Paula Polk Lillard

Paula Polk Lillard is a Montessori educator, author, and co-founder and head emerita of Forest Bluff School in Lake Bluff, Illinois, which she helped establish in 1982. A graduate of Smith College, she holds a master’s degree in Montessori education from Xavier University in Cincinnati and is certified as an AMI Montessori Primary director. Before entering Montessori education, Lillard taught for eight years in traditional public and private schools; she has also served on the boards of the American Montessori Society and AMI USA.

Lillard is the author of Montessori: A Modern Approach, Montessori Today, and Montessori in the Classroom: A Teacher’s Account of How Children Really Learn. She co-authored Montessori from the Start: The Child at Home, from Birth to Age Three with her daughter, Lynn Lillard Jessen.