Snapshot:
Jennifer Kelly

• Lower Elementary Montessori certified — Montessori Educational Programs International (MEPI)

• Primary Montessori Certified — American Montessori Society (AMS)

• Has her master’s degree plus 30

Did you know?

In 2012, Jennifer helped Anderson School District 4 open a public Montessori program.

“Those whom nature has fitted to care for children see a change in them every day, almost every hour. They see these small changes as admirable. This is an art which cannot be acquired without effort. To encourage is to rejoice, so that the child sees that you are rejoicing.”

— Maria Montessori, The 1946 London Lectures

Jennifer Kelly has an unbridled passion for education utilizing the methods pioneered by Maria Montessori. She began to study the Montessori method while a student at Lander University. Ironically, her introductory class to Montessori was a late addition to her course load, to replace a class she had exempted.

“I went on my lunch break to the session they had opened up, and I just fell in love with it,” she recalls. “I said, ‘Where has Montessori been all my life? This is so cool!’ I immediately enrolled and started classes that first semester that they offered Montessori training!”

Kelly would go on to graduate Lander in 2001 with dual degrees in general education and Montessori lower education. After graduation, she taught at Hickory Tavern School in Laurens County, and “loved every minute of it.”

“Laurens County actually has the largest school district in the state that offers Montessori as a free choice,” Kelly says. “I went into a Montessori classroom right off the bat and student-taught that class and was there for seven years.”

After Hickory Tavern, Kelly accepted a teaching position at a traditional public school in Anderson County School District 4. But she would not be deterred from using what she had learned, even without a classical Montessori setting.

“I taught third grade, and the first day I told the janitor, ‘I need you find me as many bookshelves as you can find,’” she recalls. “‘I need you to take my teacher’s desk out of this room and give me as many rugs as you can’, because I really did the Montessori approach even though I had a traditional classroom, because that’s what I knew.”

With the school principal’s encouragement, Kelly moved from a third-grade class to a kindergarten class, because, she says, “The principal said, ‘Why are we waiting until third grade? We need to be starting this in kindergarten, when they’re first starting school!’”

After helping the district establish its own Montessori program, Kelly would meet her future husband, Chris, who lived in Greenville. After the couple married, she taught in Greenville County public schools, but Chris encouraged her to strike out on her own.

“My husband was former small-business owner, and he said, ‘You’ve got to leave; you’ve got to open up your own school,’” she says.

Kelly left Greenville County Schools at the end of the 2014 school year and opened UMA in May 2016.

“We started with 14 children and now we’re at 120,” she says proudly. “It’s been a shock for everybody because we didn’t really know what was going to happen!”

Is a Montessori education right for your children? Contact Jennifer Kelly at 864-551-1152, or via email at jkelly@upstatemontessori.com, to schedule a visit and learn more about Upstate Montessori Academy and the Montessori Method. Or, use our inquiry form.