Dr. Michael Dorer
Dr. Michael J. Dorer, a St. Anthony Park resident and Montessorian, international speaker and presenter, has been named one of six distinguished educators to receive the 2017 Wisdom of Elders Award by the Montessori Accreditation Council for Teacher Education
The Wisdom of the Elders Award recognizes educators’ lifetime of dedicated service to Montessori education.
Dorer has been involved in Montessori education for more than 45 years. After beginning as a classroom assistant, he earned a Montessori-education credential from the Minnesota Institute for Teacher Education in 1971. He also has earned early childhood and elementary-school credentials from the American Montessori Society (AMS) and the Association Montessori Internationale. Dorer has a doctorate in instructional leadership from Argosy University.
Dorer taught in the St. Catherine University Montessori Teacher Education Program from 1984 to 1990 and served as program director from 1991 to 2012. He founded the Institute for Montessori Innovation at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, from which he retired in 2015. He also started and wrote the charter for the nation’s first Montessori charter school, in Winona, Minn.
Dorer now serves as a senior consultant for the Montessori Foundation in Sarasota, Fla. He is an active member of the Minnesota Montessori Network, the AMS Dissertation and Thesis committee, is a past president of the Minnesota Alliance of Montessorians, and is an AMS past president. He is also a frequent speaker and presenter at Montessori events worldwide. Dorer’s latest book, “The Deep Well of Time: The Transformative Power of Storytelling in the Classroom,” was released in 2016. Dorer and his wife, Rose, are longtime residents of St. Anthony Park.
