About M.M.A.

Mrs. Amy B. Kemper, Certified Montessorian Educator (Owner)

Mrs. Kemper is a native of Owensboro, Ky. and graduated from Owensboro Catholic High School in 1997. Following her graduation, she was hired at the Triplett School as an instructional assistant while completing her college education from Portland State University. Mrs. Kemper is a Certified Montessori Educator at the 3-6 , 6-9 and 9-12 grade levels. She takes pride in being a member of The North American Montessori Center. Mrs. Kemper is also certified in The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd at the 6-9 grade level.

Mrs. Kemper has been with the academy since 1998. Over the course of these years, many of her former students have gone on to achieve academic excellence and honors. In January 2007, ownership changed hands and the former Triplett School became Maximilian Montessori Academy. We adopted the name Maximilian Montessori Academy after St. Maximilian Kolbe, an Auschwitz prisoner who was martyred for his belief, and Maria Montessori, the creator of the Montessori method of education.

Mrs. Kemper is married to J. Kemper, Director of Retail & eCommerce Marketing – North America for Linde, plc. Jarrod and Amy have four children: Sydney, Kolbe J, Kiley, and Mya Grace, all of whom have attended MMA.

Maximilian Montessori Academy (MMA) is a private school, founded in 1988, which serves Owensboro and the surrounding area. We educate children from preschool through the completion of the high school years. MMA is pleased to be an outstanding source of schooling for local families and shares the goal of all schools: to provide children with the best education possible. We offer a small, carefully-designed environment that provides some features that cannot conveniently be offered in a more traditional school setting.

Along with academics, character and morals are taught in our school. All teachers and schools shape character, either knowingly or unknowingly. At Maximilian Montessori Academy, we value honesty, consideration, fairness, integrity, courtesy, joy, independence and other essential qualities that help children become responsible members of society.

We believe that children’s capacities to recognize and enjoy truth, beauty and goodness are just as deserving of nurture as their capacities to read and to calculate. We openly accept responsibility for this nurture-based approach to education, and expect whole-hearted support from each child’s parents.

The school is fundamentally Montessori in approach, meaning that we use Montessori materials and instructional methods; that we encourage initiative; and that each child progresses at his or her own natural pace. As in all schools, our curriculum includes a core of basics, the expected content areas (history, social studies, science, geography, etc. ) plus music, art, drama, physical education, foreign languages, field trips, and computer competence. We emphasize independent research, pride in achievement, self-management, and respect for the rights and feelings of others.

The Montessori method is not new; it was developed by Dr. Maria Montessori in the early part of this century and has spread throughout the world. The hallmark of this method is respect for the child. We allow children great freedom and we also teach them how to use this freedom wisely. The result is a love of learning and a degree of responsibility and independence rarely found in traditional educational settings.

Because we emphasize individualized education, all children progress as rapidly as their capacities allow. No child is ever held back to the average level of the class or to arbitrary standards expected of a particular age or grade; likewise, a child who encounters a difficulty in learning will be given ample time and additional instruction to accomplish mastery. Naturally, the concept of grade placement is meaningless in such an environment, except in its original sense of number of years in school. Maximilian Montessori Academy has children of widely varying ages together in the same class, a lifelike setting that has both social and academic advantages.

Although we hold high expectations of our students, we neither pressure them nor limit their learning to basic skills. Attitudes toward school acquired in the early years persist into a child’s later education and must not be neglected. School is a major influence in the development of a child’s self-concept, so we always work to maintain an environment which promotes this development and enhances self-esteem. Our children learn broadly, they learn how to learn, and most importantly, they are helped to enjoy the learning process.

In the years since we first opened, our students have demonstrated uncommonly high growth rates in traditional areas (such as reading, mathematics and science), significantly higher-than-average measures of self-concept, and at the same time have acquired the initiative and responsibility necessary to handle our unique, nontraditional environment. Because our instruction is individualized, qualified children may be admitted at any time during the school year, provided that we have openings at that age level.

At Maximilian Montessori Academy, we believe strongly in what we do and we also believe that a child’s education will be far more important to the quality of his life than many parents realize. We are proud of having achieved our goals and of demonstrating the vital role of free enterprise in our country’s most important resource: the education of its people.