Did anyone attend a montessori, steiner or other alt school?

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How was your experience?
Did you feel accepted?

I went to a Steiner school. I loved the arts and crafts and although I faced some teasing,
was a lot more accepted than in public state schools where I moved later. At the state
schools I was an outcast, considered a nerd, and faced frequent sometimes violent harassment.
My friends were the teachers and other "weirdos" like immigrants.
That said, it did wonders for my math and engineering skills, which would have withered at Steiner.

I don't know if it had a name but the elementary school I went to had no grades, no homework, and during the school day you could work on any subject you wanted on your own time. I did manage to have two friends whom I followed around all day long, so I managed okay, and there were some good things about it, like the freedom, but on the whole I think I found it kind of chaotic and I would have preferred knowing what I was supposed to do.

Also when first started, in the second grade, I didn't speak English and had to learn quickly and that was quite stressful, both not ever knowing what was going on because everything was so loose and also not knowing the language.

No one else has been to any alternative school? What about a high school for people who don't do well in a regular high school? I have a friend who taught in one before he retired.

I went to Montessori school. Best experience of my school career. As an adult when my wife and I were looking at schools for our kids we visited a Montessori school. I wanted to sit down there and never leave. Then after leaving (moving in wasn’t a service they really offered) - I saw the price tag. We couldn’t do it. I was very sad. It was many times the price of the school we eventually chose.

The name of the school I went to was Saint Anthony’s in Carney New Jersey. Sadly it is not there any more. It had Montessori for the younger kids and “Extended Montessori” up through 6th grade (age 11-ish). The Math room was full of “manipulatives” (hands on representations of numbers and operations). I think it really helped me with higher math and geometry later on.

i attended montessori and steiner school. i did not feel accepted at public schools after attending those because i felt like my brain somehow got lost - montessori and steiner were my first several schooling years and public school after. i think of those years as this sortof ethereal, colorful learning and that sortof ruined math and science for me because i still have a hard time with those - it seems sharp, cold, colorless.

I think math education leaves a lot to be desired.
Having learned math to a masters level, I know that most of what is taught
at high-school level absolutely fails to capture the imaginative and whimsical side
to abstract math that is actually incredibly important for pure math.

Most of it is simply rote-learning of "recipes" for certain problems, some mathematicians
I have read complain about this. The trouble is mathematicians tend to be so aloof, it is
rare to find a mind that can solve the "empathy matching" problem of communication,
so it remains as it is, kind of bizarre bureaucratically structured thing.

I went to Montessori schools for my first couple of years of schooling. My mother is also a certified Montessori teacher.

Switching to public school felt like three-steps-backwards. It wasn't until highschool that things felt even remotely interesting again.

I went to The New School in King's Langley in the UK. My son also went to a Steiner School too, but in Norwich, East Anglia, UK.

I went to an honors magnet school for high school. I was treated a little better there than any other high school in the community I lived in but was still basically an outcast, even among outcasts.

That said, the school now has a autism program that did not exist when I was in school so I don't know if that would have changed anything or not.