Baking for a Cause: One Student’s Passion Story
At this point, I’ve made the Hershey’s chocolate cake recipe more times than I can count…
A Trip Out and a Trip In: Student Photo Essay
The last MMS Junior High trip of this year was to Mt. Diablo State Park…
Grit Under Pressure: A Montessorian at Mathletes
Math anxiety was already a hot topic 25 years ago when I was a student…
Toward a Shared Humanity: Getting Our Kids Beyond Their Bubbles
At age twenty-one, and five days after I graduated from college, I moved to Sumatra, Indonesia. Sent by the organization “Volunteers in Asia,” I spent the next year focused on educating Indonesian youth on HIV/AIDS prevention…
Real Fears. Real Hope: eBook on Social Media, Mental Health, and Our Children
This April, I sent a series of posts to the Marin Montessori community that wrestled with some of the pressing issues of the day. We’ve now collected the posts into a single document that you can read and share at your leisure.
Real Fear. Real Hope: A Conversation about Social Media
We all know it: something is not working for the youth in our society right now. Data, scholarship, and lived experience all tell us that social media and unimpeded technology have disrupted childhood profoundly and, often, destructively. In this episode, Sam Shapiro, head of Marin Montessori School, joins to reflect a bit on the series of blog posts he penned over spring break called Real Fear, Real Hope: Social Media, Mental Health, and Our Children.
What Happens When We Embrace the Human Tendencies
My three children are as distinct and beautifully themselves as any three human beings can be – and yet they undoubtedly developed along a nearly identical track, experiencing the same lurches and regressions at roughly the same stages of development.
Tips for Healthy and Fun Family Food
What could be more essential — and challenging — than feeding your child food they love and that they need? It can be a struggle, but there’s hope! In this episode, Sam Shapiro, Head of Marin Montessori School, speaks with Nimisha Gandhi, who runs Moon Cycle Nutrition, about her approach to inspiring a love of healthy eating in children.
Want a Healthy College Kid? Start Now.
In this episode, Sam Shapiro, Marin Montessori’s Head of School, speaks to Varun Soni, Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California, about the mental health crisis on college campuses and what we might do about it.
Throughout their deeply felt conversation, they try to work backward to identify the strategies parents of young children can use to increase the likelihood that their kids will enter college healthy, confident, and whole.
What to Do When the School Doubts Set In
Most of us miss the first part of DeCartes’ most famous axiom. He actually said, “dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum,” which translates, roughly, to “I doubt, therefore I think, I think therefore I am.”
Turns out that the first part is super important. To doubt is to ask questions that pressure-test assumptions and choices.
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