News | Higher Ground Education | A Fully Lived Life

A collection of ideas, stories, inspirations, and thought pieces

Higher Ground in the Press

Higher Ground Education Announces the Acquisition of Tinycare

The leading provider of Montessori education, today announced it has acquired Tinycare, a network of in-home, Montessori-inspired micro-daycare centers that serve infants and toddlers

Higher Ground Education Announces the Acquisition of NeighborSchools

The acquisition will bring a new wave of innovative childcare resources.

The Higher Ground Education Team

The Higher Ground Education Team

Higher Ground Education to Expand With EB-5 Investment from EB5AN

The partnership will allow Higher Ground Education to open more schools across the US.

The Higher Ground Education Team

The Higher Ground Education Team

Higher Ground Launches Education Think Tank

Montessorium explores the history and philosophy of education and takes a first-principles perspective on educational controversies.

The Higher Ground Education Team

The Higher Ground Education Team

Guidepost Montessori and the Academy of Thought and Industry Earn Cognia System Accreditation

Both school systems—and their domestic and international locations—now meet Cognia Standards of Quality, and commit to continuous improvement.

The Higher Ground Education Team

The Higher Ground Education Team

Higher Ground Education Raises $30M Series D and Acquires Award-Winning FreshGrade Platform to Accelerate ‘Montessori Everywhere’ Mission

The new funding and acquisition will support Higher Ground’s continued investments in curriculum, training, technology, and international growth.

The Higher Ground Education Team

The Higher Ground Education Team

The Purpose and Pedagogy of Black History Month: A Panel Discussion with Higher Ground’s Advisory Group on Montessori and Identity

As Black History Month begins, our Montessori and Identity panel gathers to discuss what we want for our kids with respect to race in education.

The Higher Ground Education Team

The Higher Ground Education Team

Culture and Pedagogy

Why Montessori Matters

A Guidepost parent tells us why Montessori has been the best educational path for her son.

The Guidepost Team

The Guidepost Team

Get to Know Guidepost Montessori: Our Programs, Our Community, Our Pedagogy

New to Guidepost? Start here. In this guide, we’ll break down our top resources that share our commitment to exceptional Montessori learning at school, in-home, and around the world, from birth through adulthood.

The Guidepost Team

The Guidepost Team

Higher Ground's Lanterns

Education is done with a view to the good life. Drawing from Montessori, we offer five lanterns, five constant and guiding values, for understanding what constitutes a good human life: knowledge, work, agency, and trade, all adding up to a life fully lived.

Matt Bateman

VP of Pedagogy

Lives Fully Lived

If we dig deep—deeper than our educational practices, deeper than our core values, deeper even than our mission, all the way to the very foundation of our worldview—we find a bedrock idea that everything rests upon: the individual human life fully lived is an end in itself.

Ray Girn

CEO

Culture of Work, Culture of Knowledge

Knowledge and work—thought and action—are the two fundamental manifestations of human agency. An education that supports agency does so by embodying a culture of knowledge and a culture of work.

Matt Bateman

VP of Pedagogy

Higher Ground's Friday Notes

Broadcasting the weekly internal memos of Higher Ground Education. For our full archive, click here to visit our Substack feed.

Control of error

Let’s observe a child together. This is Alice, my daughter. She’s 2y8m. She just woke up from a good night’s sleep. She has found some metal measuring cups stacked on the coffee table. About five minutes before I started recording, she disassembled the stack and separated them, and she’s been trying to reassemble them since. Let’s watch the last three minutes of her work. What do you notice?

Matt Bateman

VP of Pedagogy

An early advantage

We spend a lot of effort teaching toddlers a clever way to put on their own jackets. Why bother?

Matt Bateman

VP of Pedagogy

Columbus Day vs. Indigenous Peoples’ Day

That these are still-contested, competing political holidays make it quite difficult for educators to approach this day successfully as school holidays. For older students, it’s a good opportunity to think about the controversy, which is great—but it makes for an odd holiday, which are usually about community celebration and rituals that exemplify shared values. I don’t have any conclusive, systematic answers as to the best way to approach this Monday in October in our schools. I think probably this day just needs to be completely rethought in an educational context. But I do have a few thoughts.

Matt Bateman

VP of Pedagogy

Would you intervene?

Montessori thought that there are many ways to “help” a child that are, in fact, useless or even harmful to development. Children need a great deal of independence, including the space to struggle, to achieve, to be frustrated, to get discouraged, or even to be (non-grievously) injured. How should we, as educators, as caretakers, judge how and when to intervene?

Matt Bateman

VP of Pedagogy

Two principles of parent engagement

By applying what amount to Montessori principles with parents themselves, we position ourselves to keep children in our classrooms—to educate them longer, more effectively, and more joyfully.

Ray Girn

CEO