Grandfriends’ Day is a special annual tradition at Inly School when children can share their classroom experience with members of their families or other special friends.
Donna Milani Luther, Inly’s Head of School, addressed a crowd of Inly community members on Grandfriends’ Day (November 21, 2012), and shared the following:
When I was a little girl, whenever asked the question “what are you going to be when you grow up?”, I said “a teacher.” I’ve been lucky, and also probably typical of someone my age. I have been teaching for 39 years and have had the great pleasure of working in 4 different schools, landing here at Inly 17 years ago.
In a 2010 Wall Street Journal article, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the next generation of young people will spend an average of 3.8 years in a job and have 7 different careers in their lifetime. Quite different from my experience, and I dare say different than yours.
In his recent book: Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change The World, Harvard professor Tony Wagner says that we must “graduate all students to be innovation ready.” According to Wagner, they will need the following Survival Skills:
–critical thinking/problem solving
–collaboration/leading by influence
–agility and adaptability
–initiative and entrepreneurialism
–effective oral and written communication
–accessing and analyzing information
–curiosity and imagination
Montessori education is proving to be at the head of the class in educating innovators. Famous Montessori graduates who were innovation ready include Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, Will Wright the creator of the SIMS video game, and the founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. In fact, Brin and Page credit much of their success to their Montessori education. In a Barbara Walters interview, they said they learned to be self-directed and self-starters as pre-schoolers. Brin and Page said that Montessori allowed them to learn to think for themselves and gave them freedom to pursue their own interests.
We’re proud to be educating the next generation of innovators, your grandfriends, here at Inly. We know you are, too!
Grandfriends’ Day continues to be a wonderful way to share the Inly experience with friends and grandfriends near and far. Thank you again to everyone who participated and we hope to see you all again next year!