Our Teachers

Our teachers are the heart of Cottage and the base of our success. Passion, inspiration, empathy, creativity, understanding and generosity of time & spirit define these wonderful teachers.

TEACHER JOCELYN

DIRECTOR

Jocelyn Robertson brings a meaningful and multi-layered perspective to Cottage, drawing on her educational background, experience in the classroom and years of participation in the Cottage community as a parent. She attended Cottage as a child, returned as a parent with her son and daughter, and worked as a substitute teacher before joining the Cottage teaching team. Her journey at Cottage continues as the director as she shares the Cottage Way with the next generation of families. Jocelyn’s understanding of the Cottage philosophy stems from her deep and abiding trust in children as natural born learners.

She has a Bachelor's degree in Gender Studies and Studio Art from Occidental College and a Master's degree in Human Development from Pacific Oaks College.

Jocelyn is passionate about parent education and has founded a blog addressing topics of parenting and understanding child development with thoughtful and eloquent posts. She has been an advocate of the belief that that the Cottage community extends far outside the classroom.

Jocelyn is equally at home ankle-deep in a puddle of mud while wearing a cape with the children, leading parent education discussions and reaching out to support struggling parents. She is warm and engaging with an innate ability to connect with children. She has a clear and exciting vision for Cottage, grounded in developmentally appropriate best practice and anti-bias education.

Read Ms Robertson's Statement of Educational Philosophy

Jocelyn is a major contributor to our blog - Cottage Parenting:

Cottage Parenting

The Lesson I’m Still Learning (revisited)

The other day, my kids and I were at a friend’s house. My daughter came to sit at the table and eat a snack while the other kids were playing. After a minute, a child who lives there came up behind her, furious, glaring over her unknowing shoulder. We adults saw the problem.

Cottage is for Everyone

This evening, as I sit in the glow of graduation day, eyes dry from crying, I just feel so profoundly grateful for the work we get to do. And I mean all of us: the teachers, the parents, and the kids, too. What we do here is hard, emotional work.

Saying a graceful no: Big kids and little kids at the Ice Cream Social

This Friday is Cottage’s annual tradition of filling our kids with forbidden sugar and setting them loose in the sandy wonderland of the yards in the evening, also known as the Ice Cream Social. When I was a parent of an infant and a toddler, I was filled with social anxiety…

Big and Powerful

I cast the kids as powerful giants in a land of vulnerable little creatures. We humans can dominate, when we so choose.

Holding Our Values

We work day by day to enact our shared ideals about valuing and prioritizing child led play, connecting with nature, trusting children as the drivers of their learning, within the structure of a loving community. We listen to the kids, both through their words and through their behavior. We respond, support flowing into the space where it’s needed, and then giving them room when they can stand on their own two feet.

Enacting Our Mission

In revisiting our mission statement this week, as we move into a new era, I read something new that had never occurred to me before. In the past I had emphasized the terms, “child-directed”, “social emotional development”, and “conflict resolution”, and that has served me well in recreating the mission on the ground in our classrooms each day. But this time, as I read, there was a different part that stood out, as if in bold print, for the first time.

Cottage Speak

Among the most distinctive aspects of being a part of the Cottage community is the way we talk to each other, and we call it Cottage Speak.

Stories of Resilience

My daughter loves to hear stories of terrible fates befalling people and animals. Dog bites, broken bones, illnesses, car crashes, and pet deaths are all favorite topics. She asks to hear them over and over, many stories in succession.

The Cottage Way

You know, one of our Cottage-speak catch phrases is “the Cottage way”. I used it in another post, without further explanation, because we are cultural insiders here. Families use it all the time at debrief and in our surveys, to indicate whether or not something was in line with our collective philosophy.

Teaching Consent

Twenty years ago, when I was a Gender Studies major, long before my children were born, I had already started thinking about the great honor and responsibility of teaching my kids, daughters and sons, about consent.

TEACHER JASON, Rainforest class

Jason Ballard was introduced to Cottage as a parent in 2012 when his daughter attended. Cottage was a perfect fit for his family's parenting beliefs. From that time he has worked with and been mentored by teachers at Cottage to fully understand "the Cottage way."

Jason worked as a substitute teacher in both the small yard and big yard since 2015 before joining the Cottage teaching staff in 2017. Jason is a great believer in the philosophy that a child learns best through play. He creates a fun and creative environment for his students to explore and learn through interaction with their peers and environment.

Endlessly inventive, he creates new and exciting opportunities in the yard and blends new and the familiar to create different settings for engagement. A pile of donated cardboard boxes may lead to a construction site with hammers and pegs, then become a city of tunnels, followed by a boat and then a house to be enthusiastically painted by the children.

When he is not working in the class, Jason works as a professional photographer.

TEACHER ALYSSA, Oak and Rainforest classes

Teacher Alyssa joined our teaching team in the Spring of 2021, during our first jump back into classes after Stay-at-Home, and immediately won the hearts of Cottage kids and parents alike. She has been dreaming of becoming a teacher since she was a child herself, and has worked with kids since she was 15, in school and home settings.

Working with older kids, she was particularly valued for her help with English assignments, but she has always had a special fondness for little kids. She is loved by our kids for her calm patience, her ease and grace, and her listening ear. Alyssa holds a BA in Child Development from Cal State LA, and is the mother of one daughter, Izzy.

Teacher Katie, currently on leave

Teacher Katie was born and raised in Los Angeles. As a baby, she was in a RIE parent infant class with Magda Gerber. She started working with children herself as a babysitter in high school. She studied coastal ecology in Mexico and taught environmental science to middle schoolers. She completed the RIE foundations training twice, and worked at the RIE center. In 2009, Katie completed the Feldenkrais training and began her practice working with infants and children. In 2017 she completed a BA in Human Development with a concentration in Early Childhood Education at Pacific Oaks College. Most recently, she completed an MS in Early Childhood Education with a STEM concentration from Erikson Institute. She loves observing children and seeing how their interests lead to investigations and discoveries.

Although Katie had always dreamed of being a science teacher, she fell in love with the world of preschoolers and realized that those wonderful scientific and mathematical habits of mind can be fostered in early childhood when adults nurture a child's natural curiosity. She loves reading with children, and has a special love for nature and animals, handed down from her parents. When not at Cottage, Katie can be found at a nearby mountain or beach looking at rocks and plants or catching reptiles and insects, or moonlighting as a photo archivist for the late great jazz photographer Herman Leonard.

Teacher Gaby, Mulberry and oak Classes

Gabriela Martinez, known to us as Teacher Gaby, is a Los Angeles native. Gaby is a graduate of California State University, Northridge, with a bachelors degree in Child and Adolescent Development. She joined the Cottage staff in 2022.

Gaby is a gifted and intuitive teacher, using a soft voice and a wonderful sense of humor to earn kids' trust. She is thoughtful and disciplined, helping the kids find a feeling of safety while getting to work out their big ideas. Gaby is bilingual, and has years of experience caring for a child with special needs. When Gaby isn’t at Cottage, she's often out trying new brunch restaurants.

Teacher Ana, mulberry and olive classes

Ana Chaidez was born and raised in Tongvaland in the North East Los Angeles area. Teacher Ana was inspired to become an educator during years of participating in movements to create change in the realms of environmental and food justice, human rights, and community engagement. A tireless advocate for children, Ana is known by the families who have worked with her for her careful attunement with children and her uncanny knack for understanding things from their point of view. She has been involved in education for 20 years, working in preschool environments, K- 6th grade, and has taught art classes and provided critical social-emotional support for homeschool communities across the LA area. Ana first came to Cottage in 2008, returning after a brief hiatus in 2022.

Teacher Ana has a strong theoretical background, citing Constructivism, Reggio Emilia, RIE, and Forest School -inspired philosophies as major inspirations. She views Cottage’s child-led, free play, guided and supported by caring, observant adults as ideal for nourishing children’s innate curiosity.

Ana is also a mixed- media artist and has shown her work throughout Los Angeles. She has collaborated with other artists and writers and has provided the cover art to four books of poetry as well as provided illustrations for chapbooks. In her free time, Ana enjoys surfing, skateboarding, films, listening to and making music. Whether it’s in the forest, the desert or the beach, she appreciates being in nature and learning about plants and wildlife.

Teacher Julie, Olive and Rainforest classes

Julie Lotter has been in the field of Early Childhood Education in one way or another for thirty-ish years. She was the director of Seattle Preschool at Seattle Gymnastics Academy for 11 years, did her AmeriCorp service with First 5 California, and had her own licensed home day care in her hometown of Point Arena, CA. She ran a pandemic pod of 7 kids for a full school year and is currently a nanny for two families in Northeast LA. She is also a mom to five amazing humans: Aaron, Ana, Avram, Aderyn, and Andre.

Citing the legendary educator Bev Bos as her hero, Julie says that anything science, nature and art related are what she especially loves to explore with kids. She believes there's always more to the story, and that teamwork makes the dream work. Julie loves Disneyland, camping, 80's music and squirrels.

Julie is over the moon to be joining Cottage as a Teacher! After this year, Julie plans to retire with her husband and move home to Point Arena.

TEACHER Basia, Oak and Rainforest classes

Teacher Basia is an experienced educator with a background in Music Education, Music Therapy and Child Development. She grew up in Poland and moved to the United States in 1999. Basia has extensive experience working with children in preschool settings as well as providing private music instruction in violin and piano for school aged children.

Passionate about play-based education, she draws inspiration from educators like Peter Gray and Bev Bos. Basia incorporates music into everyday routines, bringing joy and creativity to her interactions. She loves being silly, playful, and spontaneous, which helps her connect deeply with those around her.

Outside of her professional life, Basia enjoys traveling, gardening and swimming. She is a long time member of “The Silverlake Singers” chorale. Basia is a proud mother of two: Zosia, a college freshman, and Jack, a high school junior.