Librarian and Assistant Math Teacher

 

Maria is a native Russian speaker. She received her Bachelor’s degree at the State Pedagogical Institute in Murmansk, Russia, where she studied Linguistics and Teaching English and French as Foreign Languages. Maria also recently completed her Master’s in Library Science from Syracuse University.

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After graduating from college in Russia, Maria spent about a decade working in office management roles. However, her real passion was rooted in books and literature. To that end, she founded an online children's book store Bookashki.Net. Through her website and blog, she interacted with parent-customers and built a community of loyal readers. Upon moving to the US, Maria continued her work with books at the Friends of Princeton Public library and later at the Orchard Hill Elementary School, where to this day she assists the school librarian in library instruction for children in K-2 grade and is the Co-Chair of the Library committee of the PTA. In parallel, Maria has taken on an internship at the Digital Social Science Center at Columbia University.

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Maria commutes to us all the way from Princeton, NJ and has two young children, Varya and Tim, who both attend the Golden Key Russian School. Over the last five years, Maria’s family has regularly participated in bi-annual Russian camps organized by acclaimed math teacher and author of many kids’ books on math, Jane Kats, where Maria has observed many tricks of the trade from the camp leader. Maria joined our staff as a school Librarian in 2016.