Alumni Spotlight: Margaret Lyons | Ambleside School
Alumni Spotlight
Margaret Lyons
In celebration of our 25th anniversary of Ambleside School, each month we’ll be featuring a short spotlight article about graduates of our school and what they’re doing now.
For Margaret, Ambleside has always been close to her heart and home — five minutes away, in fact (in Great Falls, Virginia). But it was more than the short distance that knit her to the school. Her mother was the 3rd grade teacher for nine years, which meant she was, at one time, Margaret’s teacher as well.
As the daughter of an Ambleside teacher, a big part of Margaret’s memories include arriving early and leaving late. She spent many afternoons from 1st to 8th grade hanging around after school while her mom was in faculty meetings.
But she wasn’t alone. By 3rd grade, she and the other faculty children formed an “after school club,” where they bonded over snacks and climbing as high as they could in the trees around the parking lot. Those moments forged friendships that Margaret holds close to her heart today.
Besides her friendships, Margaret cherished one class in particular. “My absolute favorite time of the school day was always Handwork. I adored everything about being in nature as well as the opportunity to create something meaningful with my own hands.”
One of her first Handwork memories was creating sock snowmen in 1st grade. She remembers the process being fairly simple: cut the sock, stuff the “snowman body,” and then sew the parts together. These little masterpieces were just one of the countless things she loved about Handwork.
“The thing that feels so special about it are the memories… that contain the pure enjoyment I felt after looking at the final products of our labor of love,” she says.
Today, Margaret is truly grateful for the classroom structure and how it helped her to socialize maturely with both peers and adults. That confidence undergirds her work as a Paralegal in the Mortgage Securities Department at Freddie Mac (a mortgage lender in Tysons Corner, Virginia).
Though she loves her work today and how Ambleside prepared her for it, she won’t forget how she was encouraged to enjoy the freedoms of childhood. For Margaret, Ambleside will always be a place where she cultivated lasting friendships and made memories she’ll never forget.
