The Power of Starting Where We Are: A Montessori 6–12 Curriculum for the Age of AI — Slide Deck (Montessori Aotearoa New Zealand Webinar, September 23, 2026)

Abstract

Slide deck for the webinar The Power of Starting Where We Are: A Montessori 6–12 Curriculum for the Age of AI, presented for the 6–12 teachers of Montessori Aotearoa New Zealand on September 23, 2026. Across 37 slides the session opens with the policy landscape of Aotearoa New Zealand, the Ministry of Education's generative AI guidance, NZQA's rule for NCEA external assessments, and the Netsafe Kit, then frames the Montessori classroom as a living algorithm and presents the mapping of the didactic materials to AI-era competencies through the Class Posters, environment by environment from 0–3 through 12–18, with the 0–18 classical vocabulary page. The 6–12 arc follows, from highly informed researchers to highly informed creators: A Cosmic Story: The Coming of Technology, keyboarding taught together with digital citizenship, a child-built timeline of emerging technologies, special research and the sketchbook, the cooperative person-and-AI game, Prompt Discussions, makerspace work, community speakers, and, where a school chooses interaction at 9–12, group-built chatbot agents governed by school policy and a signed family agreement, with a student Environmental Impact Tracker kept from first use. The Innovation Lab environment shown in the photographs was created by the educators of the technology team of the AMS Innovation Fellowship Think Tank.