You have to stay curious yourself to see the world through the eyes of children who simply want to understand it.
A broken leg is rarely a stroke of luck. For Claudia Frei, however, it was. It opened up a completely new path into education. When her neighbor broke her leg, she stepped in as a substitute at the lunch table. From that moment she was fascinated by working with children. The one-off assignment ultimately turned into eleven years. At first she only served food and tidied up, but gradually Ms. Frei became more and more involved in the entire care operation. She took great joy in meeting the children exactly where they were in their development. In addition, the work fit perfectly with her everyday life as a mother.
With the encouragement of her then-supervisor, Ms. Frei decided, at the age of 50, to complete the training to become a childcare specialist (Fachperson Betreuung, FaBe). After successfully finishing the program, she initially worked in daycare centers, where she primarily cared for the youngest in the infant group and gained valuable knowledge beyond the everyday after-school routine.
In 2023 Ms. Frei started at Lip as a childcare specialist in the after-school center. Because of her wealth of experience, she was encouraged to take the Montessori training for the three- to six-year-old age group. So at 58 she returned to the classroom and successfully completed the diploma. Since then she has been joyfully working as a Montessori teacher.
She approaches the school day with about the same curiosity as the children. For example, even the walk to the forest playground becomes a great journey of discovery. Nature is, for Ms. Frei, the best learning environment: here you can discover animals and plants, keep warm by sledding in freezing temperatures, or use stones and sticks to work on first arithmetic problems. Outdoors you can do anything, and the children learn through play.
And so the circle is complete: it was only through this openness and curiosity that Ms. Frei found her way into education in the first place. One could almost say she used her favorite book, "The Café on the Edge of the World," as a handbook. That everything fell together so wonderfully back then is, in any case, a real stroke of luck for Lip.