Alumni Testimonials

Alumni Information

Council Oak was founded in 1990 and graduated its first 8th grade class in 1995. Many Council Oak graduates are now in college and graduate school at various institutions around the nation, such as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Reed College, St. Xavier University in Cincinnati, St. Augsburg, Eastern Illinois, Eckerd College, Howard University, St. John's College Annapolis, Syracuse University and UCLA, as well as in the work force. Radio communications, aviation, political science, education, creative writing, marine biology, marketing, dance, and computer and aerospace engineering represent part of the wide array of majors chosen by our students. Graduates work in areas as varied as computer science, psychology, business, art, Montessori education and the military..

The more recent graduates are attending high schools all over the city of Chicago. While many have attended academically elite schools such as Morgan Park Academy and St. Ignatius - and several have been top students at these schools - each student has followed his or her own individual needs and interests to find the high school right for him or her. Among these are: St. Ignatius, Morgan Park Academy, Whitney Young, Marist, Brother Rice, Leo Catholic, Morgan Park High School, Mother McAuley, The Forum High School for the Arts, Marion Catholic and Evergreen Park High School.

A survey of graduates found them to be unusually successful in high school. Although the Montessori environment of their grade school years was very small and very different from traditional schools, they had typical and temporary adjustment problems to the bigger, traditional settings found in most high school programs. After an elementary career with very little testing, most graduates adjusted to the continuous test-taking in high school within a month. More significantly, our graduates still expressed a high enthusiasm for learning and a rare ability to reason and evaluate the world around them, academic and social.

"Among the brightest, most enthusiastic students...a joy to teach...models of responsibility and leaders in the classroom" These are representative of the consistent feedback we have received on our students from high school teachers such as Clare Concannon at Morgan Park Academy. MPA French teacher Emily Clott said "The kids who come from Council Oak to MPA really love to learn. They ask the best questions!"

The following are a selection of comments our graduates:

Gus Kampf-Lassin graduated from C.O.M.S.in 1995 and attended Whitney Young where he was elected class president. Senior year at Whitney Young, he was featured in a Time Magazine article about students against standardized testing. He said that when he got to high school "I was more idealistic and I had higher expectations for the interactions between me and my teachers and for the work they would give out than other students. The small environment [I was used to] at first seemed to hinder me socially in high school because I wasn't used to large groups of people. But it was a blessing in disguise because I didn't get caught up in the social milieu. And the small environment was intellectually liberating because I wasn't pressured by social concerns, so I could think about other things.

"I found the tendency to take a visual approach to problem solving at Council Oak very helpful. Using the materials helped me to think abstractly, and the methods at COMS didn't prescribe a specific pattern of thought, so it left me free to find my own way to solve problems. I think spending money on my early years in school was really worth it because they were formative."

1995 graduate John Enright is in Aerospace Engineering at UCLA, having attended the U of I Champaign-Urbana for his B.S.and Morgan Park Academy for high school. He said "In high school, I was more attentive and active in class [than other students]. Even in college, I was usually the first one to speak up in class, and that's because we had a lot of discussions and were encouraged to voice what we thought at Council Oak. In high school, I cared about the ideas and information. And, at Council Oak, the way we learned math with materials made the concepts easier to understand. I had a much better grasp of math than other kids in high school because of that way of learning."

John spent one undergraduate semester as an intern at the Boeing Company in Seal Beach, California. He now specializes in guidance and control of multiple unmanned vehicles in the Aerospace Robotics and Embedded Systems Laboratory at UCLA. See http://rigoletto.seas.ucla.edu/Members/jenright

Michael Tucker attended Southern Illinois University, after having graduated Council Oak in 1995 and attending Leo Catholic High School. He said "I am better at communicating with people than other students. That's because I was used to talking to people at Council Oak, and I was at ease with the teachers and students. The whole environment and way of doing things at Council Oak helped me a lot."

Mike graduated with a degree in Art and now works in Videography and Website Design.

1996 graduate Brandice Manuel said: "The hands-on learning - the seeing as well as doing - helped my creativity and made me think more because I had to understand things and how they tie in to harder things later on. This [approach] helped me later because my mind was trained to grasp other subjects. People are always saying to me, 'Brandice, you always analyze things!' And the open classroom, the multi-age classroom helped me to relate to people of all kinds and ages."

"I learned so, so many sports and I had a lot of time to learn each one. Because the emphasis was on doing the skills well, I really knew how to play. In football especially, I learned such a perfect style." Brandice went to the Chicago Academy for the Arts and attended Howard University's Fine Arts program in Dance.

1996 graduate Sean Martschinke thinks that "Learning how to manage my time at Council Oak and, definitely, knowing how to manage on my own was a big help. I would most definitely encourage parents to send their kids to Council Oak. I had been at a traditional school and Council Oak was more relaxed and the individualization was very helpful. There was a focus of attention on each person from the teacher." He went to Marion Catholic High School and Eastern Illinois University..

Kate Conroy graduated in 1997. After attending Whitney Young High School, she went on to Syracuse University. She said that when she got to high school she found that "I had a better feel for my abilities as a student [than other students there]. I could work on my own and I knew what my strengths and weaknesses were."