Draft:Ambleside Schools International

Ambleside Schools International (ASI) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation who offers alternative options for secondary education using the teaching methods of Charlotte Mason. ASI serves both independent schools and homeschooling families by providing curriculum, training, and mentoring using the principles outlined in the six volumes written by Charlotte M. Mason.

Charlotte Mason’s methods of education have been compared to Montessori education, the classical education,  traditional education, and  alternative education.  Among schools and homeschooling families who use Charlotte Mason’s methods, there is a broad diversity of interpretation and practice. ASI practice of the Charlotte Mason’s philosophy is called the Ambleside Method and summarized by key principles through a series of videos.

Background

Charlotte M Mason (1842 – 1923) was a British educator and reformer in England at the turn of the twentieth century. Her principles of education, developed after years of teaching and observing students, received public recognition in the United Kingdom through her work in the Parents National Education Union (PNEU)  and the Charlotte Mason College (House of Education) located in Ambleside, England. Her early work was devoted to training parents and governess tutors, but later expanded as schools in England successfully adopted her methods.  

She began publishing her lectures and articles in 1886 in the form of six volumes:

Volume 1: Home Education; Volume 2: Parents and Children; Volume 3: School Education; Volume 4: Ourselves; Volume 5: Formation of Character; Volume 6: A Philosophy of Education. These volumes are now in the public domain and a number of publications are widely available.  

Charlotte Mason provided an education for young persons rooted in the principles of a respect for their personhood, a wide liberal arts curriculum and a focus on empowering students to become self-educated citizens. She emphasized the use of short and varied lessons, well written books, high quality work and hours of outdoor observation. Narration, the practice of retelling observations and readings, was a methodology of teaching used for all students throughout the school day.

By the time of her death in 1923, Charlotte Mason’s work had gained national acclaim throughout the United Kingdom and schools working under the PNEU program continued through the mid-20th century.

Charlotte Mason and her pedagogy has become a popular approach for modern homeschooling families and Ambleside Schools International has made her ideas accessible for schools.  

History of Ambleside Schools International

In 1989, after ten years in the classroom, Maryellen Marschke St. Cyr began searching for a Christian philosophy of education. She read For the Children’s Sake and began reading Charlotte Mason’s six volumes about education.   

She traveled to England to study with Susan Schaeffer Macaulay (author of For the Children’s Sake), and met some of the last surviving Charlotte Mason Trained (CMT) educators. She visited schools and observed hundreds of classrooms and began to develop a curriculum and pedagogy for schools of the 21st century. Over the subsequent years, Maryellen would become a close associate of others invested in the Charlotte Mason renewal, such as Karen and Dean Andreola and Eve Anderson, a Charlotte Mason trained teacher.

She began implementing Charlotte Mason’s principles – first as a classroom teacher, then as a director of instruction, and finally as a school principal. In 1999, Maryellen moved to the town of Fredericksburg, Texas, spent a year writing curriculum, and launched the first Ambleside School in that town in the fall of 2000.

Central to Ambleside’s mission was the fostering of a renewal of Christian education based upon Charlotte Mason’s philosophy. The first Ambleside Internship was held a few months after the opening of the school in Fredericksburg, TX and soon educators from across the country and around the world began coming to learn of these principles of education.

Responding to interest among educators wanting to start similar schools in the other locations, Maryellen St. Cyr and her husband Dr. William St. Cyr, joined with others to form Ambleside Schools International in 2005 to support the development of schools according to these principles. 

Since the first Ambleside School opened its doors in Fredericksburg, Texas, Ambleside Schools International has grown to a network of 25 schools with locations in the United States, South Africa, Austria, India, Mozambique, and Nigeria.

In 2005,Ambleside Schools International formalized the Ambleside Homeschooling program to support families seeking curriculum and mentoring support. Ambleside Schools International of Southern Africa was later organized to support the many schools forming in South Africa.