Tina Patel of Albuquerque, New Mexico, started her first business after seeing the needs of at-risk youth in her community. That experience inspired her to found a Montessori school, then an intergenerational program with an elder care facility. Next, her sights are set on correcting what is wrong with communication and recordkeeping from birth to end of life. Patel took time out of her packed schedule to talk with The Montessori Post about her experience and vision for the future of education and elder care.
Tell us about your professional background and what led you to today. “I earned my Master’s in Architecture at University of New Mexico, and was exposed to Dr. Montessori and Howard Gardner from Dr. Anne Taylor. She had come to the School of Architecture from the College of Education because she loved that architects are trained holistically–architecture is math, it’s science, engineering, it’s art, it’s language, creativity, and it is solving problems. Architects take a problem and come up with multiple solutions. Dr. Taylor wished that schools all over the world would try this approach.”
“I then worked at an architecture firm for a year and doing toilet detail day in, day out, made me wonder, ‘Where is the creativity?’”
“During this time I had the opportunity to present a lesson in a 3rd-grade class. But I totally bombed it! The students were looking at me as if to say, ‘Where are you going with this…?’”
“That bothered me. I went back that week with a different approach, and saw a student have an ‘aha!’ moment. The feeling that I had at that point stuck with me.”
Patel noted that New Mexico is consistently 50th in the nation for education. She was inspired to co-found her first student re-engagement program, a nonprofit organization called Rio Grand Educational Collaborative.
She worked with a high school that had the highest dropout rate at the time. “we told the school, ‘instead of dropping students out for truancy, lack of performance or fighting, I said ‘send them to me for 18 weeks.’” She created an 18-week re-engagement program, Rio Grand Educational Collaborative. Through that she realized the cause behind the truancy and dropping out.
”Once I started talking to the children and their parents, I realized that if I had been dealing with what they were dealing with, I would not have succeeded in school either! [These students had been] victimized by gangs, had had abortions, that kind of stuff. But the majority of the things that I found out is a lot of them had to work to help put food on the table.”
Through her work at the nonprofit, Patel began to see that certain restrictions would not allow her to accomplish goals. When my funding was running out, I went to the superintendent and I said that our organization ‘saved you $2.5 million. We’ll need a portion of that to keep this program running,’ and that’s where my disdain of bureaucracy kicked in. He tells me, ‘I’m sorry, that money is already allocated for next year and I don’t have anything left [for your program].’”
Patel lamented the issue to a colleague, who gave her an idea. “He said, ‘how would you like to keep these children for four years instead of just 18 weeks?’” Inspired, Patel, pregnant at the time with her second child, took 9 months off to write two charters–Both serving high school students that included gifted and talented as well as at-risk students.
Patel continued to run into more challenges with the charter schools. In one audit, she was told that because her schools consistently operated under budget, the excess funds would be deducted from the following year’s budget. Later, she was told that because she did not have an education degree, she could not act as a Head of School.
“At that moment I’m thinking, ‘I wrote the charter, you approved it. I have a track record, we’re serving children, they’re succeeding.’ The Department of Education did not care about that. I decided at that time to create my own private school. I didn’t want anyone to tell me what to do or how to do it.”
Patel recalls that at that time, her daughter was enrolled at a local Montessori school, and that she would come bounding into school each day, “without a care in the world.”
She compared that image to the high school students she had worked with at the charter schools. “I know it’s not the ‘have’ versus the ‘have not’ because our family didn’t have a lot of money at the time, yet my daughter loved school. “I remember learning that Dr. Montessori wrote that education begins at birth.” She realized that unlike her daughter’s experience of learning to love school and learning from an early age, the high schoolers from the charter schools did not grow up learning to love learning. That’s when I decided to do Montessori.” Montessori ONE Academy was born.
Patel started with a Primary program, and organically grew Nido and Elementary as the community needed it. Being the entrepreneur and solution finder that she is, Patel then collaborated with her siblings to create a Montessori senior living home that would work directly with her existing school community, called AMARAN Senior Living and Memory Care.
According to the website, ‘following Dr. Montessori’s seven key principles, and a focus on inter-generational programming, AMARAN aspires to deliver a cross-generational experience that offers an avenue to share a lifetime of experience, skills, knowledge, and wisdom to the next generations.’
As Patel and her team did research on senior living’s current practices, she described the commonplace routines as very passive, isolating, and somewhat ‘jail like.’ Coming from an East Indian background, Patel was used to honoring the elders of her family and community, something vastly different than what she saw at the time in her own town. At the suggestion of Kathy Minardi of Whole School Leadership, Patel went on to consult with Jennifer Brush, MA, CCC/SLP and Director of Brush Development.
“Kathy Minardi told me about Jennifer Brush and I went to DC and took one of her workshops. As soon as I took the workshop, clouds parted and everything was just came into focus on how we were going to do this. We have the school, we have space, let’s make it intergenerational programming and let’s try Montessori with our elders in memory care.”
“Our intergenerational program, wow! It’s thriving. They’re cooking together. Elders share family recipes that their moms used to make or that they used to make for their children, and Montessori ONE children go twice a week they cook with the elders.”
We use whatever we’re growing in our garden. We have a gardener that comes to Montessori ONE and he also takes children to AMARAN and elders and children are working together. Flower arranging is the most popular activity with elders. Trader Joe’s down the street heard about it and now they’re donating fresh flowers every week. We’re seeing residents more engaged and more active than they normally would be, and that’s been really rewarding to watch.
The elders have so much knowledge and so much experience that they’ve collected over the years and the love and empathy and acceptance on the children’s side, the unconditional love that they give to the elders is a beautiful thing.
Have people approached you to franchise this model? Patel has plans to open another intergenerational facility in west Albuquerque, still focusing on Montessori design and architecture.
The new facility has a giant open space for gardening and walking and a playground and exercise. There will be an outdoor cafe where our kitchen and dining opens into. Parents can also have coffee there with the elders, making it more of a village type of feeling than just the classroom.”
Patel explains that the elder care facility should reflect beauty and nature, and appear less clinical. “The Department of Health doesn’t want us to do certain things so the biggest challenge is how to marry clinical with creativity.”
Patel mentions visual cues that are in place at Amaran, such as certain colors used on different floors; when a resident gets off of the elevator, they will know where they are, and what to do.
Let’s talk about your tech company. “It’s been a long journey. It wasn’t until I was planning the Nido building that I realized I’m suddenly taking children from birth all the way to their second plane of development and there was no single location to track the child’s journey. We had paper files but nobody really reads the paper files. I thought, ‘how do we communicate with parents how do we make them feel content and and good about leaving their child here to go to work?’ That’s when the idea was created.
Patel used the architecture process once again to come up with multiple solutions to the problem. Inspired by the point of sale software that one of the Montessori One parents had developed in Albuquerque, she hired two companies to bring her vision to life.
Patel’s goal with Education DNA (EDNA) is to take observation and record keeping from birth to end of life. For Montessori schools, she developed Noorana. “Let’s save teachers time. We all were burnt out but no one everyone’s talking about it. I’m hoping that Noorana provides that fresh, modern approach to lesson planning and recordkeeping and the HR side which all administrators hate.” Patel’s goal is to provide Noorana as the approved software in public schools. Patel imagines extending the software offerings to parents as well, to document milestones and their baby’s development, which would in turn be shared as the child moves up into preschool and school age.
Why has no one thought of this before? “I don’t think that most people think it’s a problem. They use 10 different software programs to get through the school day,” not knowing that there could be one central solution. “Let’s simplify our work life so we can focus on our home life.”
Patel isn’t finished with software yet. She sees another problem that needs solving, this time in elder care.
Patel is developing an elder care management software called énora. énora is being developed for home caretakers of “elders with dementia and Alzheimer’s. It would work same way as we do lesson planning, observation and record keeping. Users will see previous hobbies, previous or current passions and skills as well as declining abilities.” énora will help caretakers create Montessori activities to create meaningful experiences and routines while tracking progress.
Another aspect that is still in development at énora is Montessori activity kits for elders. Subscribers will be able to do 17-18 different activities with activity kits, with support and software to track practice, mastery and improvement. The kits and the software would go hand in hand, and be interest based. Patel imagines gardening kits, artist kits and more.
What drives you and keeps you going despite challenges? Patel recounted what she learned from her father. “He taught me to look at a situation not as a problem, but instead as an opportunity. He was in the diamond fields and while all his friends were focusing on diamond polishing because that’s what made money, my dad focused on making the plates that diamonds were polished on.” Patel enjoys looking at the problem and “I know how I’m going to get from A to Z, but with multiple options.”
Patel isn’t done finding solutions to problems. Her next focus? Teacher training and student outcomes in public schools.
“I’ve been fighting to change public education for 30 years.” Patel has been in talks with public school Montessori teachers and her state representatives to improve Montessori schools and teacher training. Her vision is to see a 3-year model in schools, and to facilitate a stipend for teachers pursuing Montessori certificates. Teachers can go from a $40,000 salary to $80,000 or more. Patel explains that highly qualified teachers who can work with students at their pace will make a difference in New Mexico.
“If I can pass this legislation, at least my 30 years of struggle will result in better teachers and a better way of teaching children.”
What would you like to be able to say as you look back on your career? “I’m hoping that in the field of education that we stop putting the adults’ needs first. Let’s think about children.”
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