New school helps ease area childcare shortage, offers music and language skills

CAPTION: Students pick up some foreign language skills by browsing the library at the Torit Montessori School on Bromfield Street. The newly-licensed Torit Montessori School on Bromfield Street has opened its doors this month, adding desperately needed new daycare and preschool slots for parents and their little pumpkins. So far, the school has 11 children, including several from the area, and most are parents who work downtown. The low numbers ensure an enviable low teacher-to-student ratio. What makes the school unique, however, is its focus on teaching their students foreign languages and music concepts to give them an edge in learning. Kristen Mansharamani, executive director of the school, has a Yale degree in ethics, politics and economics, with a focus on Chinese language and international relations, and a Harvard law degree. She worked as a consultant in public finance, and as an attorney at Ropes and Gray until 2006. How did that career path lead to early childhood education? She wished to instill her vision of a base Montessori curriculum with foreign language and music exposure. “I am not teaching, but, rather, am putting together fabulous teams of teachers and independent advisers,” she says. The school teaches Spanish, Chinese and Arabic, languages that the director says she hopes “will be open doors to many types of work opportunities that may present themselves to our children 20 years from now.” The Music Together program encourages children to play instruments, sing songs, and encourages parents to help with a songbook, CD and guidebook. Laura Sabini, who studied with the Center for Music and Young Children in Princeton, directs the music program, Groovy Baby Music, which offers Music Together Preschool classes at the Torit School. "We seek to create a community of music-makers by providing excellent teachers, materials and classroom resources in a developmentally appropriate, engaging and fun, participatory environment that supports and nurtures music development in young children," says Sabini. According to research, language and music skills at early ages may improve multi-tasking abilities, abstract thinking skills that help science and math aptitude, verbal performance on measures like SATs, and even increased gray matter, says Mansharamani. “Our goal is to expose children to the sounds and syntax of these languages that may be far from their everyday. What we know is that hearing a language at an early age aids the later ability to speak the language as a native speaker. . .even if vocabulary is forgotten and relearned later.” Dr. Suzanne Flynn, a long-standing faculty member of the MIT Department of Linguistics, is a member of the school’s advisory board. Says Dr. Flynn, "[One] of the greatest gifts that a parent can give a child is the opportunity to become multilingual. The benefits last a lifetime." Rod Wagner, who works downtown at Bank of America, lives in Fort Point Channel with his wife and son, Jack, who is 2 ½. When they were looking for schools, they knew one of the teachers at Torit, and looked into that school and others in the area. “I love it there,” he says. “She has a very good concept. “They’ve taken a lot of good parts from other schools and created this. We did look at other schools … after a few meetings with the teachers, we were very happy.” Plus, he says, the school provides lunch, which he says is huge. Because of limited preschool slots in the Back Bay and Beacon Hill area, many area schools have an extensive application process to accept new students. Torit is a first-come, first accepted kind of school. “I know that all of the area schools regret that it has been a difficult process for parents,” says the director. “We are happy to take them if they’re obviously interested. We want to be part of the solution for working parents.” The school has three full-time staff members who either have or are in the process of obtaining master's degrees, with another full-time and part-time teacher to be hired. Four independent language and music teachers will come there for one hour a day. “We do not employ teaching assistants at this point, so every child is with a wonderfully educated and experienced teacher,” says the director. The Montessori style of education on the Pre-K and earlier level is designed to introduce concepts often reserved for early elementary. Concepts are introduced intuitively through materials that invite the children to manipulation and discovery. The program is designed to meet the needs of working parents, with hours of operation from 7:30 a.m. – 6 p.m., for infants through Pre-K. Children may come for two-three days a week, or full-time. Parents are invited to stop in during the day to nurse or participate in music or language classes. Tuition at the pre-school level ranges from $1,250 per month for three days a week to $2,400 a month for full-day, five days a week. Tuition at other age levels differs slightly. “We are a very small program at the moment, meaning lots of personal attention to the children as we get started,” said the director. “We have 11 families enrolled, some of them part-time. We are still accepting enrollments, both for immediate enrollment and for a January start date.”