All of the classroom directors at Fox Valley Montessori School are are certified by the American Montessori Society.
Classroom directors provide guidance and help develop autonomous, competent, caring, responsible individuals, not merely providing children with the right answers. The classroom director prepares and maintains a prepared learning environment containing natural order and sequencing. S/he directs activities, and offers stimulation so that the child is motivated through the work activities and learns to persist in a given task.
The classroom director provides necessary resources, including opportunities for children to function in a safe and positive climate. The director thus gains the children' trust, which enables them to try new things and build self-confidence.
The Montessori classroom director functions as a facilitator of learning. As such, s/he is a designer of the environment, resources person, guide, role model, demonstrator, and meticulous observers and recorder of each student's behavior and growth.
The classroom director relies on his or her observations of the children to determine which new activities and materials may be introduced to an individual child or to a small or large group. The aim is to encourage active, self-directed learning and to strike a balance of individual mastery within small group collaboration within the whole group community.
* The above ideas are excerpted from American Montessori Society