Hi, I’m Chelsea.
My life changed after a trip to a used bookstore, where I found and read E.M. Standing's Maria Montessori: Her Life and Work.
What I found there was a model for life and education that served me as an adult and empowered me to serve children with the respect and gravitas they deserve, but do not always receive from our dominant culture. I wanted to walk that path alongside Elementary children - the most imaginative, curious, and skilled of all.
I trained and earned my AMI 6-12 Elementary credential, completed an M.Ed in Montessori Education, and have spent over a decade in Montessori spaces - physical and virtual, in the classroom and behind the scenes of the schools that make classrooms possible.
In administrative leadership at a teacher training program, I helped to run the very kind of training that shaped me. Later, I stepped into program support and product development at a national level - work that taught me how the same Montessori principles that guide one classroom can transform education in the home setting.
In every one of those roles, I found the same formula underneath the work: a life defined by a continued path of self-construction, awareness of (and gratitude for!) the grand mysteries of the universe, and realization of the interconnectedness of it all.
A New Chapter
Montessori has always talked about the prepared environment but just as important - and less often named - is the prepared adult: the teacher or parent whose own awareness and intention shape everything a child experiences.
That's where my work lives now. I coach teachers and mentor parents toward that clarity, and I design the classrooms and homes around them, too.
Coaching Teachers
I work with teachers on the beliefs, behaviors, and ways of being underneath their Montessori practice, so change grows from the inside and lasts.
Mentoring Parents
I mentor parents of elementary-age children (6–12) as they move past what worked for a younger child and find a new way of parenting for who their child is becoming.
Designing Space & Systems
I design spaces and the systems behind them, choosing tools and routines that grow the specific skills a child is developing, not just rearranging furniture.