My name is Claire Hutton, a South African, married for nearly 20 years and I have 2 boys, James and Matthew, who are seniors at St Andrew’s International High School, Malawi. We have been living in Malawi since 2013 and are permanent residents.

After finishing school, I went to a private college where I completed my Teaching Diploma with distinction.

The school where I did my practical training at, Diggledale Nursery School, offered me a post after completing my studies and I taught the 4-5-year-olds for a year.

I then went to North Carolina, USA to teach swimming and on my return, I began to study through the University of South Africa, a Bachelor of Arts Degree, majoring in Psychology and Anthropology.

As it was a correspondence degree, I continued teaching swimming for 3 years and then moved on to teach at Moms and Tots Head Office, for a couple of years. Moms and Tots is a workshop where moms and little ones from 18 months to 3 years attend weekly classes, and these are the classes that I ran daily.

The Moms and Tots owner, Petra Lester, then offered to open a school for me to run when I had finished my degree. The school was called Jungle Tots Playgroup and as of today, there are multiple franchises all over South Africa.

I taught at and ran this first Jungle Tots Playgroup for 3 years, teaching children between 3 and 5 years old.

We then moved to Zambia, so I resigned from my job at Jungle Tots.

On our return to South Africa in 2010, I joined my sister in law with running an Educational, Design and Technology Lego based programme at 11 schools around Johannesburg.

I have taught this programme whilst living in Malawi, at SAIPS and Hillview.

In 2018 I completed my Montessori training through North American Montessori Centre (NAMC) with distinction and I have also finished my Diploma in Dyslexia with distinction, through The Blackford Centre, UK.

Jaymini Lakhani and I opened Stepping Stones Montessori in September 2019 and this education journey has been so rewarding. The Montessori Method of teaching really encourages each child to develop a love for learning at the pace they are able to learn at. We have taught very diverse groups of children who have helped us to grow in our knowledge and approach to teaching and adapt our methods accordingly.