Maria (she/her) began working at Sunny Hollow in January 2020 in the extended day program and received her Bachelor’s in history and education from Macalester College in May 2020. She will complete her Montessori Secondary credential in summer 2024 through CMSTEP. Fun fact: Maria intended to leave the Montessori world in summer 2020 to attend a different teacher training program (gasp!) but didn’t even make it to the program’s first day. Upon leaving the Montessori environment, Maria realized that the values most important to her as an educator – a continuously adaptive and data-driven teaching practice, a focus on land and place-based identity, an abiding respect for youth and their ideas – are central to the Montessori method, perhaps more so than anywhere else. As though attached by bungee cord, Maria found herself back at Sunny Hollow. Maria is now the Humanities Guide for the Junior High, and spends her days happily posing complicated questions to adolescents and then forcing them to make their own individual ethical determinations in response (she’s mean like that).