History of Alcuin Montessori School

Alcuin ("Al-kwin") Montessori School was established in 1961 by a group of Oak Park area parents following a visit by one of the founding parents to the nation's first chartered Montessori school, located in Stanford, Connecticut.

This first Montessori school, Whitby Montessori, was founded in 1958 by Nancy Rambusch who was trained in the educational philosophy of Maria Montessori. Her school began in a barn on the property of Eunice Shriver, John Kennedy's sister. The Whitby School today occupies twenty-four acres of scenic land in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Inspired by Rambusch's work, a parent from Oak Park went to observe the Whitby School and returned to begin Alcuin Montessori School in Oak Park as the second chartered Montessori school in the United States and the first in the Midwest. Alcuin opened its doors in September of 1961 with Mary Flynn as the directress, twenty-four children, a morning and an afternoon class for preschool aged children.

Alcuin has been located at several sites in the Oak Park-River Forest area and is currently located at the First United Methodist Church just north of Lake Street in downtown Oak Park. Today Alcuin has roughly 190 students ranging in age from 12 months to 14 years and 30 employees. In the fall of 2008, Alcuin opened a new Middle School at a satellite campus at Gale House in Oak Park, adjacent to Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple.

Saint Alcuin

The founding parents of Alcuin chose to name the school after a man who brought education to the common man. Alcuin is named after an English monk from a high-ranking English family of Charlemagne's time. Alcuin entered a school in York at the age of ten and eventually became its headmaster. In 766 A.D. Prince Charlemagne began a palace school in Aachen, Germany and asked Alcuin to be the headmaster.

Alcuin's Symbols

Two symbols have endured through time: The school's mascot, "the Rock", was unearthed in 1968 when Alcuin was building its first school at Ridgeland and Randolph Street in Oak Park. The Rock was moved in 1979 to Alcuin's new Washington school site on Keystone Avenue, in River Forest, and again in 1997 when it moved to its current location.

Alcuin's logo symbolizes education based on essentials. Its primary shapes (square, triangle, and circle) and its use of the primary colors (red, blue and yellow), were designed by Fred Roberton, an industrial designer and former Alcuin parent and Board member.