Adolescent Program Director Announcement
May 15, 2015

Dear MSLF Community,

We are pleased to tell you that we have succeeded in filling the role of Montessori School of Lake Forest Adolescent Program Director. Since Ann Jordahl left this position in order to lead the school in June, 2013, we have conducted two formal searches and directly approached several individuals, in ongoing efforts to fill this position. We are grateful to Bev Adamczyk who agreed to temporarily direct the Adolescent Program during the 2013-14 school year.

We searched carefully for an individual to fulfill our Adolescent Program’s distinctive criteria, including:

  • A wide range of experience in working with young people; developing and leading programs; teaching, collaborating with colleagues, students, and parents; expanding enrollment; managing critical issues-all skills necessary to ground the Adolescent Program.
  • The capacity to continue to build our Adolescent Program by developing local, urban, national, and international connections both within the Montessori community and within the larger worlds of higher education, sustainability, arts and culture, and service.
  • The ability to engage in critical thinking across the disciplines; offer sound and well-proven leadership skills; collaborate with and support parents; and serve as a good guide for students as they prepare to enter high school and college, and to develop part-time and full-time job opportunities.
  • Teaching experience with a wide range of youth; familiarity with Montessori education; possessing an advanced degree; the insight to engage successfully with the challenges of Montessori philosophy, and the maturity to collaborate well with our high performing faculty, our sophisticated parent body, and our richly varied and high-potential student body.

After a 3 year search, MSLF has appointed Stephen Sennott , a teacher and youth mentor who worked at Illinois Institute of Technology, where he served 14 years as Assistant Dean and adjunct professor in the College of Architecture. Steve is already known to many in the MSLF community, most recently as a Chicago tour guide for the Adolescent Program, a former committee volunteer, an alumni parent, and the spouse of Ann Jordahl.

Steve’s application and qualifications indisputably established him as our single strongest candidate for the position. His deep familiarity with Maria Montessori’s collaborative approach to education and community has informed his teaching, advising, and administrative tasks. The Adolescent Program students will be well served, too, by his experience as a mentor for Chicago-area middle school and high school students engaged in the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s Saturday Studios and as the director of IIT’s summer high school workshop, “Experiment in Architecture.”

We have worked carefully with MSLF’s Board of Directors and have pursued this opportunity fully aware of the challenge and promise it offers.  Per their guidance, candidate interviews were conducted by a team. The selection process prompted a useful review of procedures, and to maintain the integrity of our employee communications we have added a formal whistleblower policy to the Employee Handbook. In addition, Ann has taken steps to insure that Steve’s formal report and review process will be conducted by another employee than herself.

We are confident that Steve will foster the MSLF Adolescent Program as a teacher, mentor, and program director. To this end, he will seek to develop relationships with the full MSLF community beginning this spring, before he formally joins the MSLF faculty this fall. He will be reaching out to faculty and students and there will be opportunities to meet him during the spring and summer. Please feel free to invite him to events or to contact him with ideas or questions.

We are fully committed to maintaining the Montessori School of Lake Forest as an open learning community, focused on serving the parent-child-teacher triad, on behalf of all of your children. To that end, we seek to hire only the very best in faculty. Please contact either of us with comments, questions, or concerns. As you know, the door is always open.

Best wishes to all of you, and please join us in welcoming Steve to MSLF.

Ann Jordahl
Executive Director
Tom Zengeler
President, Board of Directors
By Teresa Pavelich June 2, 2025
At MSLF, overnight trips become an important part of Montessori learning beginning in Lower Elementary. Each trip is carefully planned to meet the developmental needs of students in the second and third plane of development , with each overnight trip getting progressively longer to ease children into these independent journeys away from their families. These aren't just trips - they're carefully crafted opportunities for students to discover who they are, what they're capable of, and how they can contribute to their community and the wider world. Beginning in their first year of Lower Elementary, students take their first MSLF overnight trip to Nature’s Classroom in Wisconsin. For many Lower Elementary students, this trip represents their first nights away from home. During their trip they explore the outdoors, work together in groups, use their practical life skills during community meals, and grow! It’s this first overnight trip for MSLF students where parents and staff remark how students come back almost transformed after being able to develop their independence in a supportive environment. Our Upper Elementary classroom has embarked on overnight trips to both Camp Timber-lee in Wisconsin and The Country Experience at Amstutz Family Farm in Elizabeth, IL. Both locations provide students with increasing opportunities to apply their practical life skills, like checking the weather to ensure they have weather-appropriate gear for their trip. Every task empowers them to develop self-reliance and problem-solving skills. These trips are also opportunities for the students to get to know one another and build strong relationships with their peers and with the adults in their classroom. Adolescent Program students at MSLF have opportunities to visit both Springfield, IL and Washington, DC . These overnight trips tie directly into their studies – connecting curriculum learned in the classroom to experiences in the wider community. They often take their learning on the road, for example by watching a legislative session in action in Springfield to see which bills are passed during their trip or presenting their research papers at monuments in Washington, DC. And for these students, the skills they built on their trips in Lower Elementary and Upper Elementary are put to work, as they pack their own bags, learn more about public transportation, and plan their daily itineraries to make the most out of their visit. Experiences like these at MSLF support the child’s independence, laying the groundwork for transitions in later life: the start of high school, going away to college, a first job, and beyond. As they conquer challenges outside their comfort zone, their confidence soars, laying the foundation for the autonomy and independence they will continue to utilize throughout their Montessori experience and beyond. It’s good for parents, too, to see how truly capable our children are!
By Teresa Pavelich March 7, 2025
Forbes Article highlights mental health benefits of Montessori education