OUR STAFF

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Head of School - Hanane Zayer

Hanane Zayer has been at C'E Montessori for four years and is our Head of School. Her work centers around maintaining a top-tier Primary and Elementary program while creating cohesion through the curriculum and in our Montessori practice. She supports our teaching staff in developing curriculum and creating the best possible study paths for children at our school. She drives social initiatives at our school. In this, Hanane works hard in creating and maintaining a school environment that is inclusive to all children, teachers and people and works with our neighborhood and communities to partner for the good of the community at large. She organizes our yearly STEM Fair, inviting schools in Williamsburg, and Montessori schools beyond to participate in the event. She also coordinates our school spelling bee and prepares us to compete each year in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. She was born and raised in Queens and her family comes from Morocco. She is an experienced Elementary trained Montessori teacher but has also worked at more traditional schools in NYC and in Charlotte, NC. She loves cartoons, board-games, rugby and gardening.

C'E Community
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Education Director - Katherine Correa Acosta

Katherine graduated from CUNY - Staten Island with a BA in Early Childhood Education and has been a teacher for the past five years. She interned and worked at a Montessori-based school in Staten Island where she discovered the philosophy and loved the feeling of giving children the freedom and respect necessary to grow independently. She was born and raised in Brooklyn and has lived here all her life with three sisters that she still considers her best friends. Her family is originally from the Dominican Republic and she visits her extended family there quite often. She is herself athletic and believes in creating environments for children in the Primary classroom to experience many different opportunities to use and improve on their gross motor skills. Many iterations of her Primary classroom look like mazes or obstacle courses designed to give children opportunities to walk around and explore.

What Makes Montessori Special
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Admissions Director - Mary Beth Kennedy

Mary Beth Kennedy is the Director of Admissions and Parents at C'E Montessori. She is one of the founding families at C'E Montessori. She has three children at C'E, a set of twins in our Lower Elementary program, and another daughter in our Primary (2.5-5) program. She is our prospective parents' first point of contact as they learn out about our school and continues that work curating monthly family events and answering questions for parents throughout the year. Email her if you have any questions about admissions or if you would like a parent's perspective of life at our school.

Email Mary Beth
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Director of Schools - Fernando Camberos

Fernando Camberos is the founder and Director of Schools at C'E Montessori. He was first introduced and trained in the Montessori method and the International Baccalaureate Program at Charlotte Preparatory School and has been in school administration for over 15 years. He has presented at Montessori and IB conferences worldwide about creating sequential curriculum to develop student voices and transforming progressive schools through accountability. He is originally from Argentina but lived in seven cities in three continents before pursuing Education at Duke and NYU and settling in Brooklyn. Contact him with any questions about school, the power of transparency, or to share interesting thoughts about education in general.

A Message from our Director
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Primary Lead and Coordinator - Siri

Siri is a Lead Teacher in our Primary (3-6) classroom and the coordinator of the program. She has lived her life in and around New York City, graduating from the New School with a specialization in teaching Environmental Sciences and Sustainability. In this, Siri carves out one of her most important contributions to the classroom and to our school community in general. When reimagining Peace Education and the responsibility to develop lasting peace in the 21st century C’E recognizes the central importance of guiding children towards protecting our environment. Siri helps in creating and implementing curriculum from the Toddler to Lower Elementary classrooms that foster a relationship between the child and the environment that grows from appreciation to care to activism. She also leans in on her experience and love for design and decor in creating classroom spaces that are beautiful, attractive to children and enriched.

Visit our Primary
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Elementary Teacher and Coordinator - Ashton

Ashton is a Lead Elementary teacher. They are responsible for the Math and Science curriculum in our Elementary school and its alignment with the cultural curriculum in our Primary program. Like many other Montessori Elementary programs, C’E Montessori does not include screens in the 1st-4th grade classroom. Ashton has used different resources like Cubetto and First Lego League to ensure that children at C’E Montessori are coding and experimenting with robotics as early as Kindergarten. They use and develop a problem solving curriculum featuring the design cycle to constantly challenge students to ask questions, find problems, hypothesize, test, and try to come up with solutions to every kind of problem on a daily basis. They are originally from Alabama, where they graduated as an Elementary Level teacher at Auburn, and has lived and taught in New York City now for three years.

Meet our Elementary Team
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Toddler Teacher and Coordinator - Kim

Kim graduated from Queens College with a BA In Sociology focused on the Modern Urban Community. She has been at C'E for the past three years, and has been a trained Montessori teacher and a Lead in the Toddler classroom for the last two. She grew up a star volleyball player for her high school and college and brings lessons, warm-ups and games learned during that experience into our Toddler classroom and Extended Care program. She had previously worked helping children in Corona, Queens as part of a foundation called STACKS run by the New York City Public Libraries to bring more children into the library community through fun after school activities and tutoring programs. She is (proudly) from Queens originally and has lived in and around New York City all of her life, her roots and extended family are from Ecuador. She is C'E's go-to teacher for training new staff in having fun on the playground.

Meet our Toddler Team
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Primary Lead and Coordinator - Jordan

Jordan received their B.A. in Education Studies from New York University. Though their major focused on education from an interdisciplinary perspective, they feel most energized while in the classroom with children, which is what has been their focus during the last few years. Before coming to C'E Montessori Jordan worked in classrooms and tutoring centers with young people of different backgrounds and grade levels. They have spent time working with English Language Learners, and adult learners in Rikers Island through a visual arts and human rights education non-profit. They are an AMA certified Montessori Primary teacher, eager to learn more and more about teaching young children about advocating for themselves and others. They spend a lot of their free time painting and drawing and studies Quechua, hoping to move to Peru one day and work in Quechua communities. They joined C'E Montessori in 2020 looking forward to being a part of a community that values anti-racist education, gender inclusivity, and sustainability. 

Meet our Primary Team
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Primary Lead and Music Director - Victoria

Victoria is from Argentina and first came to C'E Montessori as a visiting teacher for a Spanish immersion experience through music. She is an artist first, a proud graduate from AMDA Integrated Conservatory in NYC after training at the Fundación Julio Bocca in Buenos Aires. She sings, dances and acts through each one of her days at C'E Montessori and outside of school in performances at Teatro Sea, LATEA and Cuchame theatre among others. She has been an important part of school for the past four years, and in 2020 decided to complete her Montessori training and take on a Lead Teacher role in one of our Primary classrooms. Victoria injects artistic flair into everything she does, nap-time included, but most notably plans, designs and runs the C'E Montessori Winter Concert. This yearly December event is the culmination of the fall semester and a great way for children at our school to take on different responsibilities and roles in developing voice and stage presence.

Arts at C'E Montessori