Montessori Mastery School of Odessa continues its evolution adding a high school Student Council, considering bringing in First Priority and adding student population to the point where they need to expand.
The school also has Chromebooks for their high school students this year.
“Students were using their own personal laptops or their own phones and … there was no consistency in how we could do things and what was happening,” said Randy McGuire, who is co-director of Montessori Mastery with his wife, Gloria.
Parents stepped up to make the Chromebooks possible.
“We’re just really excited about that. We’re accredited. We received our accreditation again for the next six years with Cognia. … That was a big deal last year and a lot of work goes into that. … It’s an oversight group to help make sure that we’re doing the right things. We do surveys with it, with our students, with our parents, with our staff. … It helps, we think, to make us a better school,” McGuire said.
Students will be attending the Shakespeare Festival in November at the Globe Theatre and taking other field trips designed to make students more well-rounded and prepare them for their next step in life. They planned journeys to the planetarium at Museum of the Southwest, Angelo State University, Fort Concho and the Meyer Museum.
“We try to do at least one field trip a month with our fourth to eighth grade. The lower grades have groups come here. A lot of the museums, like the Petroleum Museum … they’ll come to the schools and do them. The Ellen Noël Museum comes once a month and does a special program with them,” McGuire said.
They also offer theater, dual credit through an agreement with Odessa College, American Sign Language and Student Council. There are eight members — four officers for the high school and there’s a class representative for each of the grades, McGuire said.
An upcoming project is to raise funds for an awning.
The school doesn’t do MAP or STAAR testing, but they give the Stanford Test once a year.
“We’re only at $6,000 annually, and we have no hidden costs. We don’t charge for textbooks. We don’t charge extra for field trips,” McGuire said.
Other schools in the area cost more like the cost of going to college.
“It’s a huge sacrifice (for parents), but we again for us it’s a ministry … We don’t have a lot of administrative costs. Gloria and I make what our teachers make,” McGuire said.
The school is mainly located in St. Andrew Cumberland Presbyterian Church and has portable buildings. Montessori Mastery is not run by the church. It has 137 students this year and they are maxed out at every grade level. There are 13 full- and part-time staff members.
“We’re trying to be affordable and provide a quality (education). People have to decide for themselves, but we’ve been full for years with a waiting list for years. We’ve got people now that are homeschooling children waiting for openings to develop here. That puts a burden on us because we’re like, oh, we wish we had more room. We just don’t have more room,” McGuire said.
He added that if they had more room, they could easily double in size because they always have people who want to work there and the turnover is low.
“We’re doing some things that people see value in,” McGuire said.
He added that most students go to college locally, but some have gone to Texas Tech or Tarleton State.
“But that’s not something we push, but we want to make sure we’re teaching to the highest to the distinguished level of the TEA graduation plan. We have kids go to college that didn’t think they wanted to, but everybody’s gotten in that’s wanted to go. I think we’re doing the right things. I hope we are,” McGuire said.
Students are learning self-discipline, learning to be responsible to prepare them for adulthood and learning to express themselves. Time management is also built into everything they do.
“The other thing that we really see is confidence. … That’s what’s really rewarding about this is seeing the changes in children. Parents thanking us for bringing their child back; restoring their child. And again, we still have parents saying my child’s up ready for school before I am ready to take them … Before, I couldn’t get them to go to school, and now they want to go and they’re happy. … Happiness in life is a big thing, isn’t it? We have children with ADD, ADHD; some are on the spectrum; dyslexia. We welcome those challenges and not that every child has those, but for those that do they find success here,” McGuire said.
Students are allowed to be different in how they learn.
“It’s not everybody does the same thing in the same way at the same time … We always stress acceptance, and again, helping to build that self-confidence. We get a lot of children that are damaged … Their self-esteem has been damaged because they didn’t pass the test or they didn’t fit in, but no one told them how special they were and how unique they were in what they did. Some of these kids on the spectrum are amazing and to see what happens when they’re given a chance to be themselves, not be judged, to not be criticized, it’s like watching a flower bloom,” McGuire said.
