Our newest product for schools, the Toolkit Curriculum, was released in July of 2020. With schools from all around the world putting the digital curriculum into practice, we thought we’d share one example of how a Kenyan school has implemented the Toolkit Curriculum and the success they’ve had so far!
Young learners enjoy a Toolkit activity!
Ms. Prisca Muyodi, owner of Montessori House in Nairobi, Kenya, was looking to standardize the quality of her teachers. With five early learning centers across the city with over 50 teachers and 500 students, it was challenging to manage the quality of instruction in each classroom: “While we sometimes did spot checks, it wasn’t enough to guarantee that each child was getting a satisfactory education,” she said.
With plans to expand her company with more kindergartens, she had to first ensure that her existing schools met the same standard and that future schools would be high-quality as well.
Are you a school owner looking to standardize your kindergarten or preschool with high-quality materials? Learn more about what the Toolkit Curriculum has to offer or book a meeting to discuss with our experts
Enter HEI Schools. With the Toolkit Curriculum, Ms. Muyodi was able to guarantee that all of her teachers would have a foundation of high-quality activity plans, pedagogy and resources that were in line with her vision of holistic learning. She introduced the platform to her teachers, and they worked as a team to go through the resources and determine how to incorporate them into their classrooms.
In order to localize the content, teachers compared the provided learning matrix to their local requirement. To achieve the rigorous academic outcomes listed in Kenya’s national curriculum, Ms. Muyodi determined that teachers would run one or two purely academic sessions per day in addition to the Toolkit activities.
Ms. Prisca Muyodi, owner of Montessori House
“I think it will be a game changer for our school and our offering. ”
With that being said, the company is currently transitioning to full-time use of the Toolkit Curriculum. The schools currently use a Montessori approach, and only one of the kindergartens is able to function during the pandemic as the national government mandated a shutdown of all local schools. Exempt because it is an international school, the kindergarten is moving toward a purely Finnish approach based on the Toolkit Curriculum teaching program.
Thus far, it has been a smooth transition. The teachers have found that the Montessori and Finnish philosophies align in many ways, and they have been very satisfied with the materials provided. They are particularly excited to see how the Toolkit Curriculum will work when in-person learning resumes next month: “We believe it will be a richer experience with more children attending in-person than we had [attending] online. We are especially excited to see how it will support special needs learners,” says Ms. Muyodi.
The international school is Montessori House’s pilot program for the Toolkit Curriculum. While pre-pandemic plans had been to get all kindergartens on board by January, Ms. Muyodi now hopes that they will all be implementing the Toolkit Curriculum by the end of March 2021: “I think this will be quite a game-changer for our schools and our offering, so we’re looking forward to working together for the long term.”
