Raquel Santamaria was born in Houston, Texas. She was raised in Caracas Venezuela and comes from a Spanish background.
She has a Bachelor’s degree in Spanish Language Education, a Master’s degree in Learning Processes and a Montessori Certificate (AMS) for the preschool years. She has worked for many years in Early Childhood Education field, in and out of the country.
In Venezuela, she founded and directed a preschool for nine years.
In 2002 she and her husband moved to the US. She soon started volunteering for different elementary schools, at the same time she was teaching Spanish for different language programs in Boulder.
After obtaining her American Montessori Society (AMS) certificate, she worked for a Bilingual and Montessori public school in Denver. Later she worked for a private preschool in Boulder as a lead teacher.
The last two years before having her first child (Diego who is now 2 years old) she worked as a lead teacher for the Boulder County Head Start Program. In Head Start she worked with children from low income families, different backgrounds and children with special needs as well.
Besides, her work and her family, Raquel loves the outdoors and nature. She mountain bikes, snowboards, hikes and flew paraglide for many years. She spends most of her free time doing pottery, which is one of her rediscovered passions.
Patricia Santamaria was born in Houston, Texas. She grew up in Caracas, Venezuela, but lived in other countries like Costa Rica and spent shorter terms of her life in Israel and Peru.
She has a Bachelor’s degree in Special Education. She has worked over 18 years in education for regular children and children with special needs. She developed a program specifically designed for children with autism and trained staff to work in the field when she was living in Florida. She also worked in an organization facilitating sensorial stimulation programs for babies and young children.
In Boulder she worked as a Family Advocate for a non profit organization called “The Parenting Place”. There she worked directly with parents of different backgrounds and nationalities and lead support groups for Spanish speaking parents.
Patricia is a mother of two wonderful children: Sabrina and Carlos, 12 and 11 years old. Both of her children are perfectly bilingual and started their first years of education in a Montessori environment.
Besides her family and work, Patricia enjoys traveling to different countries and meeting people from different cultures. She also enjoys hiking and the practice of yoga and meditation.
Yedid Saenz, our assistant, is from Mexico. She is the mother of two wonderful children. Keren her youngest daughter attends our school. Yedid has the greatest talent one can have when working among children: patience. She is also creative, sweet and loves doing art projects with the children. All the children adore her, specially the youngest ones. Yedid has three years of experience working in a children center and also one year in child care training.
