Jean Anastasia earned a Bachelor and Master of Music in Performance in Guitar from the Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford. She is the founding director of the Wilkes Community Conservatory at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, PA, a place where anyone in the community can take instrumental lessons or classes in music or drama. She then moved to Philadelphia to become an administrator at Settlement Music School, the oldest and largest community music school in the country. During her seventeen years as an administrator, Ms. Anastasia also taught guitar lessons, music theory and general music to students of all ages.
Ms. Anastasia’s first exposure to the Montessori philosophy was as a long-term substitute music teacher at Wyoming Valley Montessori School in Kingston, PA. She was most fascinated by the math and bead materials, realizing that working with these materials would give children a much better foundation than the abstract method taught in most other schools.
After moving to Florida and having her children, Ms. Anastasia realized she wanted a Montessori education for her children, so returned to school to get her Montessori certification at the Center for Montessori Education in New York. In Land O' Lakes, Florida, she taught all subjects in the elementary II classroom at Countryside Montessori Elementary School for two years. After moving to Osceola County for her husband to take a new job, Ms. Anastasia worked at charter schools for three years, specializing in writing and language arts. Her favorite subject is science and she is an avid reader and collector of books. Ms. Anastasia is extremely excited about coming to Montessori World School and getting to know the MWS family!