Sessions
More information coming soon.
2026 Grassroots Conference
12 – 13 September 2026 | Adelaide, SA
Understanding Emotional Ecosystems in Montessori Classrooms
Maria Vaioleti-Ponga
What helps a child thrive emotionally in a Montessori classroom?
This session explores how the emotional environment within Montessori settings supports the child’s development, particularly their capacity for regulation, learning, and independence. Rather than viewing behaviour in isolation, we consider how the child’s experience is shaped by the emotional climate of the classroom and home environment, and how this influences their ability to engage with learning.
Drawing on my work as a Montessori Wellbeing Coordinator in Western Australia, I share practical insights from real classroom experience in supporting children through emotionally complex moments in everyday school life.
Participants will leave with simple, usable strategies that support emotional regulation, and clear communication boundaries, along with the RELEASE wellbeing framework to support calm, consistent responses that keep the child’s development at the centre of practice.
The Learning Brain: What Montessori Knew Before Neuroscience Could Explain
Alexandra Bailey
Why do some children thrive in an environment while others struggle to engage? Why do some children seek constant reassurance, resist direction, disengage from learning, or become overwhelmed by seemingly simple tasks?
This highly interactive workshop combines Montessori pedagogy with contemporary neuroscience to help educators better understand how children experience the classroom. Participants will explore the NeuroLeadership Institute’s SCARF framework—Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness—and examine how each domain influences concentration, behaviour, motivation, and learning.
Working collaboratively through Montessori classroom scenarios, case studies, self-reflection activities, and group discussions, participants will identify common “threat states” that affect learners and develop practical strategies for responding through environmental design rather than behavioural management.
The workshop also explores Montessori’s understanding of the reasoning mind, human tendencies, moral development, and the role of the adult, helping participants connect modern neuroscience to familiar Montessori principles and practice.
Participants will leave with practical tools, observation frameworks, and immediately applicable strategies to support attention, insight, independence, belonging, and neurodiverse learners within Montessori environments.
The Educability of the Human Potential
Hope Leyson
What world are we trying to create?
Inclusive education movement has highlighted the importance of diversity in establishing democratic institutions. As microcosms of society, classrooms can reflect and value cultural diversity as well as diversity in racial, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. It also needs to value diversity in how we learn. It gives important regard for people with disabilities and those who do not seem to follow normal developmental paths.
While the idea of having students with differing abilities in our classrooms is noble and logical, it has presented unique challenges to teachers, parents and the school communities. The education of neurodivergent students or those who used to be called “special ed” students carries with it, responsibilities and unwavering commitment to do right by ALL students.
We present insights and lessons learned as well as practical tips for implementation of inclusive education rooted in Montessori philosophy and how, in moments when no other literature can give us answers to head-scratching, hair-pulling questions, we turn to the power of Dr. Montessori’s approach: Observe, Follow the child and Believe in the educability of human potential.
Unprepared: Energy, Ecology and Regeneration in Montessori Work
Laureen Barnard
Montessori work requires adults to be prepared — scientifically, technically, and spiritually — yet many find themselves working within environments that can become fragmented, reactive, and energetically draining. When the preparation of the adult and the preparation of the wider environment fall out of reciprocity, strain appears and children and adolescents may be underserved. Adults may over-function, dedication compensates for gaps, and energy leaks silently from the ecology of our collective work.
This interactive session explores regeneration as both a personal and systemic endeavour. Through practical reflection tools, an “ecology audit” and collaborative dialogue participants will identify where energy is being lost and how reciprocity might be restored through clearer structures, shared rhythms, targeted adult development, and collective responsibility. We will draw on regenerative design frameworks and highlights from contemporary thought leaders such as Breakspeare and Rosenbrock (The Pruning Principle).
Regeneration is presented both a personal practice and a design principle — ecologically rooted, developmentally necessary, and deeply aligned with Montessori’s vision of interdependence.
Participants will leave with practical strategies and at least one actionable personal or systemic shift designed to strengthen the conditions for regenerative and sustainable Montessori work within their own context.
Developing a Biological and Spiritual Culture of Observation
Karen Bennetts
Explore observation as the cornerstone of Montessori education, to more effectively serve children across the developmental planes. From becoming worshippers of nature to becoming microscopists, Montessori invites us to make a profound transformation within ourselves to observe in a way that is both scientific and spiritual.
This presentation will draw inspiration from Montessori’s many and surprising connections with insects, to look at ways we can begin, or re-invigorate, a regular rhythm of observation in our classrooms and schools. Participants will learn about how we can start with small, achievable, non-costly steps to build an observation culture that reveres nature and the nature of learning.
For the more advanced participants, including school and centre leaders, this presentation offers fresh and stimulating ideas to expand observation into an enticing and infectious cultural practice within the school or centre. The session offers lots of practical tips from a grassroots perspective – promoting capacity-building from the ground up, using local, ordinary, everyday initiatives. Attendees will gain insights into Montessori observation as a natural counter to modern education’s heavy compliance burden and to the increasing pressure from global systems that no longer serve life.
Preparing the Digital Environment
Ben Noble
The environment teaches before we speak, however unlike our physical spaces, we have cobbled together a digital one that we never intentionally designed. This hands-on workshop gives you one lens to interrogate any of them, and asks: does this build a child’s thinking, or does it for them, does it invite cognitive struggle or irons out those creases? I will share the findings of my survey that I sent out prior and leave you with a method for evaluating digital technology and while my experiences are steeped in Adolescent learning, I hope there will be something here for everyone.
