Who We Are
Jeanne (Gigi) deMarrais
The Director and Lead Teacher of The Mulberry Tree. She has served outstanding schools and programs in Westside areas of Los Angeles, including Westside Waldorf School, Pacifica Montessori, Crossroads, and YAYOE.
Gigi has a BA from UNC – Chapel Hill and an MA (except thesis) from UCLA. She has a California Master Teacher permit for Early Childhood and has completed 30+ Graduate units in music teaching for Early Childhood.
Jacklyn Salinas
Jacklyn brings a passion for Early Childhood with consistent, empowering, emotionally intelligent relationships. Her capacity to notice the development of every child, every day make the kind of teacher The Mulberry Tree is proud to feature.
CA Early Childhood Teacher Permit. Formerly of HIll and Dale.
Philip Guest
Leads Science and Outdoor Learning at The Mulberry Tree. His creative, “out of the box” projects, his understanding of the relationship between different ways of learning, his commitment to children, and his appreciation of the natural world make him an ideal teacher at The Mulberry Tree.
Philip has a BA from Gwent College of Higher Education and Dip H.E. in Waldorf Education from the University of Plymouth. He has taught at the Waldorf School of Orange County and Westside Waldorf School and is a clinician for The Waldorf Institute of Southern California.
Mia Franks
Mia brings Visual Art and Cooking projects to The Mulberry Tree.
CA Early Childhood Master Teacher Permit, Cordon Bleu Certificate, B.A. Fine Arts from Cal Arts.
Why We Love Early Childhood
We see these years as the most vital part of human development. It is when a child learns to exist in community, to develop an ecological identity, and when children form the most fundamental ideas about who they are.
“There are many who hold, as I do, that the most important period of life is not the age of university studies, but the first one, the period from birth to the age of six. For that is the time when man’s intelligence itself, his greatest implement, is being formed. But not only his intelligence; the full totality of his psychic powers.”