Learn About Our School

The concept of life relevant, purpose-driven early childhood education was rolling around in Alicia’s mind for a long time, and creating Pomegranate Schools has been her dream come true. Here at Pomegranate Schools, we deliver quality education that pushes boundaries and empowers children to become who they’re meant to be. Pomegranate Schools was founded in 2015, and since then we have expanded to three locations. We are a non-profit organization providing early childhood education in the vibrant city of Irvine. At Pomegranate Schools, parents, teachers, and children are partners in a learning community that emphasizes each child’s unique abilities in thinking, reasoning, questioning, and experimenting within their environment.

Our teachers are experienced, highly-qualified, and multi-lingual. Our curriculum explores math, language, social studies, science, foreign languages, expressive arts (music, dance, theater, arts) and gardening.

Our core learning values include perseverance, self-discipline, courage, creative thinking, respect for learning, inquisitiveness, compassion, and effective communication.

Our program is play-based and centers around the children as active leaders in designing their experience. We teach the 9 Our classroom is an energetic, orderly, and engaging learning environment. We establish a foundation that supports a lifetime’s love of learning!

Learn More About Our Director – Alicia

“To be able to connect with children and lead them to their highest potential, we must learn to REALLY slow down and be present, open-minded, and supportive as much as possible. Interacting with the youngest of kids in this way is not an easy task as it requires careful listening, observing, and reflecting. But a teacher who makes an effort to engage in such practice on a daily basis truly enriches not only the child’s but her own life as well!”

Alicia’s work with children began nineteen years ago while working in Ukrainian orphanages. That work left a lasting impression on her mind and heart and helped to lay the foundation for her mission in life: to provide rich and quality education to children from all backgrounds and walks of life. Since 2000, she’s had the opportunity to work and train in both preschools and elementary schools; direct theater/theatrical dance after-school programs for at-risk youth; and assist community-based organizations that serve low-income and/or immigrant communities with creating initial plans for charter schools.

Alicia received her Bachelor’s in Psychology from UCSD and Master’s in Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum at Drexel University. She has also completed a year-long program on the Reggio Emilia approach.

In 2012, Alicia enrolled in a Montessori training program and immediately began her full-time, year-long internship at Lotus Child Montessori preschool. Towards the end of that year, after training with some of the most inspiring and skilled teachers, Alicia knew she wanted to open her own preschool and be her soon-to-be-born daughter’s very own Early Childhood Education teacher. The piece she really wanted to bring alive was the belief that children have an endless number of ways (what Loris Malaguzzi of Reggio Emilia schools framed as “one hundred languages”) through which they can inquire, wonder, and express themselves. Alicia wanted to design an infant-toddler center and preschool in which her daughter, along with other children, could engage in messy learning that combines both the genius of Montessori and Reggio Emilia approaches to lay the foundation for developing the future thinkers and creators of our world!

This will be her fourth year in operation and she couldn’t be happier! Her daughter, Sofie, is now 5 years old. Alicia loves that other families and their children can be a part of the same rich program she’s created for her daughter.

Alicia’s greatest goal in her career is to figure out how to make learning as fun, relevant, and as purpose-driven as possible. This is her obsession, literally!