Faculty and Staff

Katy McGlynn

Administrative Director

After several bad experiences with a public middle school, Katy and her husband Sean were looking for a middle school with small class sizes, and discovered The Magnolia School in 2002. During that first year, only their son Rory attended The Magnolia School, but the following year, three of the four McGlynn children were students at the school. Rory is an alumni of the school as are daughters Cassie, and Julia.

Katy says the family has stayed at The Magnolia School “because of the community and the unique learning opportunities at Magnolia.” Katy has a bachelor’s degree in Humanities from FSU and served as The Magnolia School’s bookkeeper from 2003 to 2008, when she became the school’s administrative director. She continues in that role today. In her spare time, Katy enjoys reading, knitting, finding ways to reuse materials such as plastic grocery bags, and enjoying her cats.

Pam Maldonado

K-2nd Grade Lead Teacher

Pam enjoys learning and experiencing life alongside the students as they explore all areas of the world. “Like an extended family” is a good way to describe the feeling she gets from working at The Magnolia School. The abundance of hugs and love she experiences feeds her desire to continue to make a difference in children’s lives.

Pam, who holds a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from The Florida State University, has been the K-2 teacher at The Magnolia School since 2000. Previous teaching experiences include 5 years at Wee Care as a pre-K teacher, 5 years at Head Start in Oregon as a pre-K teacher and a term at Tallahassee Junior Museum as a Saturday pre-K teacher.

Being a mom is a wonderful part of Pam’s life. She has four beautiful children who have helped her grow as they have over the years. Pam enjoys spending time walking, biking, baking, cooking, working in her yard and reading. She also teaches at Unity of Tallahassee and volunteers with the gardening team and sings in the choir.

Juniper Bambach

K-2nd Grade Teacher

Juniper, one of the school’s K-2 teachers, came to The Magnolia School in January 2002. She has a bachelor’s degree in Early Childhood Education from FSU and worked at The Creative Preschool before coming to The Magnolia School.  She has four children:  Sage and Jaidyn, Magnolia School graduates, Sona, a middle-school student at The Magnolia School; and Ayana; who starts kindergarten at the school in 2012-2013.

According to Juniper: “I was not happy with Jaidyn’s experience in public school. I had heard about Magnolia and came to check it out. Upon entering the building, I met [middle-school teacher] Sharon and instantly knew this was the place for us. I had just graduated and thought it would be cool to volunteer here before I got a job at a public school.  Well, obviously I never left!  Sona was 3 when we first came here and I was able to be here with all my children. When Ayana was born, the love and support I got from this community proved what I have always known – this is my home.”

In her free time, Juniper loves to camp, sew, hang out with her kids and friends, and go to music festivals.

Sharla Benedict-Region

3rd-5th Grade Lead Teacher

Sharla came to The Magnolia School in 2008 as the lead teacher in the “back room” (3-5). Before that, she had been working as a writer, librarian, musician, and composition and creative writing instructor at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and at the University of Florida. Her other professions have included horse grooming, horticulture, content development for language-arts-education websites, editing, housekeeping, administrative assisting, and teaching English as a second language here and in the Czech Republic.

While teaching college kids about writing and critical thinking, Sharla discovered that what she suspected about our current system of grades, standardized testing, and subject-area compartmentalization is true—it sets young people adrift in a complicated world without the skills they need to understand how things fit together. She became an advocate for a return to integrated curricula, skills acquisition through inquiry, and writing to understand. At The Magnolia School, she gets to learn and grow every day, along with the students; it’s a very rich and exciting life!

Sharla earned a bachelor’s degree in English and Creative Writing from Florida State University and her Master in Fine Arts in Creative Writing/Poetry from the University of Florida. She is a fellow of the National Writing Project and is currently working on a master’s degree in Education. When not at Magnolia, she can be found playing with her band, The Mayhaws; puttering in her garden; writing songs and poems; learning clawhammer banjo; hiking, biking, or cooking with her husband, Brian; playing with Mathilda, their Blackmouth Cur; reading; and/or working on one of several writing projects.

Susan Smith

Founder

Susan started the school in 1985. She taught at The Magnolia School for 15 years, and has also taught for 4½ years at other area public and charter schools. Although she is no longer a teacher at The Magnolia School, she has been a member of the school’s board of directors since its inception and she continues to work in Magnolia School classrooms as a frequent volunteer. She enjoys working both with the students and as a mentor to the teachers. Susan has a bachelor’s degree in Music (she loves singing with her students!), and master’s degrees in both Humanities and Elementary Education, all from The Florida State University. In addition, she has participated in many continuing-education experiences relating to all areas of the curriculum, including science, math, reading, writing, classroom management, and meeting the needs of diverse learners.

Susan has a wonderfully creative husband who builds custom furniture and was very involved in the early years of The Magnolia School. They have a son (now an engineer) and a daughter (now a dancer), both of whom attended The Magnolia School before the inclusion of the middle-school grades. In her free time and when the weather permits, Susan’s favorite thing is to be outside … working in her garden, reading, or just wandering or sitting. Amazed and soothed by nature, she especially enjoys planting for and rearing various kinds of local butterflies, an enthusiasm she shares in every classroom that she can.  She and her husband also enjoy traveling together — sometimes on his BMW motorcycle.