08/29/2026
Meet the people behind Starry Garden Montessori 🌱
Starry Garden is a small school, and that means the people who own it are also deeply involved in the everyday life of it.
We’re Rachel and Daniel, the owners of Starry Garden Montessori School.
Rachel keeps many of the moving pieces of the school running behind the scenes, but she also spends time teaching and working directly with the children. She has a particular love for Grace and Courtesy and Practical Life—the everyday skills that help children learn to care for themselves, their environment, and the people around them.
She also loves working with her hands. Basketry, pottery, traditional fiber arts, and ancestral skills have been part of her life for years, and that experience naturally finds its way into how she works with children.
Daniel’s role is a little harder to define. On any given day, he might be working with children and teachers, building something for the playground, tending gardens, developing a new classroom activity, caring for animals, or working with Emmett, our school therapy dog.
Outside the school, he’s a bladesmith, survival instructor, dog trainer, maker, and lifelong learner.
Our interests are different, but they meet around one idea that has become deeply woven into Starry Garden:
Children are capable.
Give them safety and clear boundaries. Respect them as individuals. Give them meaningful things to do. Teach them when they need teaching—and then give them room to discover what they can do for themselves.
That philosophy is behind a lot of what you see at Starry Garden: children cooking and cleaning, making things with their hands, caring for animals and plants, building, exploring, solving problems, practicing courtesy, and contributing to their little community.
For us, Starry Garden has never been just a place where children spend their day.
It’s a place we’ve spent years building around what we believe childhood can be. ❤️
