Faculty and Staff Directory

Lisa Fitzler, K-1 teacher, loves what she does! After completing her Bachelor's degree at St. Olaf College in Minnesota where she grew up, she traveled through Europe before she and her daughter settled down in South Texas. She enrolled her daughter in a Montessori school and pursued her teaching career, teaching English as a Second Language, Language Arts, and Spanish in a public middle school for 12 years. During those years she also earned two master's degrees from the University of Texas Pan American: one in Linguistics (1992), and a second one in Education Administration (1995). In 1998, she moved to the St. Louis area to help her aging parents, who have since passed away. She continued teaching Spanish I-III, this time at the high school level, at St. Dominic High School in O’Fallon, MO. It was at St. Dominic where she met her husband, also a veteran teacher, and soon-to-be stepson. She taught there for six years, until her fourth child was born. While staying home taking care of her two youngest children, Lisa witnessed that children really do feel a pure joy in learning, and she wanted that joy to continue throughout their lives! Thus began her quest to become a Montessori teacher. She enrolled in the MOMTEP program at CDS and did her internship at the Washington Montessori School in Washington, MO. She was then recruited to teach at CDS at the K-1 level, where she has found true joy in teaching and seeing the joy in learning every day. Since joining CDS in 2007, she has also gone through early elementary (ages 6-9) Montessori teacher training at the Midwest Montessori Teacher Training Center (MMTTC) in Chicago, continuing to expand her understanding of how best to help children learn.