On Reading: Consistency Is the Curriculum

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What Kate Lechner and Sarah Tupper have built at Indigo Montessori, a Wildflower school in Baltimore, Maryland, isn't a revolutionary reading program. It's something harder to replicate: a school structured to give every child what good reading instruction has always required – consistent 1:1 lessons and real time to read. 

When Kate shares that over 90% of their elementary students are now reading above grade level, many of whom started the year below, the natural assumption is that they must be doing something extraordinary. She'll correct you quickly. "As long as it is phonics-based, the curriculum doesn't really matter. It's the consistency."

Their path here came from public Montessori classrooms, where you get all kids from every background. Early on, they noticed a gap in their elementary training: it assumed children arrived already reading. Many didn’t.

So Kate and Sarah built a system. They assess every child in the first two weeks using a quick phonic screener to give daily, individualized literacy lessons. Silent reading is woven into the rhythm of the Montessori day. And they work constantly to build a culture where every child is a reader, growth at their own pace is celebrated, and no child settles into the story that they're just bad at this.

None of this is secret knowledge. What's rare is a school that actually does it every day.

One child arrived in kindergarten knowing one thing: the letter F says "f." His daily 1:1 lessons were a comfort, and the Montessori environment gave him space to follow his own curiosity, copying books word for word, page after page, books he couldn't yet read. Kate and Sarah trusted the impulse. Months later, he was reading and writing independently. What looked like repetition had quietly built hand strength, letter formation, and confidence on his own terms, in his own time.

Then there's the second grader who arrived with a mind full of prehistoric animals, every fact absorbed through listening, because reading had become a source of shame. Daily individualized lessons rebuilt his confidence slowly, and the classroom gave him the space to pursue what he loved: his passion for research stayed at the center. Now he produces enormous scrolling posters — prehistoric creatures rendered to scale, in his own words — that he unrolls to present to the class. 

This is what a small Wildflower school makes possible. Montessori children self-direct their work for much of the day, which frees Kate and Sarah to observe closely, pull a child aside, and tailor a lesson to exactly where that reader is. In a traditional classroom, where one teacher is instructing the whole class and managing behavior, there simply isn't room for that.

The question isn't only how a school teaches reading. It's what has to be true about the school for good reading instruction to happen with every child, every day.