Youngest Group (2-3 Year Olds)

Giulia Montanari, Lead Youngest Group Teacher

Giulia has been a childcare professional since 2016, when she moved to the United States from her native Italy, where she studied at the official Reggio Emilia training center. In 2023 she began searching for a child care center that put values like equality and individuality at its core and found the perfect home in Summer Street. Guilia now leads our Youngest Group using the Reggio Emilia Approach to design and implement her curriculum. She is wonderfully artistic and expressive, encouraging our youngest students to find and express their truest selves. She is currently pursuing her Master’s Degree in Child Education through the University of Colorado Boulder, and creates magical miniature folk crafts and clothing often from upcycled materials in her spare time. She further parents 8 marvelous rats who often visit school and whom the children adore.

Mery Priego, Youngest Group Teacher

Mery has graced Summer Street’s halls for over 10 years, and makes memories with families that last a lifetime. She is radiant and strong like the sun: warmly welcoming our youngest students into school and keeping them safe and thriving through a range of adventures. With her own children as current students, she embodies our school’s ethos of parent-teacher camaraderie and support. She understands intimately the day to day rollercoaster of 2-3 year olds, and elevates the family experience in the Youngest Group with perspective, humor, and grit. When Mery is near, both parents and kids feel stronger and brighter, ready to passionately and confidently explore their worlds.

Middle Group (3-4 Year Olds)

Richard Barton, Lead Middle Group Teacher

Richard came to Summer St over 50 years ago as a teacher, soon after it started. He’s taught generations of families (his students’ children) and his own children are alumni, too. Such tenure and experience is nearly impossible to find in early education teachers. Yet Richard’s special way of relating to the children is equally uncommon. “I like to be straightforward, not act differently with the children,” Richard explains. “I also coach high school students,” Richard continues, “and they deal with the same issues as my three and four-year olds. They need to learn to deal with their feelings, stand up for themselves, and interact with others. We all do. I try to help them with these skills. It is the social part that causes the biggest challenge for people. If young children can master that, they will be successful in whatever they do throughout their lives.” Children leave the Middle Group more competent and mature than they entered, with a better understanding of everything from friendships to gardening to the best mittens for winter. They also leave with a treasured friend and sage in Richard. “I’m rewarded everyday at my job. I don’t hear that from most of my friends. I find great satisfaction and value in what I do.”

Nick Hayes, Middle Group Teacher

Nick has brightened Summer Street’s spirits for over 5 years, arriving after studying early childhood education at UMass Amherst and volunteering as a facilitator at The Children’s Room, a local resource for families who’ve experienced traumatic loss. He is now a vital element in the bubbling alchemy that is Middle Group, and his additional theater background is a perfect match for 3-4 year olds’ imaginative worlds. Kids feel validated and inspired, while his unique blend of emotional sensitivity, intellectual agility, and energetic levity support the community as a whole. He sees a microcosm of the world in the classroom, and navigates challenges with the aplomb of a UN negotiator and the warmth and pride of a family member. Parents have as much fun as their kids discovering what activities Nick has set up for the day. Families leave drop off and pick up with smiles and lighter hearts. And usually with a killer song in their heads from Nicky’s epic dance parties.

Paul Robinson, Assistant Middle Group Teacher

Walking into Summer Street, you can’t miss Paul Robinson. Hanging in the lunch area each morning, he welcomes every family in his warm, understated way. But don’t let his low key style fool you. He pays close attention to each child and adult who enters or leaves, as if all 40 children were his own. Now married for 6 years, Paul was adopted from Colombia at age 4 to a wonderful, very community oriented family in Wellesley. He entered Lesley University as a culinary student but things changed when he was required to take an early childhood class. “I immediately fell in love with working in Early Childhood,” he recalls. So in Fall 2001 he came to Summer Street as a student intern. Reflecting on what’s kept him here for 23 years, he says he likes “the way the teachers work together and support each other. The same for the Summer Street community – it’s a very supportive, great community.” Paul says he “loves watching the children grow up. And then having their siblings, and watching them grow up too.” He smiles. “But the best is knowing that what we teach the children now is going to be with them throughout their whole lives.”

Oldest Group (4-5+ Year Olds)

April Stewart, Lead Oldest Group Teacher

April came to Summer Street 14 years ago after 4 years teaching at another parent cooperative in Cambridge and 2 years teaching in San Diego, California. She enjoys the community that cooperative schools inherently create, and having families work together in the classroom on a consistent basis brings our specific community incomparable strength. April finds great importance in the power of play and the undeniable learning that comes from what young children do naturally. She plans her curriculum using a project-based approach, studying topics that children can manipulate, observe and experiment with (including using resources available in the community). Children direct the path of study by discussing what they already know about a topic and identifying questions they want the answers to. April develops ways to investigate their questions and document what they learn. The result is children excitedly engaged and full of pride in their activities. April is tactful and sensitive, and a calm presence in what can sometimes be a chaotic scene. But she believes any noise and mess are productive and serve great purpose. Children emerge from the Oldest Group curious and confident, ready to navigate new exciting chapters in their lives. All three of April’s children are alumni and often return to school to visit and volunteer.

Jen Devine, Oldest Group Teacher

Jen has been at Summer St for 11 years, yet each conversation feels fresh and enchanting, drawing us to the wonders of the present moment and the natural world. One of her many super powers is slowing kids down while maintaining their interest. She tells the stories of the trees in our school’s backyard. She beads in a corner during independent play, commenting on the lovely way the beads sparkle in the light. Her open-mindedness enables her to see otherwise hidden potentials in people and things. At the same time, as one parent put it, “she doesn’t take guff.” Oldest Group children are empowered to explore and elaborate on their internal and external worlds, both real and imaginative. And parents get a free pass to slow down from the frenetic pace of modern life.

Extended Day

Jason Michelitch, Extended Day Teacher

Jason joined the Summer Street faculty in 2022 as a father-turned teacher, with one son an alumni and the other a current student. He began teaching at Boston University while earning an MFA in Film and Television Studies and pursuing his Phd. His research explored powerful acts of imagination and observation at the intersection of human behavior, emotion, and consciousness. While these were compelling lines of research in film, Jason found it equally if not more exciting to study them in the empirical realm of the classroom. Today his athletically goofy intellectualism supports Summer Street’s extended day and Summer programs, to the delight of the children he serves.

Director

Tracey Kaplan, Summer Street Preschool Director

Tracey became the Director of Summer St Preschool in 1997. In her 27 year tenure, she’s fostered an ecosystem of peace, joy, and social progress for children, their families, our faculty, and community.

Tracey grew up in South Africa, where she earned her early childhood education degree as a way to manifest her passion for politics, specifically issues of equality and justice. Her mission became creating nurturing spaces in which children could explore these issues safely and in the context of community.

In 1990 she left South Africa, living in Europe then eventually Boston. She continued cultivating safe spaces for growth by running an inner city school, working at a famous bookstore in Harvard Square, and supporting a cooperative preschool in a progressive, politically active church, but none were the right venues for her work long term. In 1997, a position as Director of Agassiz Preschool (now Summer St Preschool) opened and was a perfect fit.

Tracey evolved the school to become unique and well-known on several dimensions. First, it has unprecedented faculty retention rates, largely because Tracey demands investment in teachers both financially and holistically. “Without brilliant teachers, a school is just a building.” She also gives the faculty perks and support, as well as freedom and trust, making Summer St a place teachers want to stay.

She can lend this trust due a second dimension she’s fostered: Summer St as a place where deep, often difficult conversations take place productively. Tracey and coworkers are equal in looking at their own human “stuff,” processing together what has and is happening in their lives, and finding ways to make it useful. As happens everywhere, people mess up. The difference at Summer St is that people are honest about it and work together to mend and grow.

This makes Summer St a “human place” as opposed to an instagram school, a third dimension the cooperative is known for. People have described it as folksy, crunchy, or ‘old school.’ What they mean is that real people put their real hearts into the space and make real connections within it. She’s found the removal of preciousness from the school’s image allows the kids to be kids. “The most important thing is the kids being happy. The rest can get worked out.” Tracey’s own daughter thrived at the school under her mom’s directorship, and now as a high schooler continues to visit, adding to the comforting family feel of the school.

Parents say “Tracey is just the right balance of authoritative, loving, chaotic and creative. She loves each and every kid at Summer Street fiercely and forever, and makes you feel like the world’s best parent for making them. She is a treasure to our school and community. We are lucky to count her as a guide and a friend.”