Alumni profiles

Since January, alumni parent Kay Holbrook has been experiencing deja vu on a daily basis. Almost 20 years after her sons Justin and Austin graduated, she’s been escorting her granddaughters to school at WMS. For Kay, while the physical space has undergone a few changes since her time as a WMS parent, the spirit remains the same.

It’s the same halls - sometimes it’s like ‘been here, done this before,’” Kay said. “It’s just like bringing my two boys in. That same feeling is here - it’s peaceful.”

She is also watching her two granddaughters thrive, as she did with her sons a generation ago.

“The Montessori Method prepares kids for life academically, socially, emotionally,” she said. “The academic piece, social piece and emotional piece - when I think of education, I think of all three. To achieve a peaceful love of life, contributing to society, you have to deal with all three.”

While Kay knew little about Montessori education until she enrolled her older son at WMS as a kindergartner in 1992, her first Montessori experience actually dates back to her own days as a kindergartner.

“I had an unusual situation of being in Montessori for kindergarten,” she said. “Normally I would have gone to public school. But I wasn’t doing my letters, and I have faint memories of not being able to do things other kids could do.”

Kay’s parents decided to send her to a local Montessori school in New Jersey, where they lived at the time, in hopes she would receive more individualized attention and catch up to her peers. The following year, they enrolled her in the public school her older sister attended. Her school year got off to an inauspicious start.

“I was a beast,” she said. “I was having behavior issues.”

Later that fall, Kay’s parents asked if she would like to return to her old school, and she jumped at the opportunity. She resumed at the Montessori school as a first-grader in the 6-9 classroom, where she learned to read.

“My teacher sat me on her lap and taught me to read,” she said. “I came out of that experience and there was nothing that I thought I couldn’t do. I’m indebted to [that teacher], because I did well academically - I didn’t struggle in school again.”

Her family moved after that pivotal first-grade year, and she attended public school in Virginia for her remaining school years. Years later, she had all but forgotten about her brief Montessori schooling when she came across WMS for her older son, Justin. WMS offered a full-day kindergarten program at a time when the local public schools only offered a half-day program, and as Kay and her husband both worked full-time, WMS seemed like the right fit.

“The public schools weren’t going to work,” she said. “When I got my first son here, I fell in love with it because he loved it. Both my boys will tell you they learned more in Montessori than in any other place.”

Kay went on to join the WMS board of directors, serving for six years while her sons were students.

Now that she’s returned to WMS as a grandparent, she’s watching her granddaughters learn and grow in the same environment that served her sons so well. Kay believes the variety of available manipulatives at WMS sets up students for success.

“You can be a kinesthetic learner, an auditory learner - what WMS does is figure out what makes each child tick,” she said. ““I was looking at ‘peace, happy, love of life’ [a decorative display in the Marie M. Dugan conference room] - why did we bring the boys here? I think that’s it right there.”