Lisa Gillespie

Lisa has spent the last 45 years in elementary and secondary education, working with children from nursery school through twelfth grade. She earned her AAS degree in early childhood education from Bennett College in 1970. Her first eight years of teaching were spent teaching kindergarten in Buffalo, NY, at the Elmwood-Franklin School. During the summers, she took graduate courses at Southampton College, which focused on learning styles and the need for differentiating the way material was presented to students in the classroom. In 1978, Lisa moved to New York City's Buckley School, where she taught first and third grades. She continued to develop her interest in understanding the needs of the learning disabled student through coursework at Hunter College and specially designed courses with established speech/language specialists. In 1992, she moved to the East End permanently, teaching at the Hampton Day School/Morriss Center until its merger with Ross School in 2006. While at Hampton Day, Lisa was the Elementary Division Head, classroom teacher for grades 1–4, sixth grade math teacher, and School Test Coordinator. From 2003–2006, she was the Learning Coordinator at Morriss Center, helping teachers develop differentiated curriculum for students with learning needs. Lisa has extensive admissions experience, having developed the evaluation tools for admissions while at the Elmwood-Franklin School, Buckley School, and Hampton Day School. She has training in Junior Great Books, Project Charlie, and Mel Levine's School's Attuned, and has served on several accreditation committees for the New York State Association of Independent Schools.