Emmett
For the last four years, Emmett has been a teacher "guide" at the only Montessori secondary school in the UK where he leads A-Level Economics.
He also gives weekly presentations and facilitates discussions on the news, current events and geopolitics with students aged between 12 and 18.
He leads classes which weave together current events, Politics, History, Religion and Economics.
The idea of Newsroom Tutors is to bring these classes online and make them available to young people wherever they are.
Working with young people
Emmett is a Montessori guide, which means he is not teaching in a traditional manner. He is here to guide conversations and to stimulate personal enquiry, not to convey a specific list of facts, cover a curriculum or work to an exam. Montessori education prioritises cradling and supporting an intellectual curiosity that comes from within and lasts well beyond school into adult life.
Since 2020, while creating Newsroom, Emmett has worked as a guide at The Montessori Place in Brighton, the only school in the UK which enables young people to stay in a Montessori school environment all the way from 18 months to finishing A-Levels at 18 years old.
Emmett works with 12 – 18-year-olds, leading a range of classes on the humanities: Politics, History, and Religion. He also teaches an Economics Introduction course and A-Level Economics.
The school, and Emmett’s tutoring outside the school through Newsroom, is based on Maria Montessori’s approach to individualised, self-motivated learning. His lessons do not teach ‘this is right’ and ‘this is wrong’. Emmett is in the lesson to offer context, to provide structure and space for young people to learn about today’s complex national and international issues and to develop their own opinions.
Maria Montessori, From her book Childhood to Adolescence:
“Here then is the essential principle of education: to teach details is to bring confusion; to establish the relationship between things is to bring knowledge.”
"Education should not limit itself to seeking new methods for a mostly arid transmission of knowledge: its aim must be to give the necessary aid to human development."
Emmett's first career
How Emmett guides, tutors, and mentors is a function of his entire working life.
He started his career at Deloitte Consulting in London. At 26 he scandalised his parents by quitting that job in the City and becoming a humanitarian aid worker. He spent years supporting survivors of natural disasters and conflict, working for charities and the United Nations in refugee camps and health care settings in Haiti, DR Congo, Nepal and Jordan.
Emmett worked for the Gates Foundation, after which, for three years he was the Executive Director of a charity in New York focused on mental health, burnout and wellbeing for humanitarian aid workers around the world.
Then, after moving to Brighton to start a family, he studied the Montessori approach to education and started working with young people at The Montessori Place.
Emmett now works in a non-traditional school setting and loves it. However, he also loved his time in traditional education. He has a degree in Theology from Oxford University, a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University in New York, where he was a Fulbright scholar. He learned Economics first at the LSE Summer School, then went on to be a teaching assistant in Development Economics at Columbia.
Emmett is DBS certified.
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Clara
Clara recently graduated from The Montessori Place school and is studying her Foundation Year at Art School in Brighton.
During her time at the school, Clara succeeded in getting excellent grades in A-Level Art, English Literature and History, and earning a qualification in film-making by making a documentary about the school, while simultaneously growing into a rock at the centre of the school community.
Clara was twice Producer and Director of the annual school musical, which the young people organise, produce and deliver alone without the teaching staff. This involves coordinating a team of over 50 young people through rehearsals, setting up music and microphones, designing and building their own sets, and paying for it themselves through fundraising,
Clara is the person friends come to for solace and adults go to for advice.
Rudy
Having studied economics and politics under Emmett for three years in sixth form, it was only natural for me to be part of the core team at The Newsroom. I am now an Oxford and LSE candidate, with a strong interest in the hows and whys of the political, economic, and philosophical world. Having also tutored maths since I was 16, I am well-positioned to approach The Newsroom’s students, not just from a technical angle, but from a learning perspective as well. Currently in my gap year, I work and join The Newsroom from somewhere across the world each week.