Welcome
You will soon become a member of a larger community, American Montessori Society, and a world-wide organization of Montessori teachers, parents, leaders, and, most importantly, children. On a smaller scale, you will soon be a member of the next MI-NE program level cohort. The cohort model is the cornerstone of our Montessori teacher education program, and a reason why our graduates are highly engaged and prepared for the future. This cohort is comprised of your fellow adult learners.
The cohort model is foundational to effective blended learning because it recognizes that Montessori teacher education is about transforming practice through relationship, reflection, and shared experience.
Adult learners bring diverse backgrounds, classrooms, questions, and strengths to the program. Moving through the curriculum together allows you to learn not only from your instructors, but also from one another. As each learner applies new ideas in their own environment, they return to the cohort with observations, challenges, successes, and insights that deepen everyone’s understanding. This continual exchange bridges theory and practice in ways that intensive study alone cannot achieve.
The cohort experience then gives life to that knowledge through in-residence workshops, online discussions, collaborative inquiry, and reflective dialogue. Together, these experiences create a rhythm of individual preparation followed by collective meaning-making.
The cohort also cultivates the habits that Montessori educators seek to foster in children: careful observation, respectful listening, curiosity, collaboration, and reflective practice. You and your fellow adult learners become trusted colleagues who offer encouragement, constructive feedback, and diverse perspectives throughout the experience. These professional relationships often continue well beyond graduation, forming a network of Montessori educators who support one another throughout their careers.
Perhaps most importantly, the cohort model mirrors the Montessori understanding that learning is inherently social. Just as children construct knowledge within a prepared community, adult learners flourish in a professional community where ideas are examined together, experiences are honored, and collective wisdom emerges through dialogue. In this way, the cohort becomes more than a group of learners, it becomes a unity through a shared commitment to serving children and their families with knowledge, confidence, and compassion.
A Lab School Environment
MI-NE is located at Harborlight Montessori School on Boston’s North Shore in the city of Beverly, Massachusetts. Public transportation is only one block away and many local restaurants and beaches are within a short drive or easy walking distance of the campus.
Harborlight Montessori School is an AMS-accredited Montessori school and serves as a Montessori lab school for children from infancy through adolescence (Grade 8). This unique setting provides adult learners with daily access to authentic Montessori environments across every stage of development. By observing classrooms in session, interacting with experienced Montessori educators, and learning within carefully prepared environments, adult learners are able to connect Montessori theory with practice in meaningful and lasting ways. Much like a teaching hospital, the lab school is a living environment where observation, mentorship, reflection, and best practice continually inform one another, creating an exceptional setting for professional growth and the development of reflective Montessori educators.