Welcome to the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast. Cult of Pedagogy is a website devoted to building

a community of people who are obsessed with education. Please visit www.cultivpedagogy.com

to find great articles, forums, book and technology reviews, and other podcasts, where we'll

talk with people from every possible angle in education. If you're a teacher nerd, you'll

find a home at Cult of Pedagogy. This is Jennifer Gonzalez, well-hooming you to episode

three, where we interview Benedict Basu, the lead teacher at the Montessori Elementary

School of Bowling Green, Kentucky, which opened its doors in August of 2012. Along with

a group of local parents, Ms. Basu spent several years researching and talking with community

members to open this school, the first and only Montessori Elementary School in the area.

Though she is a certified experienced public school teacher, she had to move to Cleveland

to complete a full year of training required to use the Montessori approach at the elementary

level. Several weeks ago, I visited the school observing the students at their lessons.

The atmosphere there is really something special. You know that deep sense of calm you get

when you're totally immersed in a task, when the rest of the world falls away and you lose

all sense of time? That's what it's like at that school for everyone, pretty much all

the time. Watching the students work, I thought, every child should have this. I've posted

an article with photos on my site, although nothing really beats being there that should

give you a better idea of what it's like. After my visit, I sat down with Benedict to

talk more about the Montessori philosophy. I realized that converting every public school

to a Montessori school would take not only time and money, but a huge shift in our beliefs

about how school should work. I don't know if we'll ever get there. I do think that we

can learn some things from these schools, things that we can start to do now within our own

...