Updates from Denver Montessori Junior/Senior High School
Adolescent practitioners share stories and updates from their own schools in this series. If you’d like to share an update with us, please send an email to Kari@IMTIOhio.org. We’d love to hear from you!
Orientation graduates Hannah Ewert-Krocker and Leah Parker Bry share updates from DMHS in Denver, Colorado!
Denver Montessori Junior/Senior High School is a public innovation school in Denver Public Schools (DPS) now in its seventh year of operation! We have students in grades 7-12 in two programs: Farm School (7-9) and High School (10-12). Our students matriculate from four public Montessori elementary schools in DPS: Denison, Lincoln, Academia Ana Marie Sandoval, and Garden Place Academy. We serve students from all over the city and from a diversity of backgrounds: over 50% of our students qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch, and over 80% of students identify as students of color.
Our high school program graduated its first class of seniors in June 2019!
Our Farm School program centers around the operation of our small urban farm, which is home to organic gardening beds, 8 egg-laying hens, one angora rabbit, and a vibrant micro-economy. Our students produce cutting boards and other wood materials in our workshop, make crafts (ceramic plant pots, hand-made jewelry, homemade soap, hanging quilt decorations, and more), and run several events open to the public, including an annual musical and dinner theatre, all of which contribute to the micro-economy. Our students also have the opportunity to learn about financial literacy by assisting at Pinwheel Coffee, a local coffee shop, twice a week. In recent and exciting news, we were just approved by the district to begin our first bee hives and hope to do so as soon as Spring 2020. And we are still the only middle school in the district whose students work side-by-side every day with DPS kitchen staff to cook lunch for the entire student body.
Our High School program graduated its first class of Seniors in June 2019 -we are still a young and growing program! Our core academic classes center around project-based learning in Science, Humanities, and English in which students work toward making authentic real-world contributions through their study. Students drive their own learning - with expert guide support - through our integrated Math curriculum. We offer elective classes in Spanish, musical theater, Shakespeare, mural painting, human development, steel drums, financial literacy, and more.
Above all, we seek to design our program in response to the needs of our students: to build a community that we are all responsible for - sharing leadership in partnership with students, building strong relationships in advisements, supporting students in developing executive functioning, time management, and critical thinking skills in a context of purposeful social organization. High school students run our restorative justice program, student government, hospitality program, international and national trips.