Ms. Stuti Mehrotra, Founder & Director, Linden Montessori
About Linden Montessori School
Linden Montessori is a school with a robust and ever-changing curriculum to keep pace with the dynamism of this world. "Experiential" and "Thinking-Oriented" learning is the pedagogy followed at Linden. The school aims to kindle the children’s natural desire to learn and invoke a love of learning.
It has been a great learning journey for the organization over the last decade. The institute takes immense pleasure in seeing the significant changes in the development of children over the years, and we feel proud that we have grown from 15 students to hundreds by word of mouth.
The school started with established brands within the vicinity, but we overcame that challenge with great practices and a unique teaching methodology.
A backdrop about the Visionary
“A learner for life!"-Ms. Stuti Mehrotra, Linden's founder and director, has rich experience working with children for over 15 years. She holds a degree in Education and is a passionate educationist. She has also trained in the Montessori Method for the Pre-Primary and Elementary Years.
Stuti worked as a teacher and a trainer with corporates before becoming an entrepreneur. Inspired by the book "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish" by Rashmi Bansal, Stuti embarked on a journey to start her school. Stuti is an alumnus of IIM-Kolkata of the Education Leadership Batch, a first-of-its-kind Education Leadership Program offered by the IIMs.
A flat hierarchy, transparency, openness, and approachability are followed in Linden. An organization wherein group discussions, arguments, brain-storming, etc., are encouraged among team members. The team members are encouraged to share their best practices, mistakes, and learnings with others in the school. Stuti oversees Linden's curriculum design, research, and teachers' ongoing training.
Over-Delivering the Best Values
The school always believes in overdelivering as an institution because the best way of winning people's trust is always by over-delivering. The policy has always been to give the parents more value than they expect from them. This is seen in the school's culture and the great transformation parents see in their kids after joining Linden. It is perceived as one of the best in the preschool industry.
Robust Infrastructure
The school building is a beautiful space that is bright, spacious, and inviting. It has a spectacular outdoor area encouraging free play and social interactions among children. Distinct spaces have been created for their dining, reading (library), and for them to enjoy stories (puppet theatre), among other activities. This setup allows children a lot of physical movement, which is necessary for learning and making the mind active. All environments have been designed with child-sized furniture and learning materials suited to the size of a child's hand.
The classrooms are spacious, well-lit, and airy. They are meticulously designed with various learning materials divided into 5 distinct areas (Exercises of Practical Life, Sensorial, Math, Language, and Cultural), which are carefully sequenced. These classrooms differ from most other classrooms as they have a mixed-age group of children supporting independence, social interactions, and mutual respect. The materials may look simple on the shelves, but the skills they impart are truly wonderful.
"And so, we discovered that education is not something the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being."
-Dr. Maria Montessori
Imparting Quality Education
Education is a very exciting space at the moment. It is even more exciting with the technological advances and usages in the field of Education. Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality is crucial in enhancing children's learning experience. However, as a preschool, we believe in minimum screen exposure and more hands-on activities, which will help in developing a child’s focus, confidence, and independence.
The school introduced the STEM Lab in 2022. It encourages children to make creations using something similar to LEGO Blocks.
The school also uses technology daily to research activities for children, and they started their YouTube Channel to help parents and teachers across the world with the preschool teaching ways-https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfwqHCAkG87LfcJbbKAzm4w
A Decade of Excellence
The institute is proud of its existence and survival through the challenging covid years. As the saying goes, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste!" They didn't. The team is even more creative and robust with the online-teaching competency. Thanks to Covid! The success mantra is dynamism!
About Preschooling
The preschool industry is set on a growth trajectory, with more and more parents realizing the importance of preschool and how significant it can be for the development of young learners. That said, the school aims to see itself not as a pre-primary school but as an elementary one. They also want the magic of the Montessori Method to continue into the Primary Years of learning.
A Message to Budding Entrepreneurs
To all the budding entrepreneurs in this domain, "Education is a highly enriching and satisfying field; you feel empowered and immensely joyful to see the significant changes in the children's development. Do it for passion, and the world will be a different place!"
