“…behavior management isn’t a one-size fits all solution–solutions are dependent on each child’s situation.”
Tell us about your professional background. I’m a registered early childhood educator, with a specialty in Autism and Behavioral science. I also hold a Montessori Casa certificate from a MACTE accredited program. I’ve had over 10 years of experience working with children, 5 of which was in a Montessori school.
What constitutes good early childhood education? For me, good early childhood education requires a holistic approach on a child’s development. This means providing children with support in their emotional, physical, and academic development. It requires teachers who display an empathetic and evidence-based, knowledgeable approach towards teaching young children.
Expand on your belief that good early childhood education should be accessible to everyone. Good early childhood education provides children with a head start in life. A lot of societal problems can be avoided by providing every child with quality early childhood education. I’m not just talking about a drop-in centre, but instead, early learning centres that build the foundation of emotional regulation, creative freedom, displaying socially acceptable behaviors, letter recognition and numeracy in young minds.
Tell us about FRESH Education and how it was born. It started off as Fresh Education, but I did a rebrand to Fresh Montessori. This was all born during COVID. It first started out with me creating physical products for parents to help teach their children at home. I made Sandpaper letters and numbers, and provided parents with step-by-step instructions (written and videos) to teach their children phonics at home. I did this because I saw the struggle children had re-adjusting to school after being home for so long.
Eventually, I faded this out and moved on to writing my parenting book entitled ‘Fresh Montessori’ where I provide parents with my 5-FRAMEWORK to help them learn how to teach their children at home.
In this book, parents are provided with 50+ Montessori activities that they can implement at home without needing to buy expensive equipment.
I’ve also written 3 children’s books as of now, which are a part of a series of books that will support a child’s journey to independent reading. With each book is a QR code where I read the books together with the child to ensure they’re receiving the most from it.
What is one of the most common questions parents have for you? Although I focus a lot of my time on teaching parents how to get their children to read, surprisingly most parents would actually ask me how they can deal with their children’s behaviors. I guess because of my specialty in Behavioral science. When this happens, I would often tell them that I would need to observe their child in the given state and see how the parents respond to it. This is because behavior management isn’t a one-size fits all solution, but solutions are dependent on each child’s situation.
What led you to write Fresh Montessori? I’ve always wanted to write a book that will help parents. COVID was what really pushed me because that’s when I saw how much of a need it is for parents to know how to educate their children, and not simply relying on the school system to do it for them.
What did you learn during the writing/ researching process of Fresh Montessori? I’ve learned how there actually isn’t a lot of research being done in the field of Montessori education (not as much as I’d hoped). Many of the resources I found were in support of how the philosophy and method works, but very few had actual strong evidence to show the benefits of Montessori school in children to adulthood.
What have you learned since starting your business? I’ve learned that to create impact in the lives of children beyond my classrooms, I would have to be not just an educator, but an entertainer. Unlike the classroom, as a creator, it’s not enough for parents to hear and know what your credentials are to trust you with their child’s education. One of the hardest things about what I do is figuring out how to develop trust with parents who will probably never meet me in person. That’s where social media has played such a huge part in my business.
What is next for you? In the future, I would love to do my own research to see the long term effects that Montessori education has on children – those who continue to pursue private education, and those who transition to a public school system.
I’m currently creating online courses to help teach parents how to bring the Montessori curriculum (primarily language and math) into their own homes. Keep up with Joanna’s work.
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