The Start of Middle School Microeconomics
I haven't been at the school long but I think you’ve all heard me talk about micro-economics as a foundational component of Maria Montessori’s vision for middle school. The whole Montessori curriculum is rooted in hands-on learning. Through materials and some self-guided work, students can learn with visual examples, tactile experiences and trial and error which solidifies the information more deeply. Montessori believed that this was possible with a classroom environment that is curated perfectly to support the students in this experience. This is why someone could enter into a Montessori classroom on two sides of the globe and see a very similar layout. The classroom strives to create an environment for students to be educated not just by a teacher, but by the space, themselves and their peers. From ages three to twelve, guides work to create this atmosphere inside the classroom. In adolescents, we begin to broaden our idea of a classroom.
This means that it is the job of the guide to start to think how we can curate the outside worlds to support the adolescent in joining us, as adults, in this new bigger community. There are many parts of this; finding more mentors that practice relevant professions related to our classwork, taking more field trips and outings, and of course micro-economies.
You will hear more about all these throughout the year, but the focus of our first few weeks of school has been starting our micro-economic project. If you’re not new to Friends-Montessori you’ll be familiar with Maria’s Pizzeria, the business run by the 6th grade students. They provide pizza to the students on Fridays. The middle school business will differ in two big ways, students will have more responsibilities and they will be interacting with both students and adults.
A new responsibility is calculating different types of costs. With pizza, each week is the same but with sandwiches there will be more variation as we change the menu.
To help the students learn some of these new skills, last Wednesday we had an accounting professor join our class. I was incredibly impressed by the students' engagement and focus. They exceeded all our expectations in grasping new and complicated concepts. Prior to this, we created a list of sandwich options and took a trip to Harris Teeter where we collected a list of prices that we could use in our calculations. These calculations helped the students determine how to price their sandwiches and how many they needed to sell to reach their fundraising goal. He even created a specific spreadsheet just for our class to more easily track everything we need.
by: Maddy
