About Us

Rainbow Montessori of San Francisco began in 1984 and we moved to our present location in 1987. The founder of the school, Candace Cusack, has been an educator for 41 years. Prior to starting Rainbow Montessori of San Francisco, Candace spent 16 years working with Special Education students at Sand Paths Academy, the first school she founded in San Francisco in 1968. Here she trained a group of Special Education Teachers in the Montessori curriculum and developed a resource room for Sand Path’s population. She was immediately impressed with the results as she saw learning-challenged students make progress in relationship to self, others, and the learning environment. She decided she wanted to foster this experience for students at the earliest levels possible – the pre-primary learning environments – where many learning and behavioral issues could be prevented by the inherent wisdom of the Montessori philosophy and methodology. In the January 2008 issue of Bay Area Parent Candace states: “Montessori is a beautiful, methodical way to teach children a sense of order and purpose, so they learn to be self-directed and become happier, more successful human beings. If the child could speak he/she would say, ‘Help me learn to do it myself.’”

“I have studied the child. I have taken what the child has given me and expressed it and that is what is called the Montessori method.”

Maria Montessori