About

Hi! Welcome to our little corner of the internet. My name is Sara Cotner. I live in Austin, Texas, with my partner, Matt, and our two boys, Henry (born 2011) and Tate (2013).

I was born in San Diego, California, and lived there until I was 12. We then moved to Tampa, Florida. I attended Stetson University and majored in American Studies (with minors in Women & Gender Studies and English). I spent a lot of time in college sitting around talking about the world’s problems. By the end of four years, I wanted to be part of working toward solutions.

I joined AmeriCorps and recruited and trained reading tutors for the public school system. I volunteered in schools in low-income neighborhoods and saw that in the United States, your zip code really could determine your destiny. That experience inspired me to want to become a teacher and work to offer families high-quality educational options, no matter what neighborhood they lived in.

Through Teach For America, I began teaching in rural Louisiana and had an amazing experience as a third-grade teacher. I then moved to Houston to teach at the original KIPP school, focused on helping children from low-income schools get to and through college. I then worked as an educational consultant for schools around the nation.

Through the process, I started asking myself some critical questions:

How do we move away from a “factory model” of education with everyone doing the same thing at the same time in the same way? How do we prepare children for a future we can only begin to imagine? How do we not only prepare children for the next century but prepare them to transform the next century? What does it mean to be a white woman teaching primarily children of color in schools that place a significant emphasis on obedience, compliance, and following directions?

I took a year off on a self-subsidized sabbatical, met my future husband (Matt) while tutoring Hurricane Katrina evacuees at the Astrodome, and settled back in Houston. I did observations at elite private schools in Houston, trying to find a different model of education. I walked into a Montessori school, and within two minutes I knew my whole life had to change.

Instead of looking like a factory, it looked like a Google workplace where everyone had freedom of movement to work on their projects, collaborate, and meet their needs within a beautiful, humane, micro-society.

Matt and I both decided to move to Denver to get our Montessori certification. We taught in public Montessori schools in Denver for our internship year. We planned a $2,000 wedding in the mountains of Colorado, got married in July, and then two days later moved back to Houston and bought our first home. Matt returned to work at KIPP, and I worked as an independent educational consultant and then as a public Montessori teacher in HISD.

A couple years later, we decided to start our family. We welcomed Henry in February 2011. We decided it was time to really put down roots and settled in Austin, TX.

We rented a house for 1.5 years, suffered through a miscarriage, bought a half-acre of land, started building a family home, and gave birth to Tate at home in July 2013 (moving into our new house a month later). Simultaneously, I started a non-profit organization called Montessori For All and worked with a team of incredible folks to launch Austin’s first free public Montessori school in East Austin. What a whirlwind!

Our life is finally starting to settle down. Matt works from home for a non-profit organization called Leading Educators. The boys go to the school I helped start. We spend our days wrestling, swimming, riding bikes, going to the park, taking day trips, swimming in the river, hiking down by the creek behind our house, and making art. Matt does photography and runs a whole lot; I like to blog, read, and go to therapy.

And as smooth as a story sounds when you type it up into a neat package, you can rest assured that there was a lot of angst, insecurity, uncertainty, and stress throughout the entire process!