Stay At School Until 4:30?

“I get to stay at school until 4:30 every day? Awesome,” said a 3rd grade boy on hearing that new this year, Countryside Montessori School is offering a longer day for their Elementary class. The class consists of forty-seven children in 1st through 6th grade. They study together in one large, bright classroom at the school on the corner of Pfingsten and Techny in Northbrook. In the Elementary classroom, children work individually and in small groups in self-directed learning. As in the past, attendance is required from 8:30 AM until 3:30 PM, but children can now arrive as early as 8 AM and leave any time until 4:30 PM.

“The children really love school and there just didn’t seem to be enough time in the day to do all of the things they want to do,” Wendy Calise, Elementary teacher and Educational Director, says. “Adding the hours has made the class feel more like a neighborhood of sorts, instead of a formal class.”
The new extended day is voluntary, and Countryside assures parents that children who don’t stay the extra time will receive, “the same volume of teaching and attention that they have in previous years.” As might be expected, parents are pleased with the program. To their delight, so are their children.
“Come back in 15 minutes,” begged one 3rd grade boy, whose mother arrived at 4:15 on the first Friday of school, a sunny, still-summer day. “Please! Please! Please! I want to go back upstairs.” And back to the classroom he went to his reading interpretation lesson, leaving his mom to shake her head, remembering how she had watched the clock, waiting for her school day to end. When this boy’s older sister, a Countryside graduate now in 8th grade, heard of the extra time in the classroom, she complained, “Why didn’t they do that when I was there?”

Another child, a 3rd grade girl, tested the water on the first day of school by staying until 4 P.M. The minute she greeted her mom that afternoon, she said, “About tomorrow, pick me up at 4:30 please.”

Other families don’t leave the choice up to their children. That includes 1st grade twin boys, who are new to Countryside. Last year they were in public school half-day kindergarten, so the change is dramatic. Still, their mother reports they are loving the long day.

Several children, including a 6th grade girl, report they are enjoying the extra time with friends. So what happens in this extra time? In the morning as the children trickle in, Mrs. Calise says the teachers now have time to chat a little and hear about the things the children do out of school. Then as late afternoon arrives, she says, “children start to be called to go home, as in the morning not all at the same time. Many work up until the very last minute. Some listen to stories read aloud from William Bennett’s, THE BOOK OF VIRTUES, some younger children watch the 6th graders feed the snake, others organize the art cabinets, attend a geometry lesson, or continue with water color illustrations.”

Countryside decided to offer the longer day partly, Mrs. Calise points out, because American children have one of the shortest school years and shortest school days in the industrialized nations. The other inspiration came from Countryside’s All Year Montessori classroom, which is open to its 3 to 6-year-olds from 7:30 AM to 5:30 PM year round. “That classroom has a relaxed feel,” Mrs. Calise says. “There never seems to be a rush for time. We wanted that same feeling in Elementary. And so far,” she adds, “that is exactly what we have gotten.”

Posted on TribLocal