Famous Montessori Students

Within our community, Montessori is very new to many of us. I personally did not know about Montessori until I was in high school. We are just a small piece of a very large community. There are Montessori schools all over the world and it is flourishing in many areas. I thought it would be nice to share what other well known people have also taken the Montessori path!

 Here a video of the founders of Google giving credit to their success to their Montessori education!

•  Larry Page, Co-Founder of Google
•  Sergey Brin, Co-Founder of Google. Recently, this article· was written which describes how Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, remembers his Montessori experience.
•  Peter Drucker, Management Guru
•  Prince William and Prince Harry, English royal family
•  George Clooney, Academy Award-winning actor
•  Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon
•  Anne Frank, famous diarist from World War II
•  Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Austrian painter and Architect
•  Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia
•  Will Wright, designer of The Sims
•  Katherine Graham, former owner-editor of the Washington Post. “The Montessori method—learning by doing— once again became my stock in trade…” from Personal History by Katharine Graham
• Sean Combs, Sean ‘P.Diddy’ (formerly known as Puffy) Combs, RAP mega-star
• Julia Child, famous chef, star of many TV cooking shows and author of numerous cookbooks Chef
• Helen Hunt, Academy Award-winning actress
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel Prize winner for Literature
• Joshua Bell, American violinist, owner of Stradivarius violin
• Lea Salonga, multi-awarded Filipino-American singer and Broadway actress
• Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, former editor, former first lady (John F. Kennedy)
• Berry Brazelton, noted paediatrician and author
• Kami Cotler, actress (youngest child on long-running series The Waltons)
• Melissa and Sarah Gilbert, actors

Famous people who chose Montessori schools for their own children:

• Stephen J. Cannell, TV writer-producer-director (The Rockford Files and many other)
• Patty Duke Austin, actress
• Bill and Hillary Clinton, Former President and New York Senator
• Cher Bono, singer, actress
• John Bradshaw, psychologist and author
• Yul Brynner, former actor
• Marcy Carcy, TV producer
• Michael Douglas, actor
• Shari Lewis, former puppeteer
• Yo Yo Ma, cellist
• Willie Nelson, musician, has a Montessori school on his ranch
• Elizabeth Berridge, actress
• David Blaine, street magician
• Jennifer Granholm and Daniel Mulhern, Governor of Michigan

Others with a Montessori connection:

• Bruno Bettelheim, noted psychologist/author, was married to a Montessori teacher
• Thomas Edison, noted scientist and inventor, helped found a Montessori school
• President Wilson’s daughter trained as a Montessori teacher. There was a Montessori classroom in the basement of the White House during Wilson’s presidency.
• Erik Erikson, anthropologist/author, had a Montessori teaching certificate
• Jean Piaget, noted Swiss psychologist, made his first observations of children in a Montessori school. He was also head of the Swiss Montessori Society for many years.
• Mister Rogers, children’s TV personality, strong supporter of Montessori education
• Alexander Graham Bell (inventor) and his wife Mabel founded the Montessori Education Association in 1913. They also provided financial support directly to Dr. Maria Montessori and helped establish the first Montessori class in Canada and one of the first in the United States.
• Alice Waters, restaurateur and writer, is a former Montessori teacher