The Gift of Time: Rethinking High School Readiness
We’ve inherited an industrial model of schooling that treats children like products on an assembly line, spitting them out into massive high schools the moment they hit age 14. But does the calendar actually reflect a child’s readiness for adult-sized pressures? In this episode, Terry Dubow sits down with Tree Sturman, Director of the Junior High at Marin Montessori, to poke at the assumptions behind the traditional 9–12 high school structure. Tree argues that the 9th-grade year is a critical “full cycle” moment, a time when the brain’s “hormonal silt” is still settling and the foundation of identity is still wet concrete.
