FACULTY AND STAFF
Polly Christensen
Directress | Atrium Catechist | Elementary Composition Guide
Polly Christensen founded St. Francis Montessori in Irving, Texas with her husband, Joe, in 2009, with the support of many members of the Irving community. After attending Our Lady of Corpus Christi for her undergraduate, she received her Master's in English from the University of Dallas in 2007. Also in 2007, she completed her Association Montessori Internationale certification for ages 3-6. In 2010, she completed her certification for Level 1 in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. In 2013, she received her Level 2 certification and in 2015, her Level 3 certification.
She continues to be the Directress, as well as a Catechist in the Level 2 Atrium and teaches composition to the St. Francis Elementary children ages 6-12 years old. She also prays daily with the Elementary children.
Polly and Joe have six children, ages 15 to 1. The oldest two graduated from St. Francis when they were twelve and the youngest will join as soon as she is old enough. The whole family is invested in this beautiful work in God’s plan.
Polly feels her life is abundantly blessed by the joy, love, and wonder that she sees daily by being with the children at St. Francis Montessori and in her own home.
Guides, Assistants,
and Administration
Amanda Fernandes
Primary Casita Guide
Amanda Fernandes is a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College and holds an MA in English from the University of Dallas. After working with young children for several years, she discovered Montessori and has never looked back. She completed her AMI primary diploma in 2018 and is currently training as a Level 1 Catechist with Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. She never tires of entering into the children’s innate sense of wonder and their joy of discovery.
Mike Gleason
Lower Elementary Guide
After graduating from the University of Dallas in 1988 (in Classics, Anc. Greek), Mike taught English at Northlake College and taught middle & high-school Algebra, Geography, and Literature at Oakhill Academy (under the same roof as the Highlands School back then), where he assisted the Principal in Year 2. It was there that he saw Grace's Montessori classroom operating so beautifully. He took his AMI Montessori Elementary Training in 1995 immediately after his AMI Montessori Primary Training in 1994, all right after marrying Grace on St. Joseph's Day in 1993. They have been blessed with 7 surviving children (including Hanna, who worked at St. Francis Montessori before they did, and Susan who assists with the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd in Lander, WY). Raising their own and coaching plenty of others in baseball has made Mike appreciate those Montessori principles beyond the classroom.
Teaching for St. Alcuin (now just “Alcuin”) Montessori in Dallas, for their own Holy Childhood Montessori at St. Mary the Virgin in Arlington, for St. Helena Montessori in the Napa Valley, and for two public Montessori schools in Milwaukee has amounted to 27 years of Montessori work at all levels from Primary to Upper Elementary (25 in the classroom, mostly Lower Elementary). The other two years saw him working on digital, Montessori-color-coded, Greek sentence-diagrams for Alpheios.net (a Classics app to run on Firefox, Chrome, and Safari). The last 15 years have also afforded more education, including the NAMTA Montessori Adolescent Orientation course and a Masters in Educational Leadership from Milwaukee School of Engineering. And yet for Mike nothing has been as instructive as parenting, which allows him to see eye-to-eye with his students' first educators
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Jennifer Spurgin
Upper Elementary Guide
Jennifer's bio coming soon!
Lena Sipe
Primary Casita Assistant
Lena's bio coming soon!
Sophia Huber
Lower Elementary Assistant
Sophia Huber currently serves as an assistant in lower elementary. She graduated in 2022 and has studied austere herbal medicine at Herbal Medics Academy. She has worked as an assistant guide in a homeschool co-op and volunteered at an equine therapy facility. Learning more about Montessori and her method reenkindled her own sense of wonder, and she is looking forward to learning more as well as assisting in the classroom. She lives with her family and her menagerie of animals.
Ellen Mirus
Latin
Ellen Mirus is in her fifth year of teaching weekly Latin to the Upper Elementary students at St. Francis Montessori. She is a graduate of Thomas More College in New Hampshire, where she combined a B.A. in Biology with the Humanities Core, and earned her Master of Bioethics from the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Melbourne, Australia. She has completed further courses in Education, Latin, Italian, and the Humanities at the University of Dallas. With eighteen years' experience teaching in Montessori, classical, diocesan, and homeschool environments, she is delighted at the rich incarnational vision offered at St. Francis and loves helping students explore Latin over the centuries and across the subjects. She practices on her three boys, all of whom are now students at the school.
Brigid Stauduhar
Enrollment | Atrium Catechist
Brigid's bio coming soon!
Angela Tellson
Primary Casa Guide
Angela Tellson began her Montessori journey when she was introduced to the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd in 2016. After serving as a catechist in the Level 1 atrium, she decided to pursue more formation and earned her AMI primary diploma as well as her MEd in Montessori Studies in 2019. Angela has also earned her AMI Assistants to Infancy diploma, her Level 2 CGS certification, and has completed graduate studies in theology at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. She feels blessed to be a part of such a faith-filled community and is honored to serve the children and their families.
Grace Gleason
Lower Elementary Guide
Grace Gleason currently serves as one of the Lower Elementary guides. She did her AMI Montessori Primary Training immediately following graduation from Thomas Aquinas College, in Southern California. Following her first year of teaching at St. Helena Montessori school in Northern California, she took the first summer of the Elementary level training in Washington D.C. She later taught Primary in her own Montessori environment at the Highlands School in Irving and after marrying her husband, Michael Gleason, St. Francis Montessori’s Upper Elementary guide, they started and ran Holy Childhood Montessori school, locally for five years.
She and Michael have raised 7 children in a variety of Catholic Montessori schools in Texas, California, and later, as homeschooling parents in Wisconsin. Grace came back to Texas to work with children at St. Francis Montessori through Michael.
Emily Dempsey
Primary Casa Assistant
Emily's bio coming soon!
Rocio Cordero
Lower Elementary Assistant
Rocio's bio coming soon!
Carole Morris
Co-Directress
Carole's bio coming soon!
Berenice San Juan
Spanish
Berenice's bio coming soon!
Anne Tierney
Financial Manager | Records & Communication
Anne's bio coming soon!
Rachel Skinner
Snacks | Farm & Garden | Special Projects
Rachel's bio coming soon!
Catechists and
Atrium Assistants
Andrea Frank
Catechesis Directress
Andrea Frank serves as a catechist for all three levels at SFM. She holds bachelor's & Master's degrees in English from the University of Dallas and is a certified catechist for Catechesis of the Good Shepherd at all three levels. She is also a certified Formation Leader through the National Association of Catechesis of the Good Shepherd and offers courses for adults seeking formation as CGS catechists in the Level 1 and 2 atria. Andrea is a wife and mother of eight children, ages 17 to one, five of whom currently attend St. Francis Montessori. She was first exposed to Montessori through a SOLT Montessori school in her hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, but working at St. Francis in the earliest years and watching her oldest child blossom there truly opened her eyes to the wisdom and wonder of this form of education. She studied Catechesis of the Good Shepherd alongside the growth of her family and St. Francis’s atria and is grateful for the rich experience of children’s spirituality that she experiences in the atrium each week. She is deeply grateful for the gift of working in the community of St. Francis Montessori's faculty, staff, and families.
Nece Zipper
Atrium Catechist
Nece Zipper serves as a Level 3 Catechist and is certified to guide all three levels of Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. She graduated from Baylor University with a BA in 1999. Over the years, she has started multiple parish atria as well as a home atrium. Currently, she is serving in a Level 2 atrium at St. Mary the Virgin in Arlington. Nece has four children, one of whom graduated from SFM in 2017 and is currently homeschooled as well as assisting in the SFM atria; her younger three are enrolled in SFM casas. She enjoys working with the older children as they complete the CGS formation and also loves the material making process and preparation of the environment.
Maria Bascom
Atrium Catechist
Maria Bascom serves as a Level I catechist. She received her BA in theology at UD. This is her fourth year as a guide for Level I, and she looks forward to becoming certified in Levels II and III. She first heard of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd from her sister-in-law Andrea Frank and quickly came to appreciate its beauty and its balanced cultivation of a contemplative and active spirituality. She has six children (with a seventh on the way), four of whom attend Atrium at SFM, and is most grateful to be a part of this community.
Mary Laurent
Atrium Catechist
Mary's bio coming soon!
Bonnie Frank
Atrium Assistant
Bonnie's bio coming soon!
Nohemi Aguirre
Atrium Assistant
Nohemi's bio coming soon!
Tamara Kuykendall
Atrium Catechist
Tamara Kuykendall serves as a catechist for all three levels of the Atrium. She is a graduate of the University of Dallas with a BA in English and a Master of Theology degree. She is also certified to guide all three levels of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. Her passion is child education, in particular the formation of children in the Catholic faith. She taught theology for 4 years on the high school and junior high level. She later discovered the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd and promptly fell in love with it in the way it recognizes and fosters the unique religious gifts possessed by the young child. She is a mother of 5 children, the oldest three attended St. Francis Montessori and all who are of age currently attend the Atrium programs.
Laura Sercer
Atrium Catechist
Laura Sercer serves as a Catechist for Level 1, Co-guide for Level 2, and Atrium Coordinator. She graduated from the University of Dallas with a BA in English. While assisting in an elementary classroom, she began training to guide Catechesis of the Good Shepherd at SFM. Laura taught Level 1 first in Irving and then down in Austin. Finally she returned to Irving and now teaches at St. Francis Montessori. She is happy to be back at the place where her journey began. She has been teaching at SFM for three years, and has a son and daughter who currently attend SFM.
Kelley Chaplin
Atrium Catechist
Kelley Chaplin serves as a catechist in the Level 1 Atrium. After graduating from the University of Dallas, Kelley worked in the mortgage industry until the birth of her eldest child. After seeing the beauty of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd at work in her children, she pursued training and is now certified to guide Level 1 and Level 2 Atriums. One of Kelley’s children has graduated from SFM, another is currently thriving in the elementary program, and her youngest hopes to follow his siblings there.
Laura Landry
Atrium Catechist
Laura Landry serves as a Level 2 Catechist. She graduated from the University of Dallas with a BA in Psychology. She worked several years at the Pines Catholic Camp, moved to Alaska to start up a new Catholic summer camp, and then spent 6 years in parish youth ministry (working primarily with 5th-8th grade students). During her time as a youth minister, she was introduced to and fell in love with Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. She has two young children and looks forward when they can experience the beauty of CGS also.
Lucy Vaughan
Atrium Assistant
Lucy Vaughan currently serves as an Atrium Assistant. Lucy served children in day care for over 33 years, and now serves as a substitute teacher and Atrium Assistant at St. Francis. She came upon her desire to work with children through Montessori through her own daughter, Polly Christensen, founder and Directress of St. Francis. A number of Lucy's grandchildren attend St. Francis.
Christina Haley
Atrium Assistant
Christina's bio coming soon!
Kathy Fiegenschue
Atrium Assistant
Kathy's bio coming soon!