Our School

Mapleton Montessori School in Boulder, Colorado was founded in 1979, the International Year of the Child. Two sisters, Dede and Patty Coogan, had a dream that started in an old historic church on Mapleton Hill with twelve children and a morning Montessori class. After sixteen years and with a growing student body, the school moved across town in 1995 and built its own beautiful home at its present location, 3121 29th Street.

Today, Mapleton Montessori has eighty to ninety families and a year round program. Although we’ve doubled in size, Mapleton Montessori maintains a comfortable, homelike atmosphere where families have daily contact with their children’s teachers, children experience the joy of working together and lifelong friendships are formed.

Faculty

The core faculty members at Mapleton Montessori School are all Montessori trained, either by AMI (Association Montessori International) or AMS (American Montessori Society). They consist of Dede Beardsley, founder, Terri Todd, Renee Dorris, Susan Leibfritz and Anna Applebaum. The classes also have either one or two assistants, depending upon the number of children in each class.

Dede Coogan Beardsley
Dede, founder and director of Mapleton Montessori School, has been involved in Montessori education for over thirty years, many of which were spent actively teaching. After graduating from Dickinson College with a B.A. in English and French, Dede lived in Paris; it was there she discovered Montessori. Working as a nanny, she delivered two children to a Montessori school each day and was intrigued that so many young children could be engaged in lessons on their own, without the obvious direction of an adult. She also found it amazing that the children didn’t swarm the door when new people entered – these young children were actually focused on their work. That was in 1973 and she’s been amazed ever since!

Dede began assisting at the Bilingual Montessori School of Paris and later completed her Montessori AMI training at the Montessori Training Center of New Jersey where she studied under Lakshmi Kripalani, one of Montessori’s translators and protégées. In 1978 she moved to Boulder, founded Mapleton Montessori and the rest is history!

Ashley Garber
Ashley is originally from Virginia. She loves hiking, skiing and camping and fell in love with Colorado the first time she visited. She studied elementary education at Northern Arizona University and obtained a B.S. in Psychology from the College of Charleston SC. After some investigation, she and her husband (also a Montessorian) realized how many Montessori schools flourished in Colorado and headed west! Once here, Ashley trained at the Montessori Education Center of the Rockies in Boulder before coming to work at Mapleton Montessori School.

Ashley believes children need a balance between "work" and play with unstructured time just to be a kid. One of her goals is to teach children what it means to be peaceful, believing that this will help to foster kindness, compassion and patience in them and the classroom.

Renee Dorris
Renee moved to Colorado after graduating from Southern Oregon University in 2003 with a B.S. in Business. She began subbing in Montessori classrooms in 2005 and was amazed with the atmosphere, energy, and philosophy of Montessori. Her Montessori training was completed that summer in Boulder at the Montessori Education Center of the Rockies and she has been in the classroom ever since.

Renee believes that children should be taught to love and care for all aspects of the earth. She also believes that children learn responsibility by being encouraged to care for their belongings and the materials in the classroom. And, as they grow in this nurturing environment, they learn to love and respect themselves and others; they grow into self-reliant children, happy with who they are.

Terri Todd
Terri moved home to Casper, Wyoming after receiving her B.S. in Environmental Studies with a minor in Art from Utah State University. While working at the Wyoming State Children’s Home, she became acquainted with the Montessori method and was inspired to see children engaged and learning on their own. In 1979 Terri attended the Washington Montessori Institute in Washington DC with trainers who had trained under Maria Montessori. She taught at several schools over the years in Wyoming and Colorado but when she found Mapleton Montessori School in 1988, she says, “I knew I was home.” Terri’s enthusiasm for art and gardening is woven into the daily life of her classroom. She also role models the importance of taking care of each other, our planet and ourselves.

Susan Leibfritz
Susan Leibfritz moved to Colorado with her family in 1986. While searching for a preschool for her young son, she discovered a Montessori school right in her neighborhood. During the observation, she was amazed not only at how well the class flowed with a room full of three to six year olds but also at how effortlessly the teachers seemed to work in the classroom. They moved through the joyful buzz of work and activity in a relaxed, almost unnoticed way.

Susan has a degree in English (with an emphasis on elementary education) from Cal Poly University in San Luis Obispo, California and received her Montessori training in Boulder at the Montessori Education Center of the Rockies. One of her areas of interest is teaching children to be stewards of the earth by helping them to love nature and the amazing world around them. She works with them on taking care of their own bodies through nutrition, exercise and laughter because stewardship frequently starts with care of oneself.