The 2021–2022 school year at The New Century School has been characterized by hope, joy, and glad new faces in the student body and the faculty and staff. One such new member of the TNCS community is Ann Marie Simonetti, Director of Enrollment Management (Admissions) and Marketing. Ms. Simonetti joined TNCS in September, when former TNCS Admissions Director Suzannah Hopkins accepted a position at St. Mary’s School in Annapolis, where her son is completing his senior year. Although the TNCS community was sorry to see Ms. Hopkins go, wishing her well in a position she will obviously enjoy deeply and being thrilled to welcome Ms. Simonetti are more than adequate consolation.

With school leadership experience in professional development, admissions, digital marketing and design, and advancement, Ms. Simonetti brings a wealth of knowledge to her position, which is so integral to the school. “I’m super excited to be here,” she said. “Everyone is so helpful and welcoming. It’s been a great couple of weeks, and [Ms. Hopkins] certainly did a great job of giving me all the institutional knowledge in the couple of days we got to be together.” Let’s get to know our new Admissions Director!

Educational and Professional Background

Ms. Simonetti attended the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, the alma mater of her parents and a few other family members, right out of high school. “I was undetermined for a while but eventually got into the major of hospitality and quickly found that to be the right place for me. I felt passionate about it, enough to pursue that as a career after college,” she explained. After graduation in 2003, she did a 400-hour internship at the Radisson in Valley Forge (since renamed). A Conference Center was attached to this very large business-oriented hotel, and her internship involved working in all the departments—front desk, sales, reservations, housekeeping—and getting a comprehensive picture of what operations required on a day-to-day basis.

“Through that, I found that sales and marketing was the area I really wanted to focus on and was very lucky to be asked to stay on in that role. I had the opportunity to do that for a while and then connected with the Radnor Hotel on the main line of Philadelphia, where I got into a management position and really started getting my footing in terms of how sales and marketing works together.” During her time at the Radnor Hotel, an unexpected opportunity arose for her to transition from corporate meeting planning to wedding planning. “Doing that, I got more experience working with all members of the family and how they each had individual wants and needs, hopes, and dreams to express. I also quickly acclimated to managing a rigorous project schedule and began exploring workflow management tools.”

It will become clear that her rich, diverse background primed her for her new role. Answering inquiries, providing customer service, following up on the detail-oriented pieces, and communicating the necessary information to all the people who need to work together to make an event successful served her well and parallels some of her current tasks. “The conversations I have now are very similar to those I had in that role in that they are focused on common goals and rely heavily on building a relationship to achieve those goals,” she said.

While weighing various options for graduate school she spent time as a private nanny. This experience reminded her of the many hours she spent in her Mom’s classroom and Dad’s school office as a child. She started on a post-baccalaureate degree at Cabrini University, where, coincidentally, our Head of School, Mr. Jacks, used to ride his bike through campus. During this time, she visited her hometown in south-central Pennsylvania and reconnected with her now-husband who she knew growing up. The couple had their first daughter in 2010 followed by twin daughters soon after.

After moving back to Pennsylvania she transferred from Cabrini into a unique post-baccalaureate teacher intern program. The program allows those with bachelor’s degrees to get hands-on observation time and experience in the classroom. “In this way, we progressed through to an instructional teaching certificate more expeditiously than we may have in a more traditional degree program,” she explained.

From Pennsylvania to Maryland . . . and TNCS!

Before Ms. Simonetti moved to Maryland, she had some more knowledge and experience to glean. After finishing her teaching certificate, she earned a master’s in curriculum instruction while working as a graduate assistant in the Teacher Education Department at Shippensburg University. Adding another piece to the puzzle, she then started working at the Montessori school where her oldest daughter was attending. “This was exciting for us in terms of wanting her to be there—it’s a philosophy I’m very passionate about—so when the opportunity came around to jump on board, I did my Montessori certification with them,” she explained. Toward the end of 2019, her husband was approached with a contract in Glen Burnie. Although only an hour and 20 minutes from where they lived in Pennsylvania, they felt that was not a reasonable daily commute.

So, I started looking for school administration opportunities that might be available near Glen Burnie. The robust community of Montessorians in this area was brought to my attention in talking with colleagues and members of my Montessori training cohort. After accepting a position in Columbia, we started researching schools and different places that we could live. We settled on Marriottsville/Woodstock, which is right in between Glen Burnie and Columbia and moved here in March of 2020.

If March 2020 sounds familiar, you’re probably feeling sympathetic for the timing of the Simonettis’ move. She was in school for only 6 days before the shutdown. Fortunately, this allowed them to get to know their surroundings and neighbors, and, as she neared the end of her 1-year contract, she started looking for different opportunities where she could grow and be part of a larger community. She began looking for schools with a toddler through 8th-grade model similar to the Montessori Academy of Chambersburg, where she worked in Pennsylvania.

At TNCS, the culture and the community appealed to her as well as the core values, which align with her personal mission statement and her vision for her professional and personal life. So, when this opportunity became available, she quickly reached out to TNCS Co-Executive Directors/Co-Founders Roberta Faux and Jennifer Lawner to convey her interest in the position but also as a “new place to call home and dig in there and set some roots. I really feel like I could contribute to the success and the growth of the students, the school, and the community and also to have that symbiotic relationship that we try to cultivate in the environment with the children,” she said.

In just her few weeks here so far, she’s already enjoying TNCS tremendously:

I really feel that everyone has been welcoming and helpful. The sense of community that I was getting from the website, my first visit here, and from some of the testimonials I’ve read online, is what I’m experiencing here on a daily basis. As someone who spent a lot of time in the classroom, I’m seeing that the things that are happening in practice are what I’m discussing with potential students and families as our philosophy, as our pedagogy and our curriculum. That’s so inspiring and makes it easy for me to promote the school because we really are providing those great opportunities and robust activities and meeting the individual needs of everyone in our community in a way that sets the foundation for learning and growing. It’s a great place for them to be but it’s also what I’m experiencing as a new team member—being met where I am and in terms of what I know and what I don’t know and what I need to bridge the gap.

For now, she’s focused on finding students who are the right fit for TNCS as well as continuing to getting to know current students and their families, learning more about the new advisory program (stay tuned for an upcoming blog!), and bringing some of her background and experience with outreach enrichment. “I’m getting to know our internal community and bringing ideas for how to strengthen our relationship with our external community outside the walls of the school.”

“I look forward to being here every day,” she said. And, when she’s back home in Marriottsville, you can bet she’s staying active. She coaches field hockey for the Howard Stampede and teaches a group fitness class. She also spends a lot of time enjoying the outdoors with her family, kayaking, exploring, and soaking up the beautiful surroundings.

Ms. Simonetti will be offering both in-person/virtual admissions events throughout the year. Please reach out to her if you know of a family who would benefit from being part of the TNCS community. Psst—our Fall Open House Is Saturday, October 23, 2021!