What am I doing at the school?
I am teaching English in all the classrooms/levels. In addition to this, I have a weekly drama class with the adolescents that is also helpful for the students to learn English. I am also able to do some Montessori lessons in English supporting areas such as math and cultural studies.
What is my professional experience?
I graduated from Butler University with a BA of Arts- focusing on theatre education. After graduating, I spent some time in Chicago working as an actress and also with the education department at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre (CST). At CST I developed study guides for productions that included teaching activities and lessons aligned to the Common Core learning standards. I also worked with their high school program that had a unique approach to a production of a Shakespeare play performed by thoughtfully selected Chicago Public School students and teachers. After a few years I decided I wanted to have more time in the classroom and moved down to New Orleans to teach a 1st grade traditional curriculum at a new school that was opening. After that first year teaching, I knew that I loved teaching but that I was interested in alternative schooling. This led me to being hired as a Montessori Guide for 1st-3rd grade at a public Montessori school and I began my training at Houston Montessori Center. I stayed with the school until 2020 when I decided to move home and began teaching at a private Montessori school in Indiana.
Why did I decide to become a member of the Labyrint School Guides Team?
Once I began teaching Montessori, I understood how passionate I was about Montessori education and I felt very fortunate to have the experience teaching Montessori in America at both a private and public school. Eventually I realized that some choices and regulations imposed by the government were impacting Montessori education greatly and I was not so happy with the outcome. I knew I was done teaching in America, but not done with Montessori. I began to search for schools abroad and I so luckily found Veronika and she told me about Labyrint. I did thorough research and searched through all news or social media posts and got increasingly excited about what I was learning about the school and community. It was an extremely exhilarating time for me- every post or photo or video where I learned more about this beautiful school made me feel like it was the right choice. Now that I’m here I can confidently report that it absolutely was the right choice. This school is such a rich community and the students are so respected here and have the freedom to enjoy, and thrive, in their Montessori education.