Classroom Setup Bootcamp

A 21 Day Intensive for Montessori Early Childhood Professionals


Seemi Abdullah

A Structured Program to Help You Prepare Your Classroom Environment and Get Ready for the School Year


100% Online | Lifetime Access


2024 price: $350/person

Registration will re-open July 2025




Module 1

Planning

Teacher Workstation

Get your own supplies in order before you try to tackle anything else.


Assistant Training Plan

Make a plan for how you'll work with your assistant/co-teacher for optimal results.


Routines and Procedures

Plot out all the routines and procedures you should have in place to foster independence.


Family Relations Plan

Map out how you will build a strong partnership with your students' families.


Shelf Map & Floor Plan

What exactly will go on your shelves and how will your shelves fit in the space available?


Record Keeping

Set up your systems for tracking and recording student progress.


Module 2

Organize Your Materials

The Cultural Area

Set up your Science and Geography shelves and storage.


The Practical Life Area

Set up your Practical Life shelves and storage.


The Sensorial Area

Set up your Sensorial shelves and storage.


The Math Area

Set up your Math shelves and storage.

The Language Area

Set up your Language shelves and storage.

Rotations Plan

Make a plan for rotating your materials during the year.

Module 3

Prepare for the Start of School

Design Features

Add a layer of beauty to your environment and finalize your layout.


Prep For New Students

It's time to start personalizing the environment for your students!


Plan for First Weeks

Create your game plan for the first weeks of school.


Volunteer Work Days

Prepare for a successful volunteer work day.


Final Touches

Leave some margin to finish any last minute tasks.


Maintenance

Put systems into place to streamline the rest of the school year.


Seemi Abdullah

Seemi holds an Early Childhood credential from AMS and a M.Ed. from Harvard University. She has been in Montessori for over two decades, as a 3-6 teacher, school administrator, and school owner. She is the founder and owner of TrilliumMontessori.org.
Seemi is the main instructor for this course.


Inside the Bootcamp

Take a closer look at what's included in the course. If the Bootcamp is out of your budget, we recommend watching this video to design a classroom setup agenda for yourself.
Recorded 2016. The dates mentioned in this video do not reflect the current year's schedule.

Storage Room Inspiration

Virginia Lozuke gives us a tour of her classroom storage and talks about her experience with the Bootcamp. 

Bonuses

Delve a little deeper with our guest speakers and bonus resources

Tammy Oesting

Tammy shares her insights about how lead teachers can work more effectively with their assistants and co-teachers. 


Tammy Oesting is an internationally known Montessori keynote speaker and teacher trainer. She holds AMS certifications for the Primary, Lower, and Upper Elementary levels, and has over 17 years of experience in the classroom.

Virginia Lozuke

Let's go beyond pouring and spooning! Virginia shows us how to set up our practical life shelves to meet the developmental needs of our students.
Virginia is the head of school at the Montessori Farm School in Durham, NC. She has worked with the Montessori 3-6 level for over 15 years and has also served as an instructor for an AMS Montessori teacher certification program.

Carolyn Lucento

Carolyn shows us how to set up a music shelf for the classroom.


Carolyn Lucento has over 30 years of experience in Montessori. She has been a teacher, school owner, and Montessori teacher trainer. Carolyn is also certified in Orff-Schulwerk and teaches music at a number of Montessori schools.


Andy Lulka

What are we doing all this for anyway? Andy discusses the spiritual preparation of the teacher and helps us get in alignment with our purpose as we head into the first day of school.

Andy Lulka is a certified 3-6 teacher and holds an M.Ed. in Montessori Integrative Learning. She also has experience in various capacities with every age group from Toddler through Adolescence. Andy is widely known and deeply respected for her ability to articulate the nuances of Montessori practice and the inner preparation of the teacher.


At Home in the Montessori Children's House

The author of this amazing guide, Mary Flewelling Pinchen, has made a PDF version of this book available for all Bootcamp students! It lays out step by step instructions for how to manage the first days of school and set up classroom procedures to help children be independent in the classroom.


...and More!
Declutter Your Classroom
by Seemi Abdullah

The Prepared Environment
by Jana Morgan Herman

Special Considerations for Public/Charter Schools
by Nancy Schaitel



Reviews

Bootcamp broke down the tasks of getting ready for school into manageable sections and gave me motivation and inspiration to work on each task with excitement.


I was AMS certified in 3-6 in 1997 and 6-9 a few years later. I taught for several years before staying home with my children for a while. In 2014 I opened my own school in my home and have been loving every minute of it.

I decided to sign up for Bootcamp after discovering that it wasn't just for new teachers like I had thought. I am SO glad I did! It was worth every penny! Bootcamp broke down the tasks of getting ready for school into manageable sections and gave me motivation and inspiration to work on each task with excitement.

I looked at each area of my classroom in a whole new light. I made numerous wonderful changes that I hadn't thought of prior to Bootcamp. I made changes to my floor plan, I was inspired to make new works, I changed my record keeping method, my parent communications, my planning, my organization, etc.

I also loved the supportive community formed in the Bootcamp Facebook group, this was crucial for me since I don't have co-workers. I feel like I was getting into a rut and Bootcamp rescued me from it. I'm so happy with the results and excited for school to begin! Thank you so much, Seemi! I'm already thinking about signing up again next summer!!

Jennifer Nichols
I am enjoying the bootcamp so much! I am AMS trained and have worked at a small public charter school in eastern NC for fourteen years. I began as an assistant and became a lead teacher in the children's house 9 years ago. We don't get many opportunities to get out of our classroom to observe and/or rejuvenate! This bootcamp has been a wealth of information! I have also enjoyed the posts from our classmates. I can't wait to implement all the new ideas swimming in my head! Thank you Seemi. This was so needed by the Montessori community!
Sara M.

Seemi, I have been loving your class. This year we are revamping the classroom. We are adding a transition year classroom to work into lower elementary with a new teacher so I am slowly working through your bootcamp class. I hope that there will be ample time to catch up as I don't want to miss anything. It's very inspirational to see other classrooms. Thank you for doing this class it has helped me feel much more prepared and together!
Jane M


Thank you so much for taking the time to put together this fabulous class. I learned a lot. It was a well designed course, very thorough, it will be very useful to me when I open my school. I love the videos. Your classroom is a model for me. It is so well organized and pretty. I wish other students find you and benefit from your expertise. Again thank you, thank you from the bottom if my heart.
Carmel N

I took the Classroom Setup Bootcamp after working in a classroom for almost ten years. It is hands down one of the most complete, relevant courses I have taken for professional development. A year has passed since I completed the course, and I can say it works! We greatly improved parent relations, had a working document for substitutes, a room that saw children happily engaged in every area, with no bottlenecks. I am so happy I took this course, and will be using elements from it every year.
Julia Coleman


Normally, when I take a workshop, seminar, or online course, I expect I may learn a few new ideas. However, with this course, I had trouble keeping up with all the practical ideas, relevant information, and amazing resources that I received every day. "Bootcamp" describes it very well!

I've been teaching preschoolers for 25+ years mostly in a traditional classroom setting. Upon completing my NAMC Montessori (3-6) training a few years ago, I started to slowly integrate it into my existing program but wished to more fully incorporate it this upcoming school year.

The problem was I still had many questions so I turned to the internet which led me to the Trillium Montessori website and this course. What a lucky find! It has been, to say the least, invaluable! From setting up record keeping, to creating shelf maps, to what's in the language area. It has all been extremely helpful.

I would recommend this course to anyone who is new to Montessori or anyone who needs guidance in refining and organizing their program. Thank you!

Meg Herron - NAMC, Primary (3-6)


Seemi your program is just awesome and very helpful, especially for those of us who are new to Montessori. The ideas, resources and depth of information is so vast and practical.

My name is Nyamikeh and I have a Foundation certificate on Montessori pedagogy from MCI ( UK) (0-6 years). I'm a retired insurance professional (2yrs now). I have a preschool in Accra, Ghana where we use the traditional method. But now incorporating the Montessori methods. I have been teaching the Montessori method for one year now.

I'm so glad I took this course because it has given me the chance to set up my Montessori room without mental sweat! Physical yes because there's so much to put together. I found the lesson on shelf maps particularly helpful because it made putting the activities on the shelves easy. It was also comforting that members in the group wanted to share their ideas.

I would recommend this course to anyone interested in getting a well thought out efficient classroom.
Nyamikeh K - MCI - Foundations (0-6)

Thank you for the wonderful videos explaining Language with such detail. I loved loved loved the way you have your language area organized. It makes so much sense your way.
Andrea R

Thank you so much for this course! It gave me the needed refresher and excitement to approach my 12th year with renewed commitment. I love the parent communication piece... it gave me a nice streamlined model for communication.
Amanda E


I'm so glad I signed up for the course because it really appealed to my essentially organized nature and broke up all the dozens of tasks into digestible chunks.

I earned my AMS certification a year ago and last year worked as an assistant in the same classroom where I did my year-long internship (while working as an assistant teacher). When one of our teachers left I was encouraged to apply for the job and at first I declined. I wasn't sure I wanted to take on the added responsibility, especially since Montessori is a second career for me – I worked in journalism for 40 years and am 64 years old!

The teacher organization material (the notebook system) was particularly useful, as was the shelf mapping exercise. The shelf mapping helped me edit the shelves left by the former teacher, a veteran teacher who has naturally modified works and methods through the years. By mapping, I could guarantee that I wasn't missing any essentials but still clear out materials in a very crowded classroom so that I had space for my own ideas and more space for the children to move around the room.

I liked that much of what was in the videos was repeated in the text, so there wasn't a need to take prodigious notes while watching the video. The external resources were great, too, especially for a new teacher who is just finding her way through the Montessori universe."

Debi B - AMS, Primary (3-6)


Your advice and wonderful ideas for the Teacher Work station are what I appreciated the most. So inspirational! This is an area that I fall so short on. I spend a lot of time tweaking details for the children's environment and neglect the adult's portion. Thank you so much for bringing this to my conscious mind so I could attend to it. The way you do this is so very helpful and made the setting up easier. It is always easier when someone else has done all the hard work!

I appreciate your generosity in sharing all your work with us. The little parts I have completed, beautifying my Binders, has made such a difference and now I look forward to getting them out and am not ashamed to set them out on our Filing cabinet.

I have been a Primary guide since 2000. I completed my AMI training with Lilian Bryan. I thoroughly enjoyed being part of this group. Thank you for having me it has been a great experience.

Heather Thompson - AMI, Primary (3-6)

Frequently Asked Questions

Will this course qualify me to teach in a Montessori school?

No. This is not a Montessori training course.


I can't sign up right now. When will registration open again?

Registration typically opens every year in July.


Are there any admission requirements?

Everyone is welcome to join, however, if you don't have Montessori training, then much of what we do will not make sense to you. I will ask you to refer to your Montessori albums a few times.


Is this course limited to residents of a particular country?

It is open to residents of any country. You just need to have access to a computer and internet. You also need to be able to pay via credit card or Paypal. We do not accept other forms of payment.


I am a Toddler or Elementary teacher. Will this course help me?

This course is for the 3-6 (early childhood) level. It is not recommended for 0-3. Elementary guides will find the Elementary Bootcamp a better fit.


Is this course appropriate for homeschoolers?

No. Homeschoolers will find that much of this content does not apply to their needs. The Montessori Homeschool by Design courses are a better option for home: 


Will I get a certificate at the end of this course?

One certificate of attendance for 40 professional development hours will be provided with this course. In order to be eligible for the certificate, you will need to complete some assignments and submit a portfolio for review. We encourage you to consult with your local licensing agency regarding approval if you are counting on these hours being accepted. You can find more information HERE.

This course is eligible for a CEU upgrade from Loyola University- Aspire for an additional fee.

Are there any required assignments?

You will be required to complete a few assignments as documentation for your certificate of completion. If you do not require a certificate, the assignments are optional. As with any course, you will get out of it what you put into it. The goal of the course is to guide you towards getting your classroom ready for the school year.


I don’t have a Facebook account and I don’t want one. Will that be a problem?

A Facebook account is not required. Membership in the private Facebook group is optional. It is available as an extra resource and forum for participants to discuss progress and share pictures etc.


I don’t have access to my classroom right now. Can I still take the course?

Yes. You will have access to the course content online. Start working through it at your own pace when you are able.


I am not a Montessori teacher but I do teach in an early childhood classroom. Should I take this course?

If you do not have Montessori training, the discussions about curriculum areas may not make much sense to you. However, you are welcome to join us if you feel the sections on organization and planning will be helpful to you.


How long will I have access to the course?

You have access for the lifetime of the course. As long as this course is available on this platform, you will have continued access! Once you have registered, you may log in anytime and view the contents at your convenience.


I can't afford the price. Do you have any discounts or payment plans?

We announce any sales and special offers in our newsletter. You can sign up here.


I don't need all the components of this course. Can I buy sections or downloads separately?

The components of the course are not available separately.


Can I download the videos?

No. The videos may only be watched streaming online. This requires a fairly reliable internet connection.