Why Chrysalis?
Chrysalis gives your child the benefits you’d expect from the best of large independent schools:
highly trained professionals, and an excellent quality, developmentally appropriate learning experience.
But Chrysalis also provides something the larger schools can‘t: a smaller group size and a low
teacher/child ratio. Plus a learning environment that’s as comfortable as home.
Our Teachers
Colleen Strohm has a Masters degree in Early Childhood Education, AMS Montessori certification, and a BA in anthropology. She has been working with young children for 35 years. Colleen has taught education classes at community college, mentored many home care providers and continues to learn from the children in her care.
After working as the director of a large center, she founded Chrysalis in her home in order to offer the more nurturing experience of a small group.
Joan Liberman has a Masters Degree in Early Childhood Education.
She has taught young children in preschools, child care centers, and laboratory schools and has taught education classes at the community college level. This is Joan's 15th year at Chrysalis!
Her undergraduate degree is in Music and Dance and she brings her love of these art forms to Chrysalis through weekly creative movement classes and daily singing and guitar playing.
Lily Lowell grew up at Chrysalis as she is the founder's daughter. She has a Masters Degree in Early Childhood Education and has been working with children for over ten years.
Lily also has a Bachelors degree in acting and performs long-form improv around Portland. She founded Quirk, a children's theater camp in Los Angeles and has taught classes at Oregon Children's Theater. She brings acting into the classroom in the form of Drama Games with the children.
Home Environment
At Chrysalis your child will develop his creativity, intellect, motor skills and social abilities with a small group of peers in a comfortable home setting. Your child’s natural curiosity will lead her through an unlimited range of learning situations. Maria Montessori calls this the time of the absorbent mind, during which children are like sponges, soaking up information, attitudes and sensations from all around them, taking in the world.
In an atmosphere permitting both playfulness and quiet individual activity, your child is encouraged to independently explore his own interests and develop at her own rate. Our teaching professionals gently guide your child in establishing the foundations of independence, order, respect, and self-esteem.
After Chrysalis
After spending their preschool years at Chrysalis, our children have successfully transitioned to
Arbor School of Arts and Sciences, Catlin Gabel, Oregon Episcopal School, All Saints,
and a wide variety of magnet programs, language immersion schools and Portland Public Schools.