Hannah (Dwan) Richard, Class of 1995
April 26th, 2013
Hannah (Dwan) Richard
Hannah is pictured with her husband.
I attended Litchfield Montessori School from 1992 to 1995. After leaving LMS at a young age I headed to first grade at a private school then eventually on to the local public school. After high school, I went onto Barnard College in New York City, graduating in May 2011 with a Bachelor’s in Philosophy. I began a job at a Montessori school in New York as an assistant in a toddler classroom. After getting married in June (to another former Montessori child), I started my second year teaching at a new school in Atlanta, GA as an assistant in a Children’s House classroom. I plan to begin my Montessori training next year.
My Montessori education was by far the greatest gift my parent’s ever gave me. It taught me respect, curiosity, confidence, and love. Those four qualities that I find in myself now and in all the decisions, big and small, that I make regarding my life, are directly tied to my Montessori education.
Some of my favorite moments from LMS are being in school with my big sister; desperately focusing on getting an “outdoor necklace” to hammer nails into a tree stump; summer camps with Danielle Mailer; completing an art project with my class that my parents won at that year’s school auction; the silent game and learning bird calls.
One particular memory I have is telling Elaine that I wanted to learn how to count to 100. She set me up with the hundred board, the numbers to which were completely scrambled. I had to unscramble them all and put the board together. I remember it feeling like it took weeks. I finished it the day before Grandparent’s Day so I was able to show off my major accomplishment to both of my grandmothers. It was probably one of the proudest moments of my life and my first memory of a sense of accomplishment and all the confidence and happiness that accompanies it. I think I’ve lived the majority of my life trying to get back to that feeling as much as possible, of trying to pass that state of euphoria onto my own students now because you will never feel it as purely as you do in childhood.
