After her move to the Hudson Valley, it didn’t take long for Janine Louis to land at High Meadow School. “It was instant love. It felt like coming home. It was so comfortable, just a wonderful, cheery place where I really felt like kids could just be kids.”
Janine spent her first year in the area teaching at another private school before linking up with former Head of School, Susan Paynter. “We met at Bread Alone in Woodstock,” Janine laughs. “She wanted to start the nursery [school] program, and I agreed.” During her first year teaching at HMS, COVID-19 hit, and things shifted again. Janine took on the Pre-Kindergarten class, then moved into Kindergarten, where she’s currently in her third year as lead teacher.
Before moving upstate, Janine taught in New York City for 17 years at the International Preschool in Manhattan. “It felt like a unique teaching situation, being submerged in so many different cultures and being able to bring that into teaching,” she says. Originally from Queens, she attended the United Nations International School “with kids of diplomats from the UN,” an experience she values deeply.
Janine became an educator “to have an impact on others.” After graduating from college with a fine arts degree, “I answered an ad in the paper for an art and drama-based school and got a position teaching 15 three-year-olds,” she laughs. “The teacher had walked out the door and I was thrown into the classroom by myself. I taught those littles for a year and realized ‘this is my calling’.” That’s when she found a job at International Preschool and began her master's in Early Childhood Education at City College.
Janine’s father was a social worker, the head of a hospice unit at a nursing home serving Holocaust survivors. Her mother was an art teacher throughout New York City. She grew up with two younger siblings, traveling and spending time in France, where she has family on her father’s side.
After struggling throughout high school, Janine was diagnosed with a learning disability at 16. This led to her first move upstate, to attend Oakwood Friends School in Poughkeepsie, known for having a strong supportive program for students with learning challenges.
Janine’s recent move was similarly motivated by her hopes for her son, now a 5th grader at High Meadow. “Coming from the city, having outdoor space and a more open-ended education was amazing,” she says. HMS has been “really incredible for Lucien. We have an incredible community of fellow teachers and parents. I have seen him gain so much self-confidence. He’s just so comfortable here. There is such a family feel to it. There’s been a lot of support for him [and] he’s seen for who he is.”
In her classroom today, “Structure, boundaries, and consistency are super important stuff for my Kindergarteners, but also fun, creativity and joy.” She works to balance learning and self-discovery through play and exploration with building a foundation for academic work. Activities emphasize problem-solving and questioning and help develop independence and self-esteem.
“I’m always excited for what the kids are going to bring to our learning process,” Janine says, glad to have space to follow student interest. This year, they started off with a weather-related inquiry, but it hasn’t generated the kind of engagement she was hoping for, so they’re going to explore another theme. “Excitement is everything,” she says, “the one thing that leads you into learning about anything.”
Janine lives in Phoenicia about a mile from her brother, and their families spend a lot of time together. “Lucien is an only child,” she says (apart from a dog, cat, leopard gecko, and Betta fish, she is careful to note), “and his cousins are everything. Our community in Phoenicia is great. What can I say, we love it here.” Looking forward, Janine says she’d like to see High Meadow continue to connect to our local cultures, pulling from the richness of our region, including local artists, authors, musicians, and chefs.