Natural Discovery Montessori School is a member of the American Montessori Society (AMS) and follows the AMS Code of Ethics.

The American Montessori Society (AMS) was founded and supported in 1960 at Whitby School in Greenwich, Connecticut, under the direction of Dr. Nancy McCormick Rambusch, appointed representative of the Association Montessori International. The incorporation declared AMS a nonprofit, non-sectarian association of teachers, teacher education programs, parent study groups and schools, with a mission to promote the principles and practices of Dr. Maria Montessori within the context of the American culture. Publication of Rambusch's book, Learning How to Learn, in 1962 helped to increase public awareness of something "new" on the American educational scene. By 1963, AMS had succeeded in becoming the foremost Montessori center in the country for professional educators, philosophers, physicians, parents and the media.

The national office was moved to New York City in 1963 and AMS was established as an autonomous entity separate from Whitby School. At its first national conference in Chicago, 60 papers on "Montessori and Early Childhood Education" were presented to more than 500 registrants. Between 1963 and 1970, school membership grew from 29 to 400 schools.

Successive boards of directors, elected by and from the membership, determined all matters of policy. Committees, sections, and commissions, were organized and reorganized to carry out the work of the organization in the rapidly changing American culture. The AMS Teachers Section was formed to meet the needs of practitioners, and a quarterly magazine called The Constructive Triangle began publication.

A "School Visitation Process," later renamed "Consultation Services," was started to ensure and encourage quality in the growing number of Montessori programs. In 1965, the first Montessori teacher education program to be incorporated as part of an institution of higher education began at Xavier University in Cincinnati. In 1970, the board designated a Teacher Training Committee, headed by directors of its affiliated programs, to recommend applicants for new teacher education enterprises and began the process of seeking federal recognition for Montessori teacher education. The first fully integrated Montessori public school program started in Cincinnati in 1975.

Between 1970 and 1980, the number of the Society's member schools passed 550 and its teacher education programs reached 40. A School Accreditation Program was initiated in 1981; in 1983, all accreditation functions for teacher education were moved to an independent agency, the Accreditation Council for Childhood Education Specialist Schools (ACCESS). In 1985, AMS sponsored the first Teachers Research Network (TRN) program with the goal of developing a cadre of classroom teachers who would be researchers in their own classrooms.

By 1987, the AMS Board of Directors had diversified its own membership to include elected representatives for parents and the public and one representative for each section: Teachers, Teacher Training Committee, and the newly formed Heads of Schools. A reformatted publication, Montessori Life, replaced The Constructive Triangle in 1989. The AMS Teacher Education Scholarship Fund awarded its first scholarships in 1990.

In 1991 ACCESS, the teacher education-accrediting agency was under a new name: The Montessori Accreditation Council for Teacher Education (MACTE). In 1995, MACTE's Commission on Accreditation achieved the goal of federal recognition from the U.S. Secretary of Education and continues to operate as an umbrella-accrediting agency that includes almost 90 accredited AMS-affiliated teacher education courses.

The 1990s found the Board focusing its goals to produce the addition of a Research Committee, completion of a series of position papers, annual awards for the outstanding dissertation and master's theses on a Montessori topic, a new website, a new office location, new strategies for fundraising and additional services and benefits to members.

AMS now supports 11,000 members worldwide including teachers and other individual members, teacher education programs, and schools.

AMS website

Montessori Education
"Montessori education is a flow experience; it builds on the continuing self-construction of the child-daily, weekly, yearly-for the duration of the program. Although Montessori schools are divided into multi-age classrooms-parent infant (ages 0 to 3), preschool (ages 3 to 6), lower and upper elementary (ages 6 to 9 and 9 to 12), and middle school (ages 12 to 14)-the prepared environments introduce an uninterrupted series of learning passages, a continuum. The prepared environments described in this section, along with their physical dimensions, desired outcomes, and documented results, carefully reflect the natural learning characteristics of the child at each stage of development. In Maria Montessori's metaphorical language, "the successive levels of education must conform to the successive personalities of the child.

"The prepared environments and the role of the teacher in the classroom distinguish Montessori from other educational approaches. For example, independent activity constitutes about 80% of the work while teacher-directed activity accounts for the remaining 20%. The reverse percentages are generally true for traditional education. The special environments enable children to perform various tasks which induce thinking about relationships. The prepared environment also offers practical occasions for introducing social relationships through free interaction. The logical, sequential nature of the environment provides orderly structures that guide discovery: Theorems are discovered, not presented; spelling rules are derived through recognition of patterns, not merely memorized. Every aspect of the curriculum involves creative invention and careful, thoughtful analysis. In viewing learning outcomes at each Montessori level, it must be emphasized that why and how students arrive at what they know is just as important as what they know."