Now that my son Jason is at the end of his third year at All Nations Montessori, I'd like to share our exceedingly positive experience with the school that has transformed Jason's life and will have a lasting impact on the family! Jason joined the school shortly after the family moved to the U.S. At that time, he was a quiet boy who did not speak any English. Thanks to the teachers' genuine care, true love and deep knowledge, Jason has grown into a confident, creative and cheerful child who loves speaking English. The diverse, inclusive and nurturing environment has helped Jason adapt to the American culture smoothly and get comfortable to communicate with people from different countries/cultures. Jason has also achieved significant physical, mental, cognitive, social and emotional development during his preschool life. We are so delighted to see the improvement of his personality and habits, and the enrichment of his knowledge and skills. Furthermore, the school has created various fantastic opportunities for the parents (and grandparents) to directly experience Jason's school life, observe his performance, witness his growth and share his joy and pride. This has led to Jason's even greater relation with other family members. These could not have happened without the commitment, dedication, passion, enthusiasm, knowledge and skills from the teachers. I'd like to take this opportunity to express my sincere appreciation for the teachers who put their heart, mind and soul into the child development and have continually gone above and beyond to make an impact and a positive difference in Jason's life.

We admitted our 3 year son to All Nations Montessori with high hopes since I'm a Montessori teacher myself (certified by MACTE) . However, it soon turned into a nightmare. The teacher was not able to handle small temper tantrums and repeatedly kept calling me to take him home. When enquired , it turned out that she tried to get him to participate in circle time running up to 45 minutes. The teachers at my son's new school (Bellevue School District) were surprised when they heard that kids were made to sit for that long.

The course curriculum was highly abstract for a preschooler - where they were trying to push facts like the scientific names of parts of flowers to 3-4 year olds !

After 7 months, she suddenly decided that I have to sit in my son's class during the circle time every day if I were to keep him in school or get our son evaluated by an occupational therapist. Finally after 3 weeks of sitting at the school, we decided to get an OT evaluation done. The OT did a complete eval and wrote down certain guidelines for the teacher to help with my son's social development. When the teacher saw that the guidelines would require her to take extra effort , she just asked us to withdraw my son in the middle of the session saying she's not "adequately staffed" !!!

My son was too young to understand that he was literally thrown out of the school because the teacher did not want to give a little extra effort. He kept crying and asking for going to school for almost a month after the incident. He'd diligently prepare his homework for show and tell every evening only to be disappointed every morning that he was not able to go to school.

Now that he's in the public school system, we wonder why we did not choose that option in the first place. It was rather heartbreaking to see another fellow Montessori teacher ignoring a Child's need and emotions and going against everything a Montessori education stands for.