Week of Celebration Marks Cowles Montessori 20th Anniversary
The grounds at Cowles Montessori School were frozen and fallow this morning. The annual resurrection of the school’s community garden felt further away than it really is. But inside the growing never stops at this greenhouse for children and this week the one-of-a-kind school on College Avenue (can you believe it?) is especially energized by twin celebrations of both Montessori Week and Cowles’ 20th anniversary as the district’s lone Montessori facility.
Maria Montessori launched the movement that’s named for her in 1907. But it didn’t take root in DMPS until the early 1990’s when it germinated in a single classroom at Hillis Elementary School before transplanting to its current home in a building that was built in the 1950’s and used as a regular elementary school until declining enrollments during the 1980’s resulted in school closings. It’s hard to imagine the bustling place sitting idle but it did for a time before coming back to life as a daycare center.
Cowles has grown steadily under the Montessori model into a pre-K through 8th grade building and now occupies the entire space it used to share. Families are lined up on a waiting list to get in. This morning an all-school assembly traced the history of the Montessori movement globally as well as its local one at Cowles, the only public Montessori school in Iowa.
This week the place is practically wallpapered with Montessori trivia and tenets. From art shows to professional development to special guests, each day of the school week commemorates both the two decades of the school as well as the uniqueness of the Montessori approach to education.
For example, students in the lower elementary classes were given the writing prompt “Montessori is…” and their completions of it decorated the lockers and walls in their wing. Certain words were recurring – peace, fun, safe and grow were frequently used.
If this morning’s event focused on the past, Thursday afternoon and Friday shifted the emphasis squarely onto the future. A steady procession of community leaders was slated to visit and tour on a “Journey through Montessori,” highlighted by Iowa’s Department of Education Director, Dr. Brad Buck. Cowles has grown to the point of maxing out its current facilities. Further expansion will have to happen elsewhere. But it feels inevitable when you’re there. The place gives off an organic, irrepressible vibe. Recreating the Cowles experience at another location seems as natural a thing as clipping starts from a thriving plant and cultivating them in another spot. As happened 20 years ago when Cowles spun off from what amounted to a one-room schoolhouse within Hillis.
A kindergartner from 1994 would be in their mid-twenties now, just hitting their adult stride and ready to take on the world. Cowles is like that at this point. Or, as their preschoolers sang at the assembly this morning, “We’ve got the whole globe in our hands…”
