Am looking for a job as a montessori kindergarten teacher and i live in kenya.?

Question

Am looking for a job as a montessori kindergarten teacher and i live in kenya.?

Answer 1

I just checked on-line and as far as I can tell there aren't any Montessori Schools in Kenya. So at least for now, if you really want to work in a Montessori School you will have to go abroad for employment.

Besides going abroad, you are going to have to take a Montessori Training course. There are schools that will accept you without one, but no school worth its weight would hire a non-Montessori trained head teacher,  an aide, maybe, but not a teacher.

How do I know you aren't trained?  Montessori doesn't have "kindergarten". We believe in multi-age groupings so that children  have the experiences of learning from older children when they are young and later from being the model when they are older.  We also believe that children should be allowed to work on the concepts they need to learn regardless  of their age. So instead of having a "kindergarten", we have a 3 - 6 year old classroom. Sometimes this classroom is called the "pre-school program" sometime the "pre-primary classroom", sometimes the "early childhood program".  I'm sure there are others, but if they are truly authentic, they won't just have a kindergarten classroom.

To be honest though, some schools try to make this difference easier for people to understand. In this case they tell their parents that they have a  kindergarten program in the pre-school program.

So how do you get your Montessori training? There are many different training programs out there, but you will find that the certification programs offered by AMI (Association Montessori Internationale) and AMS (American Montessori Society) to be the most widely accepted.

The two programs are different. You will have to decide for yourself which implementation of the method works best with your personality and beliefs. Look into both programs and see which you feel most comfortable with. Take it from me, don't just take the closest program or the training that the school down the road uses. Working in an environment that has different beliefs than yours soon becomes very stressful.

What do I mean? Well, here are two quick overviews of AMI and AMS. ...AMI was established by Maria Montessori and her son, Mario in 1929 and has international headquarters in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In AMI schools, Montessori philosophy and curriculum are implemented in a way that is consistent with the original approach of Maria Montessori. The Montessori materials are used precisely in the manner used by Dr. Montessori without deviation or extensions; preserving what proponents of this interpretation believe is the purity of the method.

In AMS schools, the belief is that Maria died in 1952. Since the world has changed greatly since then; new technology, new knowledge, new materials,... the method needs to reflect these changes. AMS teachers bring the world into the classroom by using outside resources, materials, and ideas to extend and/or supplement the Montessori curriculum. Examples include the use of technology and current events.

Both philosophies are well thought out and valid, but it would be hard for someone who believes in teaching about current events or using a new material to work in an AMI school. The same goes for a person who believes wholly in the purity of the Montessori Method being asked to use a non-Montessori material.

Additionally, I tell people to stay away from the correspondence courses. They aren't all bad, but personally I believe that a hands on, multi-modality philosophy is really hard to teach through the mail, on line, or with videos. I must not be the only one because correspondence programs in general are not as readily accepted by schools.There are exceptions though. Yet with my experience I have met more people frustrated with either the fact that their certification isn't very marketable http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;... or with working with people who have no true understanding of Montessori since quality control is hard to ensure with correspondence courses. (One of my strongest memories was that of the owner of a Montessori school who's daughter was a certified Montessori teacher. The owner had her daughter write all her papers. Then her daughter moved away. The owner then tried to run the school even though she had no idea of what was happening around her. Because of her lack of Montessori Knowledge she would often make mandates that were the opposite of the Montessori philosophy, frustrating her staff and families. Eventually she lost her school.)

Here are links to AMI and AMS to get you started.

AMI http://www.montessori-ami.org/

AMS http://www.amshq.org/teacherEdPrograms.h...

Answer 2

Well, if Kenya has Montessori schools, I would first formally study the Montessori education theories and then after getting some experience in a lower age level (preschool aged children) I would then try to go to Kindergarten. Read up on Maria Montessori.