Ask HN: Anyone go through Montessori education until age 12 (end of grade 6)?

I transferred to a Montessori school at age 10 and was there to age 12; my family moved overseas after that, so I couldn't continue. That said, it was the first time in my life that I started to enjoy learning, and really started to love math. The fact that I could learn at my own pace, and get individualized learning at the same time from my teachers was life changing for me compared to my prior public school. It's left an impression on me to this day.

My daughter (14) is currently going through this scenario. She was in a Montessori school from pre-school through 8th grade. The school she went to did not offer 9-12 so we had to transition her to a more traditional school for high school. We were extremely concerned that the daily classroom structure would be a problem, but she's adapted wonderfully. Despite never having traditional grades, tests, and quizzes, she currently has all A's and B's and is doing great. Speaking for myself, I don't think I give my kids enough credit for just how adaptable/resilient they are.

I did Montessori from kindergarten until grade 6 (age 12), in Mexico.

I really, really like it.

I think it reinforces the kids natural curiosity.

In middle school, my first year out of Montessori, I was shocked at how little other kids cared about learning. I remember the teacher discussing something about astronomy, and I raised my hand to comment on some fact I had read, and what followed was mockery by my peers and antipathy by the teacher. I learned quickly to never again show that I cared about learning.

This was a huge contrast with Montessori where most us were eager to learn and share what we had learned. I had friends that had built the solar system to scale out of their own initiative (in hindsight they may have taken some liberties, nonetheless).

I kept tabs more or less my classmates that came out of the Montessori, and I think they overall overperformed the non Montessori people in middle school and high school. Harder to gauge adulthood success.

I also liked that they had children of various years in the same classroom. I think it promoted knowledge sharing from the older kids to the younger ones, and it removed barriers for friendships. Some of my best friends back then where older than I was. That would never happen in middle or high school.

Finally, I don't think it's perfect. Because we were all expected to join a traditional school after grade 6, the school made some effort to make sure that the outgoing class had covered all the basic requirements (a not necessarily a simple thing since we had great liberty of pursuing what was interesting to us).

All in all, I would strongly recommend it.

I went to a Montessori school from pre-K through 6th grade. Overall I think it was a good experience. But the transition to traditional school was very rough. I was mostly fine academically, but socially it was brutal. I had been going to school with the same 10 people for most of my life, and then suddenly found myself in a crowd of hundreds of strangers with no clue how to make new friends. Add to that all the hormonal stuff going on with 12-13 year olds, and it's a bad scene. It took me about 3 years to acclimate. I think 7th grade is a particularly bad time to be making the transition. It might have been easier if I'd made the jump in grade 5 or 6.

My wife is a Montessori teacher and I'll warn you to watch out for schools that are Montessori in name only. I know, I know ... as if it wasn't hard enough already.