Leslie Hites

Founder and Head of the School

Leslie was born in Colom­bia, and spent a good part of her child­hood and ado­les­cence in Italy with a three year inter­lude in Wash­ing­ton DC and Chile. From Rome, she moved to Bel­gium where she stud­ied com­mu­ni­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­sité de Louvain. After mov­ing to the United States, while search­ing for the best edu­ca­tion that would allow her six chil­dren to develop their poten­tial, Leslie came upon the work of Dr. Maria Montes­sori. Since then, she has ded­i­cated her life to study­ing Montes­sori, teach­ing in Montes­sori envi­ron­ments and as admin­is­tra­tor of The Renais­sance Inter­na­tional School, a Montes­sori school that is the only gen­uine tri-​lingual Montes­sori school in the United States. Leslie is a par­ent edu­ca­tor and coach as well as a trainer for the Inter­na­tional Net­work of Chil­dren and Fam­i­lies. She reg­u­larly teaches an eight-​week Redi­rect­ing Children’s Behav­ior course to Bay Area parents. She serves on the Board of Trustees for The NewGate-​Field School, a model school of the Montes­sori Foun­da­tion in Sara­sota, Florida, and is also on the Board of the Inter­na­tional Montes­sori Council. Leslie lives in Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia with her hus­band and enjoys trav­el­ing to visit her six chil­dren and eleven grand­chil­dren who live around the world. 

 

Rosario Toward

Assis­tant Head of School

Rosario was born, raised and edu­cated in Mex­ico City, Mex­ico. She grad­u­ated with a Bilin­gual Ele­men­tary Teach­ing Cer­tifi­cate and worked in sev­eral pri­vate schools in Mex­ico City prior to shift­ing her atten­tion to the Montes­sori Method. She took her first Montes­sori course in Berg­amo, Italy. She grad­u­ated with an AMI ele­men­tary diploma, in 1971. Upon grad­u­a­tion, Rosario mar­ried and moved to Miami, Florida, where she was one of three Montes­sori teach­ers, at the ele­men­tary level, in the state of Florida. After a few years of work­ing in Florida, she moved with her fam­ily to Mex­ico to direct one of the largest Montes­sori schools in north­ern Mex­ico, with 350 stu­dents rang­ing from 2.5 to 15 years of age. Years later, and upon return­ing to Florida, she con­tin­ued work­ing in var­i­ous Montes­sori schools as a teacher and trainer and as a school con­sul­tant and con­fer­ence pre­sen­ter for the Amer­i­can Montes­sori Soci­ety. Dur­ing those years, she con­tin­ued her Montes­sori stud­ies and obtained her Pri­mary and Assis­tants to Infancy diplo­mas. Rosario has founded and owned Montes­sori schools and has been a firm believer of “edu­ca­tion for life”, tak­ing stu­dents, as young as 6 years of age, to dif­fer­ent coun­tries to immerse them­selves in the dif­fer­ent cultures. Rosario has been working at TRIS since 2005.