Provocations: A quarterly magazine of ideas that refuse the status quo.
Provocations brings together education leaders from around the world who are rethinking education in terms of human development and flourishing. These leaders care about a truly transformative education, and are willing to question the systematic barriers that prevent it from being available to all children.
The Prepared Environment Under Siege: Palestine and Montessori’s Call for Children’s Liberation
The Revolutionary Power of the Adolescent: Centering Development Without Compromise
A paid subscription to Breaking the Paradigm gives you every edition.
Access all past and future issues of Provocations.
Built by adolescent guides, for adolescent guides.
The Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum is where transformation emerges through conversation.
Join guides from around the world who are realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world, starting with how we learn and grow as adults. Whether you’ve been in this work for 40 years or this is your first year in the classroom, your expertise, observations, ideas, and questions are welcome and will be critical in shaping our community.
Our purpose
Solving the isolation that many adolescent guides feel by convening the first global, bi-weekly forum for practitioners, leaders, and anyone who supports adolescents.
Every other Tuesday · 7pm EST
Each conversation is guided by a facilitator, but is shaped by who is in the room. Guides and leaders from around the world regularly join, creating a truly diverse community of practice.
We can’t wait to be in conversation with you!
After consulting with schools around the world, our team learned something simple: no two schools or programs are alike. So we work differently. We partner with Montessori and progressive schools ready to break the paradigm of conventional schooling, starting from human development and building the culture, leadership, and practice that transform a learning environment from the inside out.
Adolescent program development and growth
Opening, growing, or rebuilding a Montessori adolescent program takes a strong vision and strong systems. Our team has walked alongside schools at every stage, helping you turn vision into a thriving program, at both the 12–15 and 15–18 level.
Leadership and Whole School Strategic Planning
Strong schools start with empowered adults. We help Montessori leaders build cultures where staff do their best work, and we guide the strategic planning that turns big goals for growth into a clear path forward.
Custom Professional Development and Support
Growth belongs to everyone: guides, leaders, and parents alike. Our virtual and on-site sessions meet your community where they are and open new ways of thinking together.
Past sessions include:
The Prepared Adult
Montessori’s Vision for the Future
Psycho-Disciplines and the Importance of Completing the Third Plane
From Compliance to Culture: Reimagining School Systems for Human Flourishing
Coaching for the Inner Life of the Educator and Leader
Great teaching and leading begins within. We coach educators and leaders at every level in the inner work: the self-preparation, reflection, and spiritual grounding that Montessori named as the true starting point of our work. Alongside it, we help you build a scientific pedagogy mindset: learning to observe closely, question honestly, and let your observations guide your practice.
Fellowship in Scientific Pedagogy: Coming Soon!
The first modern fellowship to answer Montessori’s direct call: preparing the whole adult to create the environments their young people deserve. The essence of Montessori is not albums or lessons; it’s scientific pedagogy, rooted in human development, which leads to the creation of a better world. This is the vision Montessori believed in. This fellowship is designed to aid practitioners in walking that same path.
This fellowship is an invitation to practitioners, novice and seasoned, to see their work in a new way and to be revitalized by the potentialities that each young person holds.
Our work is the answer to Montessori’s directive at the end of The Montessori Method: “This book of methods compiled by one person alone, must be followed by many others. It is my hope that starting from the individual study of the child educated with our method, other educators will set forth the results of their experiments. These are the pedagogical books which await us in the future.”
Whether you’ve been in Montessori education for decades or you are just learning about the method, this experiential and cutting edge fellowship asks you to do the same work that Montessori did during her lifetime: write the pedagogical books of the future.
Developing Education Courses
Practical, mission-driven learning for educators and school leaders, developed with expert facilitators across pedagogy, observation, and program leadership.
Upcoming Courses
Montessori in the Modern World: Guiding Children to Balanced Screen Time with Sensorial, Silence, and Self-Direction through Digital Citizenship
Facilitated by Dana Anderson
Past Courses
A Responsive Classroom: Montessori for All
Facilitated by Christine Lowry
Meet the Founders
Kelly Jonelis
Co-founder
Kelly believes in the power of supporting the development of the whole person through education and inclusion. She has worked with adolescents aged 12-18 across multiple educational environments for 15 years. She is the Adolescent Program Director and Mathematics Guide at an AMI school in the suburbs of Chicago. She holds a Masters in Mathematics from Aurora University, a Bachelors in Applied Mathematics with a minor in Math and Science Education from the Illinois Institute of Technology, and a 12-18 Diploma from the Association Montessori Internationale.
Andrew Faulstich
Co-founder
After working in schools around the world, Andrew is convinced that the education status quo must be disrupted. He holds an AMI Adolescent Diploma, a Masters in International Educational Development from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, and a Bachelors in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Rochester. He is the Director of Education at the Oneness-Family Montessori High School, the Co-Founder of Developing Education, Co-Host of the Breaking the Paradigm Podcast, an Affiliate Instructor of Montessori Teacher Education at Loyola University, and an international Montessori school consultant.