Loading ...Sara E. Cotner
Sara is a reader, runner, vintage-fabric collector, teacher, Nalgene-toter, yoga attempter, Microsoft document and Excel project plan maker, movie-watcher, craft doer, wannabe organic gardener, and goal-setter who loves Saturday mornings, down comforters, grammar, and board games and is committed to making the world more authentic, nurturing, and just for all. A friend once described her as, “A hippy who actually gets shit done.”
She was born in San Diego, California, and spent 12 developmental years there before moving to Florida. She graduated from Stetson University with a B.A. in American studies and minors in English and gender studies.
After college, she worked for Summerbridge and then AmeriCorps. In 2000, she joined Teach For America and spent three years teaching third grade on the bayou in rural Louisiana. She then moved to Houston to teach 6th grade reading and writing at KIPP Academy.
After saving her money for a year, she took a self-subsidized sabbatical and traveled to India, Folk Art School, the Astrodome to tutor evacuees from Hurricane Katrina, a commune in Virginia, and the Northeast. She also started her own consulting firm to help schools strengthen their literacy programs.
Next she worked on the national staff at Teach For America, first as the Director of Institute Staff Development and then as the Director of Teacher Evaluation.
She currently lives in Denver, Colorado, where she teaches first to third grade at a public Montessori school.
Matthew C. Bradford
It was a warm fall evening when Matt met Sara on their first date at a bubble tea shop in Houston. Following a personality test, some poorly sung country music and several trips through a sprinkler, Matt realized that this Sara was something of a firecracker and would be a nice complement to his Midwestern sensibilities.
You see, Matt was brought up in southern Indiana by two stunning parents, Mark and Katy. His developmental years were spent with his spirited brothers, Mike and John, exploring the neighborhood on foot, by bike, and through creeks all the while accompanied by their trusty golden retriever companions, Bo and Bear.
Matt was an inquisitive adolescent and destroyed telephones, televisions and power tools in the name of “intellectual examination.” However the examination stopped there as he lacked circuit know-how, a soldering iron, and sticktuitiveness. Electrical engineering wasn’t a strength of his and so Matt took to his old nature ways and joined a summer camp thanks to a friend’s advice.
At the summer camp he became “staff”, giving him his first taste of responsibility, and was soon thrown to the lions (i.e., 6-12 year old boys). He taught those little predators the basics of hiking, camping, and surviving in the wild, with a couple of treats thrown in, such as a “Where’s Waldo?” hunt in the woods; haunted house overnights; and first-hand lessons on the causes and effects of poor hygiene.
A natural next step for an off-the-cuff camp counselor is working in a formal school setting, and that’s exactly where Matt went. Soon after receiving his BA in English at Indiana University Bloomington, Matt moved to Houston, Texas, where he was offered a job at KIPP SHINE Prep as an assistant teacher and their soccer director.
As he was coming to the end of his second year at SHINE, Matt observed at a Montessori school in the Houston area and was awe-struck. His concepts of what children are capable of inside the classroom and the role that the teacher plays needed further investigation and he immediately began researching and applying to Montessori education programs.
After deciding on a program in the Denver, Colorado, area he was soon on his way towards Montessori certification, moving in with the previously mentioned Sara in a little house by the lake in a little place called Edgewater, Colorado; taking courses over the summer and teaching during the school year.