There is a pattern I have seen many times in Montessori schools.
Someone falls in love with Montessori. She trains, teaches, perhaps opens a small school of her own, and in the beginning she is involved in almost everything.
She talks to parents, guides the teachers, chooses materials, interviews staff and checks the classrooms. If someone is absent, she steps in. If there is a problem, everyone comes to her. She may also be answering WhatsApp messages, checking enrolments, speaking to parents and making decisions that no one else feels ready to make.
At first, this can feel completely normal. After all, it is her school. She started it, she knows how she wants things done, and there may not be a large management team behind her.
But after some time, something begins to change.
The school grows, but the founder becomes more tired. The teachers become more experienced, but they still wait for decisions. The school may look as though it is running well, but quietly, almost everything still depends on one person.
This is where an important gap begins to show itself. Understanding Montessori is not the same as knowing how to lead a Montessori school.
Knowing the Philosophy Is Only the Beginning
In Montessori, we place a lot of importance on understanding the philosophy, and rightly so.
A school cannot be truly Montessori simply because it has beautiful wooden materials on the shelves. The adults need to understand why we observe, why we try not to interrupt unnecessarily, why independence matters and why the environment is prepared with so much care.
But a school is also an organisation.
Even a small Montessori school has staff, parents, admissions, schedules, finances, expectations and problems that need to be handled. In many privately run schools, especially smaller ones, these responsibilities do not sit with different departments. Very often, they sit with the founder.
That is where things become difficult.
Montessori training may prepare someone beautifully for working with children, but it does not always prepare them for leading adults. It does not automatically teach a school owner how to deal with a teacher who keeps arriving late, how to handle conflict between staff members, how to respond when parents are unhappy, or how to stop every small decision from coming back to one person.
Those are leadership skills, and they need to be learned too.
The Prepared Environment Does Not Stop at the Classroom Door
One of the ideas I keep coming back to is the prepared environment.
We think very carefully about how we prepare the classroom for children. We look at the space, the materials, the order, the atmosphere and the way the adult behaves.
But what about the environment we create for the adults in the school?
A teacher cannot do their best work if communication is unclear or if they are always worried about making the wrong decision. A new staff member cannot grow in confidence if they need the founder’s approval for every small thing. And a school cannot become stronger if one person has to keep holding everything together.
The adult environment needs preparation too.
That means making roles clear, setting expectations, building simple systems and making sure people know what they are responsible for. It also means giving feedback, allowing people to learn and helping them become more confident over time.
In some ways, this is very close to what we already believe in Montessori. We want children to become independent, but we do not simply leave them alone. We prepare the environment, give guidance and then step back when they are ready.
Perhaps we need to do more of the same with adults.
Sometimes the Founder Becomes the Bottleneck
This may be the more uncomfortable part.
A school founder can care deeply about Montessori and still become the reason the school cannot grow properly.
Usually, this does not happen because the founder wants control. It happens because they care so much about the school.
They want the standard to stay high. They know how things should be done. It feels faster to answer the question themselves than to teach someone else how to decide. When something goes wrong, they step in because they know they can fix it.
Over time, this becomes a habit.
The founder becomes the person who knows everything, remembers everything and decides everything. Staff begin to rely on them, sometimes without even realising it.
I have met school owners who cannot take a day off without their phone constantly ringing. Every question still comes back to them, from a parent complaint to whether a teacher can make a small change in the classroom.
At that point, the problem is no longer only workload. It is also about how the school has been built.
We would not want children in a Montessori classroom to stay dependent on the adult forever. Yet sometimes, without meaning to, we create that same dependence among staff.
That is worth thinking about.
Leading Adults Requires a Different Kind of Observation
One of the strongest Montessori skills is observation.
In the classroom, we learn not to rush in too quickly. We watch first. We try to understand what is really happening before we decide what kind of help is needed.
Leadership needs the same skill.
If a teacher is struggling, the easiest answer is to say that the teacher is not good enough. But that may not be the full story. Perhaps the expectations were never clear. Perhaps they were never trained properly. Perhaps they need mentoring, feedback or more time.
On the other hand, sometimes we keep supporting someone when what they actually need is a clearer boundary or more accountability.
A good leader has to learn the difference.
That is not always easy, especially for founders who are used to solving problems quickly. Sometimes stepping in is the right thing to do. Sometimes it is better to let the other person work through the problem and grow.
Knowing when to do which is part of leadership.
A Montessori School Needs More Than a Montessori Expert
This is the gap I think we need to talk about more openly.
A Montessori school certainly needs people who understand the philosophy deeply. But that alone is not enough to make a school strong.
Someone can be excellent in the classroom, understand the materials beautifully and have a deep respect for the child, yet still find leadership difficult. Leading a school is different from teaching in a classroom. You are no longer working only with children. You are also working with adults, and adults bring their own habits, expectations, strengths and challenges.
A good Montessori leader has to protect the philosophy while also building a team that can function without constant supervision. They need to know when a teacher needs encouragement and when they need clearer accountability. They need to be able to explain Montessori to parents without becoming defensive. They also need to put simple systems in place so that the school does not depend on one person remembering everything or making every decision.
For many founders, this is one of the hardest changes.
In the early years, being involved in everything may be necessary. The problem comes when the school grows but the way of working does not change with it.
At some point, the founder has to stop being the person who answers every question. The goal is to help other people think, make decisions and take responsibility too.
When I look at it this way, there is something very Montessori about good leadership.
We do not want children to remain dependent on adults. We prepare the environment, offer guidance, observe carefully and step back as they become more capable.
We spend a great deal of time asking whether a classroom is truly Montessori.
Maybe we also need to ask whether the way we lead the school reflects the same principles.
And perhaps this is where the next stage of learning begins for many Montessori educators and school founders. Understanding the child is one part of the work. Learning how to guide adults, build a strong team, protect the philosophy and still allow the school to grow beyond one person is another.
This October, we will be exploring exactly this with Dr. Paul Epstein in Jakarta in our two-day workshop, Montessori Leadership in Practice, on 10 and 11 October 2026.
Paul has worked in Montessori education and leadership for many years, and the focus of these two days is not simply on managing a school. It is about looking more closely at how Montessori principles can shape the way we lead adults, build school culture and support the people around us.
If you are a Montessori school owner, leader, coordinator or educator moving into leadership, this may be a good opportunity to step away from the daily running of the school for two days and look at the bigger picture.
Because sometimes the next step in strengthening a Montessori school is not another material, another classroom or another programme.
It is becoming a stronger leader.
