Multilingual Montessori

Sophia O’Brien-Udry is a Children’s House guide at a Montessori school in New York City. Although Sophia is monolingual herself, she teaches at a bilingual Montessori school, and we talk about her experiences working in a bilingual environment, and what she has learned about language from her bilingual colleagues and students. Sophia is also the Director of Culture at her school, where she partner...

The guest for this episode is…me! I invited my good friend and former coworker Claudia to interview me about my education background and how I came to start Multilingual Montessori. Claudia was a podcast guest a few episodes back (linked below) and in honor of my 20th podcast episode, I thought it would be fun to be in the hot seat myself. I asked Claudia to interview me and she came up with some...

Siri Panday is the Director of Education for Toddler and Primary at Marin Montessori School in Northern California. Siri is trained as both a 0-3 and 3-6 AMI Guide, and she has worked in Montessori schools as a guide, administrator, and consultant for over 20 years. Early in her teaching career, she had the opportunity to help open a Montessori Children's House classroom in Kathmandu, Nepal, and w...

María Laura Ribadeneira grew up in Quito, Ecuador where she spoke Spanish at home, English at school, and studied French outside of school. She went to college in the US (with me!) where she also studied Italian and Ancient Greek, and studied abroad in Italy and France. After college graduation, she moved to Paris for a masters degree, where she has lived ever since, and just became a French citiz...

Tania Ginsberg-Jambou is a French-American bilingual mom and Montessorian living in California. Tania grew up speaking both French and English with her American father and French mother. Tania and her husband, who is French, have three children with whom they speak exclusively in French at home. Tania is trained as an AMI 3-6 Montessori guide, and before she became a mother, she taught in a biling...

Janina Burmeister is a mom and Montessorian living in Valencia, Spain. Janina is originally from Germany but she has lived abroad for the past twenty years! In this episode, Janina shares her experiences as an expat living in nine countries over the past two decades, and how that has shaped her cultural and linguistic identity. Janina and her husband have a five-year-old son Henry who speaks three...

Claudia Lundahl is an AMI Montessori toddler guide, postpartum doula, and freelance artist living in London, England. One of Claudia’s first teaching experiences after college was teaching English in France through TAPIF, which stands for Teaching Assistant Program in France, where she taught English to French middle schoolers in a town along the Swiss border near Geneva. Claudia then discovered M...

Romali Rosales Chavarría is a Montessori educator, researcher, and mom of two bilingual sons. Romali is from Mexico and lives in Glasgow, Scotland with her family. In the spring of 2021, she published an article in the Journal of Montessori Research called “ Second Language Corner for Children’s House: A Practitioner–Researcher Journey Into Bilingualism in Montessori Education ” in which she share...

Beth Allison is a mom, educator, and entrepreneur who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Beth is Navajo and grew up on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, but she is not fluent in the Navajo language. When her son, who is now 2 and a half, was born, Beth decided to learn Navajo along with him. She quickly found that there weren’t as many teaching resources for an indigenous language like Navajo as there ar...

Andrea Imhof is a PhD student in Clinical Psychology at the University of Oregon. Her research focuses on understanding language development in the early years and how it is impacted by high-stress factors. Before she went into research, Andrea worked as an elementary school teacher and advisor in low-income neighborhoods of New York City. Andrea shares her advice from her dual perspective as a fo...

This episode is all about food! Tina Laboy and Rachel Coleman are the co-hosts of Mom Genes the Podcast. Tina is a Registered Dietician and certified personal trainer who lives in Austin Texas, and Rachel is a Marriage and Family Therapist and a Certified Eating Disorder Specialist who lives in Southern California. Together on their podcast, they take listeners on a journey of unpacking their old...

Welcome to this bonus episode of the Multilingual Montessori Podcast! Since starting this podcast in September, I’ve interviewed ten incredible Montessorians, mothers and child development experts, from all across the United States and the world, who so generously shared their knowledge and wisdom about raising and educating multilingual children from a Montessori perspective. At the end of each e...

Renee Chen is a mom of two girls, who moved with her husband and children from Shanghai, China to Austin, Texas five years ago. In this conversation, Renee shares the joys and challenges of raising bilingual children, and of being bilingual herself, in a country where she isn't a native speaker. She talks about her experience starting a Mandarin-language class for her daughters' friends, and how s...

In this episode, I speak with Ayanna Lewis, a librarian, a Montessorian, and a lifelong learner. Ayanna went to Montessori school as a child from ages 3 to 11, and today she is a Children's House guide in Denver, Colorado. Ayanna and I met during our Montessori teacher training at the Maria Montessori Institute in London. In addition to her AMI Diploma, Ayanna also has two masters degrees: one in...

In this episode I speak with Sonia Cagle, an American mother of two who moved to Sweden with her husband almost four years ago. Neither Sonia nor her husband spoke any Swedish when they moved, nor did their two young children. We talk about what the move to Sweden was like for their family and how the experience of learning the Swedish language was different for each of them. Sonia and I also talk...

In this episode I speak with Jessica Whinery, a Montessorian, mom, and entrepreneur in Austin, Texas. She is an AMI 3-6 Montessori guide who started her own Montessori school in August 2020, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Prior to that, she and her partner Joe took a year off to travel throughout Asia in 2019 with their then-three year old daughter! We talk all about what that experie...

In this episode I speak with Lucie Tamášová, a mother and Montessorian who lives in Prague. Lucie shares her experiences working in Africa over the past twenty years with the NGO that she now runs. She also talks about the joys and challenges of bilingual parenting with five children - Lucie has three children and her partner has two - and how the bilingual experience has differed in raising each...

If you've ever wondered about Montessori at the adolescent level, this is the episode for you! In this episode, I speak with Hannah Ewert-Krocker, a former Montessori child who worked as the director of the farm school program at the Denver Montessori Junior/Senior High School for seven years. Hannah shares incredible insights about Montessori at the adolescent level, the joys and challenges of ru...

In this episode, I speak with Merila, a mom of two who first learned about Montessori when she sent her older son to a Montessori school when he was 22 months old. Her boys are now 6 and 2.5, and we chat about the joys and challenges of parenting from a Montessori perspective, and how Merila went from thinking Montessori sounded kind of cultish to being, as she puts it, a “hardcore” Montessori mom...

In this episode, I speak with Chelsea Daniel, an AMI Montessori guide and certified yoga instructor living in Brooklyn, NY. Chelsea is the founder of Chickadee Yoga, where she teaches children's yoga, prenatal yoga, and postnatal/baby + me yoga classes. We discuss the intersection of mindfulness and Montessori, how to use mindfulness to support children, and how we as adults can use mindfulness pr...

In this episode I speak with Jinny Gonzalez, an AMI-certified 0-6 Montessori guide and the Director of Early Childhood at Austin Montessori School in Austin, Texas. Jinny is originally from Puerto Rico and is a mom to three boys, and she has been working in Montessori for 22 years. In this conversation, we chat about Jinny’s experiences teaching in a dual language immersion Montessori classroom, h...

Welcome to the first episode of the Multilingual Montessori podcast! On this episode, I speak with Tais Zeitune, a Brazilian mother and Montessorian living in London with her Irish husband Will and their two-year-old son Luca. In this conversation, we discuss what first drew Tais to Montessori, how Montessori philosophies have influenced her parenting style, her experiences teaching in a montessor...

Welcome to Multilingual Montessori, a podcast where we’ll discuss multilingualism, multiculturalism, and raising children from a Montessori perspective. I’m Gabrielle Kotkov, an AMI Montessori guide and certified TESOL instructor with a Masters in Child Studies, and I’m the founder of the Multilingual Montessori website and Instagram account. In this podcast, I’ll be interviewing parents who are r...