Founder's Welcome
A child grows physically, emotionally, mentally, and most importantly, naturally. To facilitate a child’s growth, he must be in an environment that encourages exploration, ingenuity and excitement. Growth is something that is progressive but not necessarily in a neat predictable line. There are times of mountain peaks of excitement and other quieter valleys for integration. Understanding this cycle is fascinating to watch over a lifetime. A single pink cube can hold much fascination and imagination all on its own in a Montessori primary class, but at some point becomes a sequence of weights and measures and eventually a mathematical equation. Letters are initially symbols made tactile with sandpaper or assembled as a moveable alphabet to create sounds then words until a child squeals with delight: “I can read!” That same enthusiasm and sense of empowerment comes with digesting a difficult passage of Shakespeare: “I understand!” From realizing that a swing gives you flight to developing the coordination to shoot a bulls eye, we grow with confidence and assurance, and develop our innate ability to be our very best selves.
We, at Montessori, celebrate a child’s growing and create the needed environments for each stage of their development. In this hectic age, providing “sacred space” for this development to take place is critical.
Sincerely,
Karen Holt
Founder
Our History
In 1973 the Montessori School of Anderson was founded and taught its first group of fourteen preschoolers in basement rooms rented from a local church. Since then, we have become an incorporated nonprofit school and a leader in the Montessori educational philosophy on the national stage.
MSA, as our school has come to be called, believes that the desired result of education is to help children become responsible for their own learning by realizing what they need to learn, how they best can learn, and to embrace the responsibility that comes with this knowledge.
As word quickly spread of the caliber of our education, it soon became apparent MSA needed a facility of its own to accommodate its rate of growth. The very next year two acres of land on Sam McGee Road were purchased and construction soon began on our first classroom. As the initial group of students progressed, parents led the push to expand our programs to include infants and toddlers and elementary age pupils. That process continued until today we serve pupils from ages six weeks through high school. Our campus sits on eighteen acres and includes classrooms and support facilities, built by parents.
We are now a vital community of approximately 130 children and their families with a staff of more than thirty. We are proud to be one of only a handful of Montessori programs in the United States that serve infants through twelfth grade, and the premier and only private Montessori high school in South Carolina.