Robert Blodget

Robert Blodget graduated from Willamette University in 1965 with a double major in Social Science and Journalism with an emphasis in Economics and an Oregon Teaching Credential. He then taught 7 years in the Monmouth/Independence School District. He served as Chair for the 8th grade social studies/language arts department, taught speech, drama, directed plays and musicals, and served as Director of the Junior High and High School Choral Departments. During this time he did graduate work at the University of Oregon in Eugene, attended a Communications NDEA Institute at Oregon State in Corvalis, and was chosen by an additional NDEA Institute to study research, evaluation, and development at Teaching Research which was a Oregon Institution of Higher Learning. For this program he developed a curriculum in communication and listening skills, and developed and taught a course titled "Special Projects" which was a student run course that encouraged students to identify projects they would like to work on which would benefit the educational experience of students at the school.

While teaching in the fall of 1971 Robert Blodget received an invitation to become the Director of Research on Teaching for the ANISA project at the Center for the Study of Human Potential at the University of Massachusetts. Robert Blodget joined the project in January of 1972. In the summer of 1973 Robert Blodget then served as Co-Director of the on campus ANISA Lab school along with Nancy Rambusch who was the founder of the American Montessori Society. Both Robert Blodget and Nancy Rambusch earned their Doctorate through their particpation in this program at the University of Massachussets.

In January of 1974, Dr. Blodget then joined the faculty of the Cal Poly Education Department. After 2 years, in 1976, Dr. Blodget was invited to switch to what became the Cal Poly Psychology and Child Development Department. In this department, Dr. Blodget worked with Dr. Bette Tryon and Dr. Margaret Berrio to set up a program for those students interested in going into teaching that would focus on Psychology and Child Development as a preparation for entering the teaching profession. While working as part of the ANISA project, Dr. Blodget learned that Maria Montessori proposed that education should be based upon science and that science should be based upon the scientific study of children and how they learn and develop. That became the basis for his work at Cal Poly. In the process, over time, he served as Director of the Department's on campus preschool lab and as Director of the on campus Elementary school aged lab.

In 1976 Dr. Blodget had an opportunity to attend Montessori training courses taught be Margaret Homfray at the University of California in Santa Barbara. The following summer, in 1977, he attended the Montessori Elementary training conducted by Phoebe Child at the same Universtiy. Then, in 1978, he encouraged his Cal Poly students to attend Margaret Homfray's course at UCSB. At the end of the first week of classes, the students called Dr. Blodget to request that he invite Margaret Homfray to talk at Cal Poly so other students could have a chance to hear her. The end result was that Margaret Homfray received an invitation to teach Montessori at the University. The response was so overwhelming that Margaret Homfray and Dr. Blodget ended up establishing the Montessori World Education Institute to document the work and make information available to the public. Miss Homfray then brought Phoebe Child to California to help with the work and they introduced Dr. Blodget to their friend Edna Andriano.

Meanwhile, Dr. Blodget continued his work at Cal Poly. He developed and became Director of an educational mutli-media technology lab so Cal Poly students could use technoloogy to enhance their own learning and learn how to enable children to use technology to enhance their learning. As a result he became a featured speaker at educational conferences and helped establish the California Technology Project. He served on advisory boards for model technology schools, and wrote the technology component for the proposal for the only America 2000 project funded west of the Mississippi River. That was a 20 million dollar project for Schools in South Central LA. He also worked with Dr. Hutton of the Cal Poly Math department to receive a National Science Foundation grant for conducting research on multi-media development. He has created a complete preschool through elementary school music curriculum and has conducted research on using Montessori principals to enable children to teach themselves how to read using resources developed by Dr. Blodget on an iPad, computer, Chromebook, or other platform.