About us
Our Mission:
We connect, share and collaborate to empower each other.
We are an ecosystem.
We draw from our collective intelligence and experience.
We generate synergy which transforms not just us and our organisations but, we hope, also the world.
Our story
Over the years, since I first established Montessori Schools Andilek in the Czech Republic and Montessori Institute Prague, I found out that being a Montessori school owner and a director of a training institute can often be a lonely job. At the same time, through the work at the Institute, I discovered that are many other people in the same role as me, feeling the same loneliness, the solitude of responsibility. Some of these people turned out to live in my own country, some live in Europe, some live in other places of the world. These people are fighting the same fight as I am, they are believing the same values, they are serving the same purpose.
I found it very encouraging, energizing and nourishing to spend time with them - talking, exchanging information, learning from each other. I realized the greatness of the value of "standing on each other’s shoulders” when we receive advice and then pass it on to others. I came to understand the value of sharing experience and practice. I experienced the power of belonging to a community of people who are “walking in the same shoes".
And just as I began to think about how to turn this realization into something that may help others, I met three amazing people who turned out to have walked this path before me and who felt called to support this venture.
These people - experts with a deep well of knowledge and experience, people of great character and wonderful sense of humour co-created Lead Montessori. And they helped to create the first conference program. They became the back bone of Lead Montessori. Together we became the Lead Montessori team, each offering unique skills to the Lead Montessori work.
If you are interested in joining the Lead Montessori community, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter and stay up to date about the Community Conversations, conferences and other events we are holding. We will be very glad to include you in the Lead Montessori community we have built. We will nourish you. You will learn new hard and soft skills. We will help you to assume and practice your role as a Montessori leader. We will help you run your school and we will become your friends. We will support you in your work of building a strong Montessori program.
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Our team
Miroslava Vlčková
Co-founder and Executive Director
Miroslava Vlčková is a mother of four children. 11 years ago she founded a family center for mothers and young children. The center developed into primary and elementary Montessori Schools Andílek. In 2019 Andílek opened an adolescent program and the school is attended by over 130 children from ages of 18 months to 15 years. In her search for information about authentic Montessori Miroslava founded an AMI Training Center called Montessori Institute Prague (MIP) which became the hub of Montessori in Eastern and Central Europe. MIP hosted the 28 th AMI International Congress in 2017 which was attended by close to 2 000 educators from all over the world. Miroslava is also the co-founder of Association
Montessori CR, an umbrella organization which aims to network Montessori schools in the
Czech Republic, and now she has a new “heart” project which is Lead Montessori.
Madara Spurava
Communications Coordinator
Madara is originally from Latvia, currently living in Czech Republic. She has a degree in Public Relations and is an AMI 6-12 trained teacher, working with children at Montessori Schools Andilek, and coordinating client communication at Montessori Institute Prague and Lead Montessori.
Kathy Minardi, Sue Pritzker, Peter Davidson
Co-founders