Kathleen Moldovan, director of Moldovan Academy, employs a curriculum developed around teaching children what interests them.
Ryan lely/Sonoma valley sun
When Kathleen Moldovan began working with young children as a high school sophomore in Virginia, she knew that some day she wanted to run her own preschool. Since September, that’s what she’s been doing, as the owner and director of the Moldovan Academy, which opened in the building behind Trinity Episcopal Church on East Spain Street.
Created with family sweat equity and a bank line of credit, the school teaches 15 kids, ages 2 to 5, every day in two-, three- and five-day programs that prepare them for kindergarten. She and her father John, a woodworker, did much of the work getting the classrooms ready, and her mother Joyce, a retired middle school science teacher, is the assistant director and teaches every day. With two additional teachers, Lisa Bell and Beverly Aguilar, the school maintains a low ratio of kids to adults.
The school emphasizes active learning, based on a curriculum developed by the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation in Ypsilanti, Mich. Moldovan believes that teaching should follow what interests the kids. Earlier this fall, for example, when the youngsters noticed acorns falling on the playground, the teachers turned the acorns into a tool that could offer the continuity and repetition young children need to learn. Teachers used the acorns for basic math and reading – the kids counted acorns, sorted them by size and shape and learned the letter “a.” After the acorns sprouted, the kids planted them and are watching them grow. To keep the acorn theme going, Moldovan’s father built a plywood house that the kids are decorating with acorns, similar to a gingerbread house. They also worked with the woodworker to assemble the house.
Healthy nutrition is another important focus for Moldovan. Parents include one fresh fruit and one fresh vegetable in every child’s lunch, which becomes an opportunity to learn letters and a concept like texture by assessing crunchiness versus softness.
The school also has pint-size gym equipment, including a treadmill, trampoline and exercise bike, as well as drama, art and science areas. Because Moldovan believes a sense of community is important for the school, she schedules a family night once a month that includes supper.
Another aspect of community is providing scholarships. This year, Trinity Episcopal Church is paying for one four-year-old boy, who’d never been to preschool, to attend Moldovan Academy fulltime. As the school grows, Moldovan hopes to offer additional scholarships.
To prepare to run her own school, Moldovan earned a BS in daycare administration in 1993 from Virginia Tech, learning how to develop a curriculum as well as how to run a business. Then, having been a member of the ski and cycling teams, she decided to head to Aspen after graduation, where she taught first- and second-graders to ski in the winter and worked as a personal trainer in the summer.
In 1999, she decided it was time for a change, moving to Los Angeles to work in sales. As a sales rep for a drug company that assigned Sonoma County as her territory, Moldovan had her choice of where to live. She said she chose Sonoma because “it is such a quaint and beautiful town.”
Through all these changes and moves, Moldovan never forgot her goal: opening her own school.
Moldovan Academy
275 E. Spain St., Sonoma
707.996.3755; www.moldovanacademy.com
e-mail: ma@moldovanacademy.com
