Term 4 Primary Leaders Network Meeting (South West region)

Lisa Fenton has been Principal of Margaret River Montessori School, a school catering for children from birth to Year 6, since 2014 and has taught and worked in a variety of educational settings for over 20 years. Throughout her career she has taught students ranging from babies/toddlers and Kindergarten through to Year 12 (ATAR), from the city to the remote Western Desert in both Catholic and independent schools. Lisa has also worked as an education consultant at AISWA providing support to principals, teachers and education assistants working in the Aboriginal Independent Community Schools all over WA. Since joining MRMS she has embraced Montessori as an educational philosophy and method, and has also been invited to be a member of the Special Needs Advisory Committee with AISWA assessing the impact of disability on education and distributing funding across WA independent schools. All of her experiences in education past and present culminate in her personal educational philosophy that ensures an optimistic perspective and an acknowledgement of diversity is applied to every educational setting and every individual in that setting.

Oliver Chanin is both a classroom teacher and the Coordinator of Student Learning and Development at Margaret River Montessori School. After graduating from his undergraduate Science degree, he followed an interest in sport and took on a rugby coaching role which provided the impetuous to return to university to complete an Education post grad and worked his way into middle leadership in schools across the Southwest of England. In 2017, after years of encouraging children to follow their dreams, he took some of his own advice and emigrated from the Southwest of England to the Southwest of Australia, swapping beautiful green hills for stunning golden beaches and took up his role at MRMS. In 2019, 10 years into his career, he completed a diploma in Montessori education. Olly has gained a wealth of experience, teaching children at varying points of their own educational journeys and across a diverse range of educational settings. The more experience he has gained, and the deeper he immerses himself into the Montessori method, the clearer it is that the Montessori philosophy and approach is absolutely the best to suit the education of the whole child. To be able to prepare and educate a child not just for school, but for life is an incredibly powerful notion.