Bio

I am a life-long educator. I began my career as a high school math and physics teacher in my native Ohio (US) and in Nepal as a Peace Corps volunteer. After seven years teaching in conventional schools, I switched gears and received my Montessori elementary level certification from Bergamo, Italy in 2004. From that time onwards I have been living, teaching, and working around the world, engaging more and more deeply with how and why Montessori transforms lives, including children’s, adults’ and my own.

For 13 years, I was the lead teacher in elementary and adolescent classrooms in Connecticut (US), Washington State (US), Morocco, and Austria. I loved my time in the classroom, experiencing the beauty of spirit of the Montessori environment across ages and cultures while refining my own Montessori practices and deepening my engagement with Montessori philosophy.

I am particularly passionate about the transcultural nature of the Montessori approach, and as such have been deeply involved in a variety of global Montessori efforts for over 20 years. Inspired by Maria Montessori’s vision for an education that serves and heals the most vulnerable children in society, my husband and I co-founded the House of Flowers Montessori Orphanage in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2002, the first Montessori program in Afghanistan. We lived and worked in Kabul for four years while collaborating with the staff to create a powerful Montessori foundation in the House of Flowers. In 2020 we shifted to a dayschool model, and the Kabul Montessori team opened the Garden of Flowers Montessori Preschool.

This work over the last 20 years, providing authentic Montessori environments for orphaned or destitute children in post-war Afghanistan, has been a defining part of my life. Our Montessori work in Afghanistan at the Garden of Flowers continues to this day, and I continue to support the team weekly as they bravely implement Montessori education despite the drastic return of the Taliban.

I have since become deeply involved in helping strong Montessori programs develop in under-resourced places such as Soddo, Ethiopia, post-civil war Nepal, and Sarajevo, Bosnia, sharing what we have learned over the many years of adapting Montessori education in a challenging context like Afghanistan.

I was not involved only in education, however. Working with organizations such as the UN and international NGOs in Lesotho, Liberia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Afghanistan, and Nepal on projects including women’s literacy, food emergencies, and health clinics dramatically influenced my (initially) very naïve, idealistic views of international aid and the development world. It made clear the absolute importance of moving through the world with humility, respect, and awareness of culture, bias and history.

Later, drawn to a deeper exploration of the Montessori approach as a philosophy, I studied for my Masters degree in Conscious Evolution in 2018.  My work focused on exploring how the structure of Montessori education embodies a more holistic, ecological (indigenous) worldview, offering true experiences with interdependence, agency, respect and interconnection. This is in contrast with the mechanical, linear, reductionist worldview propagated by the structure of conventional education.

This topic continues to drive me; I am intensely interested in the philosophical yet extremely practical implications of a Montessori worldview that transcends pedagogy. I am also vitally interested in how so many aspects of a Montessori environment directly support the recovery of children coming from trauma and adversity, having seen such recovery happen over and over in Afghanistan.

Today I am based in Innsbruck, Austria.

 

Formal Education and Certifications

  • BSEd Physics Education Miami University of Ohio (1988)
  • Certified to teach math, physics, general science for grades 7-12 (Ohio, Washington State). (1988, 2013)
  • AMI Montessori Elementary certification (for ages 6-12), Centro Internazionale Studi Montessoriani, Bergamo, Italy (2004)
  • MA Conscious Evolution (2014) The Graduate Institute, Bethany, CT. Thesis: Montessori Education: What Is Its Relationship with the Emerging Worldview?

Memberships