We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rachel Averch a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Rachel, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with education – we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career.

I would change the educational system to a Montessori curriculum and Montessori Pedagogy because I believe that it is the best method of education for helping children reach their full and unique potential. We can prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career by helping them find their own passions, be adaptable, be self-motivated, and have strong intrinsic motivation for learning and for life goals.

Rachel, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a co-founder and the Head of School for The Montessori Children’s House of Denver, an accredited private school established in 1991. After 30 years, The Montessori Children’s House of Denver now spans three campuses and serves 275 students from 12 months through middle school.

A Montessori student myself, and coming from a Montessori family, I am deeply committed to the Montessori Method of education as a means to help every child fulfill their unique individual potential, and I am equally committed to uniting the Montessori community in Colorado. One way I’ve done this was as a founding member of the Colorado Montessori Association where I served on the Executive Team for over 6 years, and have since been awarded “Elder” status and continue to support the board as needed.

Beyond the Montessori world, I am active in the greater education community, having served on review teams for school accreditations, speaking at local conferences, writing articles for local papers, and have even been brought in as an expert for Fox News.

On a more personal note, I am an avid reader and researcher and love to relax with my family and friends, hike, and do a variety of crafts in my spare time.

Some of my strengths are my vision, big-picture thinking, and my love for everyone in our community, My favorite part of my job is seeing “aha” moments for students, staff, families and colleagues alike. I love spending time in classrooms and helping everyone in our community reach their potential through coaching, mentoring and collaboration. I also love developing systems and structures that facilitate the implementation of the school’s vision.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I can think of so many stories, actually, especially these last few years with the pandemic, but actually one of the most profound stories in our history about resilience was in 2011 when the school had doubled in size for the 2nd time in only 4 years. The growth was amazing, but it also tested my skills as a leader to the breaking point.

Our systems weren’t equipped to handle the growth and important things were regularly falling through the cracks. We started to experience dissention and turnover among staff and families, and I was operating in crisis mode all of the time, getting very little sleep and working to the point of exhaustion. I was still trying to lead all 3 campuses the same way that I had led the school when it was small. I hadn’t delegated well, and was doing too much myself. Important decisions were bottle-necking with me. I kept thinking the solution was just to work harder and perfect myself or improve our systems. The whole time, my amazing team of highly qualified, capable people were feeling under-utilized and disempowered and I didn’t see it or how that was affecting everyone’s morale or our success as a school.

Things got so hard that I was on the brink of leaving the school altogether, which was a heartbreaking thought for me after 20 years of dedicating my life to our community.

Luckily, first I reached out to a consultant who helped me see where my leadership style needed to adjust, and who helped me empower my team, and shift from being the one doing things to the one coaching and mentoring. It took time, and I had to lean into the discomfort of skilling up and shifting my paradigms, but in the end it was like a magic wand. Now, on the other side of all of that, we have built an incredible leadership team and a community of dedicated staff and families that are deeply invested in the success of the school and their own personal growth.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn the belief that I had to be the one who knew all of the answers, could do all of the things, and was an expert in order to be the kind of leader that my community deserved and replace it with the belief that empowering other people and giving them the gift of my presence, support, mentoring and coaching was the true path to being the type of leader that they deserved. The backstory is the story that I just shared about resilience and what I learned about my own leadership skills in the process.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mchdenver.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mchddragonfly/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mchdenver

Image Credits
Randall Erkelens