifelong



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Early Brain Science and What We Do About It: Starting Off on the Wrong Foot

The brain is an incredible machine with immense potential. When we are born, our brains are wired to learn from, and adapt to, our environment. Given what we know about the brain’s unique malleability in the first years of life,



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Parenting Matters, and Earlier than You Think

Studies of neglect and maltreatment of young children have revealed a lot about early brain development (e.g., Cicchetti, 2002; Nelson, 2000). These studies have highlighted that experiences in the first years of life can have profound implications across the lifespan.



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Parent-Child Interactions: Forming Beliefs About Intelligence

It is common knowledge that parents play a vital role in their children’s development. However, we are slowly coming to understand just how vital this role is. Teachers understand this connection better than anyone; we interact with our students’ parents,



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