For close to sixty years, Austin Montessori School has cultivated a culture of empathy, respect, compassion, and engagement in the children and adolescents who attend the school, as well as in our faculty, staff, and parents.
At Austin Montessori School, your child will be given the opportunity, through their own work, to develop independence, self-motivation, self-awareness, a lifelong sense of curiosity, and a love of learning. In other words, your child will be developing the skills to be engaged and successful in all facets of their life.
To provide an educational environment conducive to these outcomes, both parents and the school enter into a meaningful partnership, with each of us having important roles. Open and honest communication is essential to this process. You are asked to become familiar with the Montessori principles and approach so that you may support these in your home and family environment.
Browsing our website is the first step in determining if we may be a good fit to partner with you. Thank you for your interest in Austin Montessori School.
Austin Montessori School is recognized by the Association Montessori Internationale (AMI), the only association Dr. Montessori founded, and the most exacting standard in the field. We are the oldest and largest AMI-recognized school in the Austin area, and one of only about two hundred in the United States, among the thousands of schools that use the Montessori name.
Montessori teachers-in-training and professionals travel from around the world to observe our classrooms. We are also accredited by the Texas Alliance of Accredited Private Schools (TAAPS).
What AMI recognition really means →Cato "Nan" Hanrath was born in the Netherlands in 1907, the year Maria Montessori opened her very first classroom in Rome. She went on to study under Dr. Maria Montessori herself. Dr. Montessori founded the Association Montessori Internationale (AMI) to protect the integrity of her method, and in time Nan Hanrath was appointed one of its guardians, a director at its headquarters in Amsterdam.
In the nineteen-sixties, Nan Hanrath brought that work to Texas, where she trained some of the first Montessori Guides in the state. When Donna Bryant Goertz set out to found Austin Montessori School, she wrote to Nan Hanrath. And Nan came. Over the years she returned again and again, to observe, to consult, and to keep a young school true to Montessori's teaching. She sat in the classrooms with Donna, forming the Guides, and holding the work to the standard she had learned at Dr. Montessori's side.
She was the mentor and the guiding light of Austin Montessori School's early years, and she stayed close to us for the rest of her long life.
Montessori did not reach us from a book alone. It reached us from Maria Montessori, to her student, to our founder. We are proud of this lineage. We are mindful of the duty it lays on us: to carry the seeds of Dr. Montessori's work forward, and to tend them faithfully, for every child who comes to us.
A continuing story of Dr. Montessori's work for children, and her vision of education for peace.
To guide the development of each child towards their full and unknown potential.
We cultivate compassion and respect, independence and belonging, and freedom and self-discipline, in rich academic and social environments that honor the complementary needs of the individual and the community. We provide an educational setting that is inclusive, recognizes the authentic nature of the child, and nurtures a reverence for the natural order of the universe.
Meet our people, walk our grounds, and see for yourself.