This fall, Kalispell Montessori may be the only school in the state to offer a Montessori education through eighth grade.

Kalispell Montessori Director Renee Boisseau said the expansion would start out with current students who have experience with the Montessori philosophy and culture.

“We are student-driven and experiential-learning focused, facilitated by staff,” Boisseau said. “We are concerned with the process of learning rather than just the content. We look at the whole child developmentally, emotionally and academically.”

She said there are four students committed to continuing at the school.

The school currently offers elementary I (first through third grade) and elementary II (third through sixth grade). This multi-age approach allows teachers to tailor learning based on individual development.

“We could have a student who is academically at a third-year level but developmentally at a first-year level,” Boisseau said. “Montessori gives the freedom and ability for students not to be contained or pigeonholed in that specific grade level.”

The discussion for a middle-school alternative has spanned more than four years. David Cummings, an elementary II teacher, will become the middle school teacher. He has trained over the last year at Houston Montessori Center to become certified to teach seventh and eighth grade.

Cummings saw the importance of having a Montessori middle school after serving on the board of the now-defunct Flathead Valley Montessori Academy. The academy had piloted a middle school program in 2006. The endeavor proved too costly after it moved to a new building; the school soon closed.

“I was inspired by the people who started Flathead Valley Montessori Academy — their work and their dedication,” Cummings said.

The multi-age, inquiry-based Montessori approach will continue at the middle school level but will differ from the elementary levels in that students will be more independent, Cummings said.

“Peers become very important at this adolescent age,” Cummings said. “Socialization is a critical component to development.”

There will be five areas of academic study — math, language (writing/reading), natural world (sciences), social world (history) and the personal world.

Monthly themes will guide topics studied in each class.

He used the theme of “forces,” for example. Cummings said students could study the forces of Newton’s laws in physics and the forces that change nations and spark revolutions.

Each week will then involve a group research project and presentation.

Cummings will complete the final two weeks of his training this summer.

“I’m really excited,” Cummings said. “I felt it was something we really needed.”

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or by email at hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.