Born on August 31, 1870, Maria Montessori was born in Italy. Growing up, Italy had conservative values of women, but Maria never listened. In high school, she went to an all-boys school, learning more about math and science. Montessori was encouraged by her mother to attend med school and she did, leading her to graduate with honors in 1896.
Originally, Montessori worked with developmentally disabled children seeing what was the best way to help them learn. From this, she started working with other students, opening up a school to test how to let a kid learn. She discovered that by allowing children to understand topics by themselves and teachers standing back and supporting the child when they needed help, children were able to learn more and be more creative.
To this day, Montessori’s methods are still used around the world.