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Montessori teacher: Four decades and going strong

Education • Marta Garcia remains a disciple of student-driven learning.

By Carol Lindsay



Special to The Tribune



Published: February 2, 2012 09:02AM

Updated: February 2, 2012 08:50AM


  The Salt Lake Tribune
Marta Garcia, who has taught at Sunrise Montessori for more than 40 years, works with her students at the Bountiful, Utah school Monday, January 23, 2012. Growing up in El Salvador, Marta Garcia didn’t play house with her dolls. Instead, she played school.



She would line them up in a row and teach them to read. And using butcher paper from her father’s shop, she made booklets and taught the neighboring children to read, too.



“My mom told me that one of the neighbor girls couldn’t learn how to read at school,” Garcia recalled. “Her mother said that I taught her to read.”



With that kind of history, it may not be surprising to learn that Garcia went on to be a teacher. But what may be surprising is that Garcia still is teaching at age 70. She has taught at Montessori schools in Salt Lake and Bountiful — schools she founded and directed — for more than four decades.



When she was 21, Garcia graduated from an El Salvador college with a teaching degree. It was there she was introduced to Montessori-style instruction.



Developed by Italian educator Maria Montessori in 1909, the Montessori Method relies more on a child’s natural interests than on formal teaching. It focuses on five areas — practical life, sensory awareness education, language arts, mathematics and geometry, and cultural subjects — to broaden students’ horizons.



“Montessori sees the child with tenderness,” Garcia said. “It sees the child as he is naturally.”



When Garcia moved to the United States shortly after graduation, she was surprised at how hard it was to integrate Montessori into her teaching. By the time her oldest child had turned 3, Garcia had become convinced that she wanted her kids to have a Montessori education.



Unable to find a suitable school, she decided to open her own. But there was a problem: She didn’t have any money.



So Garcia went to a bank and asked for a $500 loan. At first, the bank turned her down because she had no credit history. She countered that she couldn’t develop a credit history without a loan and refused to leave the bank.



“I think they just got tired of me,” she said, “so they loaned me the money.”



With that money, Garcia ordered supplies and furniture for a school in the Sugar House area. After several moves — and brief hiatus in 1981 when she returned to El Salvador to open a school, only to have war break out — her Sunrise Montessori school reached its current location in Bountiful. It has operated there for 18 years.



As a mother, educator and director of Sunrise, she is a disciple of Montessori-style teaching.



“The learning comes from within, it develops like a flower,” she said. “You cannot pull the petals from a flower. You have to let them grow.”



Trinitie Thain, 8, is a huge fan of Garcia.



“We learn in a fun way,” she said. “We learn in circle and we play games.”



Camille Walker attended Sunrise Montessori when she was a child, spending her kindergarten and first-grade years there. Now that she is a mother, her 4-year-old son, Jackson, is following in her footsteps.



“Teacher Marta made everything exciting,” Walker said. “She is exactly the same now as she was then. When I left Sunrise and went to public school, I was head and shoulders above the other kids academically. But I never felt like I was learning. I always felt like we were playing. Marta is so insightful.”



Garcia has had a half-dozen of her former students come back to teach. She also has had a sprinkling of second- and third-generation children come to her school as students.



“Sometimes the parents are looking for me and they are surprised to find out I am still teaching,” she said. “A grandmother of one of my students said ‘Here we are again.’ ”



So when does Garcia plan to quit? She doesn’t.



“I will teach until I die,” she said.



closeup@sltrib.com





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© 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune

Montessori teacher: Four decades and going strong

By Carol Lindsay



Special to The Tribune