Welcome to the Children's House!
Welcome to our website. This site has been developed so you can see what is going on in our classroom. We hope that you will find it very helpful.
Meet the Teachers!
Mrs. Stefanie Baldonade; sbaldonade@mmcharter.org
Mrs. Baldonade was born in Germany and moved to California in 1985. She has three sons ranging in age from high school to college. She completed her Montessori Early Childhood Certificate in 2010 after being fascinated by the Montessori methodology and amazed by the growth she saw in her own children. Mrs. Baldonade was also involved in creating the preschool program at MMCA from the ground up and is very proud of what they've accomplished. She has been the Director of Children's House since 2018. Mrs. Baldonade loves what she does and is looking forward to making a difference in the lives of the children she teaches every year.
Ms. Erika Mares; emares@mmcharter.org
Ms. Mares returns to Children's House after joining our family last November. After graduating from the University of Tulsa with dual undergraduate degrees in Political Science and Secondary Education, she began her teaching career as a high school U.S. History/Government teacher.
Upon returning to her hometown of San Francisco, her journey placed her in Director Positions with: Pottery Barn, GAP, San Jose State Athletics and the SF 49ers. Erika continues to support families with private tutoring in pre-K through college. If you ask her what the most significant role she has ever held, she would say, "being a mother to my daughter Rylee."
Ms. Mares is passionate about instilling a love of learning in the students at Children's House. She believes a Montessori classroom provides the ideal environment for children to learn and grow, and become learners for a lifetime.
Ms. Cameron Gibson; cgibson@mmcharter.org
Ms. Gibson received her BA from Sacramento State University in Spring of 2024. We are happy to have her join us again in Children's House this year. This year, Ms. Gibson will also be working with our K-8 students at Maria Montessori Charter Academy while she furthers her education in Elementary Education with the goal of becoming a credentialed elementary teacher.
Portrait of a Children’s House Teacher
Integrity is at the core. The teacher’s integrity comes from calm, confidence, and caring, light-hearted enthusiasm matched with conscious self-restraint, modeling the best of human behavior for the class while showing both passion and joy in the work. Even more important is the students’ dignity, for which we ensure a positive and respectful environment.
We believe in the unfolding, not the molding, of children. The teacher watches, listens, and communicates to assess and assist each child’s development of both intellect and independence. We champion the triumphs of each day, removing or easing obstacles. We patiently, flexibly, and compassionately encourage a joyful perseverance in each child.
The teacher is not the focus but the facilitator of the classroom. Teaching is an act of service and humility. Through the creation of routines and traditions, the maintenance of detailed records, and the presentation of broad and deep lessons that illuminate concepts and encourage student discovery, the teacher encourages students’ concentration, reflection, and growth.
A teacher embraces the classroom environment as a partner. For children to succeed, the environment must be orderly and inviting, clean and uncluttered, beautiful and precise. The teacher’s job is to connect materials to students and to spark their curiosity. Children are then set free to make choices, combining freedom with a developing sense of discipline and responsibility.
The whole world is a teacher’s classroom. Teachers and their lessons demonstrate the inter-relatedness of all knowledge: the links between different academic subjects, the connections between the large and the small, and the essential similarities among all peoples. Teachers extend the classroom into the world beyond the school, both physically and imaginatively.
Teachers and students learn by setting high challenges and making safe mistakes. Boundaries, clearly set and consistently reinforced, create a safe and cooperative environment which becomes as much a community as a classroom, where we all learn from each other. Children learn both how to help and how to reach out for help, first in their own classrooms but increasingly in the wider world they will fully enter as adults.
A teacher also remains a student, growing both personally and professionally, shows a passion for learning, mastering the varied Montessori curriculum while also pursuing personal interests. Like any good student, he or she has both strengths and weaknesses, along with an awareness of how to address them in the course of the day’s work.
Montessori teachers educate the whole community. They actively engage parents in a partnership for the good of the child, engage creatively and collaboratively with assistants and colleagues from all age levels of the school, and communicate clearly while maintaining proper confidentiality. They are dynamic participants in the life of the school, actively serving, informing, protecting, and improving.