A Montessori student and Janet Begin

“Leading the Way,” is a series featuring the next generation of leaders in the field of early education and care.

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Janet Begin was a computer engineer for ten years. She worked at AT&T Bell Labs.

“I always knew I wanted to go into education,” Begin, a Haverhill resident, says. “But I knew I liked computers, and I was good at that, so I started there because it was more profitable than education. That’s the sad reality.”

Eventually her company offered a buyout — and tuition benefits. Begin took both and went back to school. She earned a master’s degree in education from Lesley University. She became a substitute teacher in Haverhill where she lived. And she started looking for a preschool program for her daughter.

“In my search, I found a Montessori school, and basically it changed my world,” Begin said.

Children in her daughter’s Montessori classroom were engaged and excited about learning. But in the classrooms where Begin was subbing, children often asked to go to bathroom or the nurse’s office, eager, it appeared, to leave their classrooms.

Without really thinking about it, Begin says, she gathered a group of people together and worked to launch a new charter school.

“My thought was, ‘My child can have this because I have the money to pay for it, but shouldn’t it be accessible to all families?’ ”

The result was the Hill View Montessori Charter Public School in Haverhill, a tuition-free, K-8 school where Begin was the founder and board chair.

Haverhill Early Learning Leadership Team launch on October 17, 2018: Shanyn Toulouse, Northeast Regional School Nurse Consultant, Haverhill Public Schools; Janet Begin; Superintendent Margaret Marotta, Haverhill Public Schools; Kristi-Lynn Craig, Early Learning Preschool Director at the Moody Preschool, Haverhill Public Schools.

Begin went back to school to study educational leadership, enrolling in a program run by Teachers 21. Begin had come to realize that having an educational philosophy was great, but to make the kind of impact that she wanted to, to make a real difference, she knew she needed leadership training. Through the Teachers 21 program, she became certified as a principal, and she returned to Hill View and became the school’s executive director.

During the time, she oversaw the re-chartering of the school and expansion from one rented building to three rented buildings to buying a building for the school outright.

Still, Begin felt she herself had more to learn.

“I felt like I really needed to be trained as a Montessori teacher and decided to start at the foundation where Maria Montessori started, with the young children, the 3- to 6-year-olds.”

Her mantra became: “Montessori for social reform.”

Her challenge was convincing people that all families should have access to a Montessori education.

“I decided the best way to help people understand that this would be a great idea, and that it would help lower-income families as well as more affluent ones, was to open a Montessori school in one of our poorer neighborhoods in Haverhill.”

So she opened a new school, Urban Village Montessori and set out to create a classroom that would reflect Haverhill’s diversity. Several years later, the school joined the Wildflower Montessori network and was renamed the Marigold Montessori School. It’s a private school where half the children are full-pay, and the other half receive state vouchers or private scholarships, thanks to the fundraising efforts of the Marigold school’s board of trustees, which raises more than $20,000 a year from individuals, local businesses, and service clubs.

To further her goal of having a broad impact, Begin worked with local leaders and Strategies for Children to apply for a Preschool Expansion Grant. The result was a $20,000 grant that the planning team used to survey more than 350 families and nearly all of the cities’ early education and care providers to create a plan for expanding preschool.

This plan was submitted to state officials in January, and Haverhill is now applying for a grant to put its preschool expansion plan into action. A leadership team has been created to do this work, and with or without the additional grant funding, the team will focus on:

• early learning – creating common language and assessments and focusing on kindergarten readiness

• workforce development – to set up professional development programs that all of Haverhill’s providers can access

• family engagement – so that all providers can support children and families, and

• student services – including transportation, access to food, health services, and vision screenings.

The goal: “All children in Haverhill will have access to high-quality learning experiences.”

What does Begin think policymakers should know about her work?

“As a state and a country we should acknowledge that early education does play this hugely critical role. We should put our money where our mouth is and get funding so that we’re not paying the educators who are working with children at their most critical age a salary that these educators can’t even live on.” 

Policymakers and the public would benefit from Begin’s perspective. As she puts it:

“To see a well-run classroom in action, I just find fascinating. The calm and peacefulness — and yet there’s a buzz, a quiet buzz. There’s an engagement and just a joy about learning.”