Denise Jillions

Lower Elementary Assistant

“Free activity makes children happy. We can see how happy they are, but it is not the fact that they are happy that is important; the important thing is that a child can construct a man through this free activity. ”
-Maria Montessori

Denise recently joined MSGH as a Teacher’s Assistant in Lower Elementary fulfilling her lifelong dream of working in a Montessori classroom. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Barnard College and a master’s degree in Family and Community Education from Teachers College, Columbia University.  She has completed the Orientation Course at Montessori Training Center Northeast.

Her earliest career was as a public health educator specializing in addiction and then as a counselor/consultant to schools.  Denise has lived abroad -- in Australia, Greece, England, and Canada -- with her husband and three sons and worked in a variety of professional and university settings until 2012 when she returned to the New York area to work for a non-profit advocating educational policies that recognize the foreign qualifications of immigrants and refugees. 

Having just moved to Hartford in 2021, she loves taking walks in Elizabeth Park and discovering New England. She enjoys entertaining old and new friends with her husband John, visiting her young grandchildren in England whenever she can, and she aspires to catalog a lifetime of photos in her free time.