Sharlie Burnie
About Sharlie
Hello there! My name is Sharlie. I live in British Columbia, Canada. I didn’t always! I grew up in Nova Scotia and moved out west after graduating from Mount Saint Vincent University in 2012. I had visited B.C. once before and knew immediately this would be my future home. I was drawn to its magnitude, beauty, and diversity in education.
Education is at the heart of who I am; I have been working and training in this field for eleven years in a variety of settings from academic, recreational, and therapeutic support. It is my mission to nurture the growth of independence, responsibility, critical thinking, meaningful connections and a life-long love for learning within every student. I achieve this through a deep understanding that children have an immeasurable capacity for learning and discovery. Therefore, I believe it is part of ethical best practice in education to remain current and knowledgeable in leading research and development in the areas of methodology, pedagogy, and philosophy in order to fully meet the unique needs and personal learning styles of today’s rapidly changing children and youth.
Since beginning my teaching career in early childhood classrooms in 2008, I have spent over a decade guiding children of all backgrounds. I earned my undergraduate degree in Child Psychology & Development and diploma in Special Needs Support before discovering the Montessori approach to education in 2012. Working with children with a wide variety of special needs has supported my work as a Montessori guide tremendously. My Montessori training expands from the first to second plane of development; I have taught respectively in the 3-6, 6-9 and 9-12 Montessori environments. I am currently teaching in a 6-9 classroom and couldn’t be happier!
Outside of teaching, I enjoy gardening, caring for animals, knitting, photography, and painting. I love being outdoors and keeping an active lifestyle through kayaking, cycling, swimming, scuba diving, and practicing yoga. I find music to be very therapeutic; I enjoy singing along to music, playing the ukulele and marimba, and dancing. I have an ever growing love for children’s literature, and often spend time browsing the children’s shelves at my local library and book store.
I believe in always having big dreams and making steps that turn them into reality. Some of my big aspirations are to be fluent in sign language, learn to sail a boat, take a train across a country, dive with great white sharks, and own a small animal sanctuary.
“It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
– Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit
Sincerely,
Ms. Sharlie
Montessori For The World