Parents want the best for their children, and choosing where to place them in school is a serious challenge for most. Imagine being a student again: you walk into class this morning and instead of seeing desks, you see a classroom divided into different areas and a large open space. The teacher walking around says good morning to you and the students are scattered around working wherever they like. It is your responsibility to put your things away and get started. There is no reason to be nervous, but excited, because what you learn today is up to you and you have the freedom to choose how to spend your time. Do you remember the last time you chose the material you wanted to study, instead of sitting down? One technique used by effective teachers is placing students in separate groups based on their level. This technique provides more advanced students with harder work that pushes them and gives intermediate students practice on familiar material. This gives the teacher the opportunity to help students who really need attention learn what they are struggling with. In the Montessori classroom, students work at their own pace on a variety of activities before moving on to new, more difficult material, which makes the system completely personalized for each student. Teachers play an important role in organizing the day and, according to the article “Authentic Montessori: The Teacher Makes the Difference,” written by Alexa Huxel, “an essential element of authentic Montessori is respect for the child through providing a prepared environment that allows children to make choices by encouraging and supporting independence, curiosity, intrinsic motivation and movement” (2). Teachers are classroom facilitators. They explain how to do the task and leave it up to the student to figure out how to do it on their own before reviewing the finished work. Many of the activities are hands-on and encourage learning with visual aids. By letting students work on their own, they develop many skills that would otherwise be unavailable. The environment allows for all seven learning styles (visual, auditory, verbal, kinesthetic, logical, social and solitary) to help students excel in various activities. The classroom environment is informal and accepting of interaction between students. Socialization among children encourages them to work with partners and ask each other for help. Students determine what they want to work on, which benefits them in the way that they will never be left without a task to complete. The classroom is obviously child-centred and, by the nature of the environment, creates a close community between the children. By working together they learn to respect and help each other. Teachers lead by example, so everything they do should not be done for their convenience, but rather how students should actually behave and how to complete classwork correctly. Children are taught to be independent in almost everything they do from the beginning of the day, and as stated by Anu Karna in her article, “Why Montessori?” “Ideally we would not want to protect our children forever, but rather raise them so that they can survive independently of us” (4). The classroom is extremely organized and everything has its place. Children are taught to put everything back as they found it when finished, after using an object for part of the lesson. Teaching the