I started teaching in rural Alberta, Canada when I was in First Grade. I felt it was my responsibility to make sure those students who didn’t get their work done in the morning, would work after lunch until their work was done, then they could go outside. And it worked perfectly. Some classmates of mine could do so much work over lunch break! Frankly, I’m surprised my teacher let me do this, in retrospect, but all of us did well that year in First Grade.

Fast forward to my seventeenth summer. I found out that my dad didn’t see a way for me to go to University like my older brother. He had three sons and they would be head of household. I would be a housewife. It would be a waste to spend money on a degree that would never be used. I was so offended that I left home at seventeen to continue my education in the nearest city. I got a job as a live-in house-servant, and enrolled in my senior year. Within three months, I got a new job serving food at a Ukrainian restaurant where I did well with my tips. This job allowed me to get a basement apartment and move out of servitude. From then on I soared! 

I did two years of University in the same city, upscaling my job and then my apartment. The final two years of my degree were in the capital of Alberta. In my third year I was one of a handful of students who taught Monday through Thursday, and did classwork on Fridays. I was working fulltime at a local University in my last year of completing my English degree. Then I was hired to teach in the big city. From there travels took me to the Vancouver area of British Columbia where I continued teaching middle school. 

In 1980, I married a Southern gentleman and moved to the United States. Here I went to work teaching at Heritage University, then Zillah High School as I got my masters in Multi-Cultural Education. This followed with Montessori training on site fifteen years later. Originally, when I looked around to find a preschool for my child-I chose a Montessori School on 48th Ave. It had a pool. It had chickens. And my child loved it. Within a year, in 1993, I took over the space rental and continued the Montessori school there until construction at our current site was completed. One day, driving to see my brother, I noticed a cardboard sign on the hillside. 4-Sale it read. I told my husband to turn the car off onto a sideroad, and we looked up at the house on the hill. I said, “That will be where the new school will be.” “And how will you pay for all this?” my husband asked.” And I quoted an old movie and said, “If I build it, they will come.” 

We moved in at the end of August, 1997. I left teaching in the Public School system when the school got too big for a parttime Director. The addition of the Elementary site at the ranch came as my own children got older. Gifted programs didn’t really start until third grade in our Valley and I wanted to at least bridge this time span. Once we got started, we embraced the whole program and have been certified through the Department of Education, Private School Division grades 1st-9th and have continued since.

Perhaps anyone can teach. But to do a great job in Montessori you have to love the child. We haven’t strayed from the Montessori curriculum as many Montessori schools tend to do when they can’t get the type of staff they need. Some don’t teach Montessori Math, which I consider to be truly amazing. Some don’t teach geography anymore, just because it hasn’t been taught in the United States since around 2015. We live in Yakima, but there is a whole big world out there. I want our students to get the opportunity to travel and live a good life. I believe that happens with real Montessori.  

I had someone ask me, “When do you think you’ll retire?” I thought for a moment and then said, “This would be a hard gig to give up. Every day a child tells me they love me. Every day a child gives me a hug. Every day a child makes a connection or starts to read. How do you just walk away? I love to travel, and at times I am called to do so.  One day, the love of travelling will perhaps take me away. Until then, I will travel to find more unique things to share with the children.”

Disclaimer: Please don’t be upset with my Dad. To be honest-we were poor. I just didn’t realize it. We got electricity when I was twelve. We got inside plumbing when I was sixteen. It was easier to say it would be a waste, than to say, “ We are too poor.” He didn’t close the door. He allowed me to find a door he didn’t know existed. I paid my student loans off before I had my first child. I truly believe a good education is invaluable.