Montessori School Owner Executive

Montessori School Owner Executive

The Braille Monitor_______December

1997

(next)

(contents)

Carla McQuillan

The Owner-Executive Running the Montessori

School

by Carla McQuillan

From the Editor: On the afternoon

of Friday, July 4, 1997, a group of Federationists told convention delegates

about their jobs and the ways in which their Federation philosophy has influenced

their work. Following are the remarks of four of them. The first is Carla McQuillan,

President of the NFB of Oregon. this is what she said:

I am the owner and director of a Montessori

school. We currently serve seventy students ranging in age from two-and-half

to eight years. We offer a preschool program, an early elementary program, and

child care for those working parents who have children enrolled in our school.

Our facility is 3,752 square feet. We have three classrooms. It sits on about

an acre of land. I supervise nine staff members, three of whom are here at convention

this year. I have Mary and Margaret, who are working in NFB Camp, and we also

have Gary Jeffries, who is the blind cook at my school, serving lunches and

snacks to our children every single day. I think, if you asked the children,

Gary is the most popular staff member we have.

The responsibilities of a director are

many and varied. It's kind of like a compact disk player that's been set on

a random song-selection. You never really know what tune is going to pop up

next. So sometimes I'm a janitor; sometimes I'm a cook or an accountant, a nurse,

a stern principal, a receptionist, a supervisor, a cop (that's my personal favorite),

a therapist, a friend, and always a juggler. There are a lot of exciting events

that happen around our school. In fact, one of the most recent happened just

on Monday. I got an emergency phone call from the school. It seems that one

of the popcorn poppers set off the fire alarm; and, while all of the fire engines

were screeching into the parking lot, none of the staff there had the code to

turn off and reset the alarm. They are laughing about it now, I hope.

Some of my responsibilities are just

short of heart-wrenching. As a child care professional I am required to report

any suspected child abuse. This last year a five-year-old boy came to me and

disclosed that his father was sexually abusing him.

I have some unnerving responsibilities.

I fired a teacher in March for throwing a pair of adult scissors across the

room with a group of children assembled and then had the honor of replacing

her in the classroom for the last three months of the year, just in time for

NFB Camp registration to start up.

I'd like to tell you a little bit about

how I got to where I am today in my business. Some of you may ask why I chose

to get to where I am. When I was a young teenager and knew nothing about the

Federation, I believed that working with young children was something that a

blind person could do. When I was a senior in high school, I acquired a job

as a preschool teacher at June Bug Preschool and was pretty much a glorified

baby sitter. There wasn't a lot of teaching going on. My freshman year in college

I taught music in a Montessori school and was just amazed at the difference

in the behavior of the children. The Montessori children were attentive. They

were well-mannered. They were well behaved, and they were extremely bright,

curious, and inquisitive. I enrolled in a Montessori teacher-training program

figuring I didn't know what it was those teachers were using, but whatever it

was, I wanted to have some of it.

Montessori for those of you who don't

know is a very self-paced, individualized type of instruction, and it's the

use of the Montessori materials as they are manipulated that helps to teach

the child different concepts. In fact, Montessori said that the more senses

you incorporate into any learning experience, the higher the retention level

and the more effective the learning. This also makes this method of education

much more accessible for blind children, which I'll talk about later. The overall

philosophy of the Montessori method is that of teaching personal responsibility,

respect, independence--all of which develops self confidence in the children.

Montessori children, by and large, are self-starters. They have a natural thirst

for knowledge and information, which is of course extremely delightful for the

teachers who work with them.

In 1988 I was the recipient of a National

Federation of the Blind of Illinois scholarship, and at that point I came to

learn some very strange and wonderful things about myself, my peers, and my

philosophy on human development. As I came to work more and more with the Federation,

I came to believe in myself and to believe that I didn't need to work for somebody

else, but maybe it would be okay for me to work for myself and that I could

be successful in the endeavor. So I ran a home-based Montessori program for

three years until my son was old enough to participate, and then he decided

that I was Mom and not a teacher, and he wasn't having any part of it. So the

next step was to go in search of a facility for us to start our own school.

In that pursuit we found a building for lease with a capacity of forty-five

students. I applied for an Oregon Economic Development Loan that was designed

specifically for disabled people wishing to start their own businesses. And

guess what? Oregon didn't think that I could make this business fly. Oregon

denied the loan, but I found out that the National Federation of the Blind did

believe that I could be successful, and I secured a small business loan from

this organization.

But it's the skills that I have learned

through the work of the Federation that have really gone far beyond the seed

money in the way of helping me to become successful. Children's Choice Montessori

School is unique in its philosophy even from other Montessori schools: philosophy

that is developed by and large through participation on my part with this organization.

When I take prospective parents through the school to decide whether or not

our facility is appropriate for their children, of course I go around and show

them the classroom and make sure that they understand that it's a safe and comfortable

and warm and loving environment. But I also emphasize to the parents two goals

that we have at our school for each of those children.

1) The children will learn to work and

play well with others. Even if they don't want to go out and play on the playground

with all of their classmates, we require that they be respectful and coexist

peacefully while they are in the classroom. How many times have we seen Dr.

Jernigan, Mr. Maurer, and other leaders of this organization faced with the

task of dealing with individuals who are perhaps not our favorite people, who

don't see things exactly the way we do? In fact, at one point Diane McGeorge

said to me, after having spoken to a state agency director, "You get done

talking to him, and you just feel like you want to take a shower." But

throughout the course of her conversation, not an inkling of that sentiment

came through. She was respectful. She was courteous, and that's exactly what

we are trying to teach the children at our school.

2) We teach the children to be responsible

for their actions. This entails recognizing that there are consequences for

their actions and for their inactions. We also believe that this perspective

will ensure that the children will never grow to believe that they are victims

of their circumstances. Dr. Jernigan was talking the other night to this scholarship

class and saying how we are in a society and a generation (both sighted and

blind) who are looking for someone else to blame for the position they are in

today. We need to resist that temptation. It is my firm belief that this philosophy

needs to be instilled at a very early age and brought all the way through life,

and that's exactly what we are trying to do.

At Children's Choice we are teaching

life skills. This is not something that most of the other programs are doing.

They are looking to resolve today's problems without any look towards where

those children will be in the future. I believe our decision has contributed

greatly to the success of the school.

One of the other things I have learned

that has been invaluable to me is that there are insufficient hours in the day

to do everything that we would like to do. I do not waste a lot of time and

energy on those things that I cannot affect. I try to spend my time resolving

and solving all the problems I can do something about. This is particularly

helpful when I take on added responsibilities such as NFB Camp, which by the

way I love doing.

Last year I applied for and received

a Small Business Administration loan so that we could purchase the land and

construct the building in which we now operate our school. There was a bit of

discussion between the builders and me about the Americans with Disabilities

Act, particularly with regard to the size of the handicapped-accessible bathrooms.

Using the skills that I have learned through the Federation, I researched the

regulations, and I challenged the builders at their interpretation of those

regulations. After I threatened to fire them, they finally agreed to reduce

the size of each handicapped bathroom by eighteen square feet, freeing up enough

classroom space to add two students more than their plan allowed, and now I

understand that they're circulating our blueprints to other people who are thinking

of building schools as a model school environment. By the way, the obligatory

handicap-accessible bathroom sign that needed Braille--we have that. I have

the technology to produce that myself without any additional cost, and the Braille

on that sign reads, "Deposits only, no withdrawals." The city inspector

came by, ran his fingers over that Braille, and we all sat and smiled.

But I believe probably the most exciting

part of what we are doing at the school happens when the Federation work and

the Children's Choice work merge to form a more perfect union. This summer the

Oregon Commission for the Blind has placed a high school student, through its

summer work-experience program, to be employed at Children's Choice Montessori.

Clarissa is learning a lot about how to work with children when you are a blind

person, and she is learning a lot about the National Federation of the Blind.

In the fall we will have a three-year-old blind child starting in Mary's classroom.

Instead of being threatened and upset, Mary is delighted because she has worked

at NFB Camp for the last two years. I am also told that there is a nine-month-old

blind child in the community whose mother has already told case workers that

her son will be at our school when he comes of age.

Every day the compact disk sets on random

song-selection; and we walk in, prepared for the dance; and through the waltzes

and the jigs and the dirges and the ballads, occasionally we are uplifted by

"Glory, Glory, Federation." Thank you.