Walnut Classroom Team
EVE CUSACK, LEAD TEACHER
Eve has a B.A. in Sociology from Northwestern University and an M.A. in Special Education from the University of New Orleans. As a Teach For America corps member, Eve taught public school kindergarten for four years outside of New Orleans, Louisiana. She then served as the educational consultant at Children’s Hospital of New Orleans for two years until Hurricane Katrina brought her and her husband, upper elementary teacher Sam Cusack, back to Bloomington. Eve joined the BMS teaching staff in 2006 and served as the lead teacher of the Hickory early childhood classroom until spring of 2017. She then began her Montessori elementary (6-12) training and became the lead teacher of the Walnut 6-9 classroom in the fall of 2017.
Eve attended BMS from 1979 to 1987, when she graduated from the upper elementary (9-12) classroom. She lives on a small farmstead with her husband, their two children, and Eve’s parents.
In her spare time, Eve sings in the UU Church Choir, tends her native plant gardens, co-runs a taekwondo studio, serves on the board for Sassafras Audubon Society and volunteers for Bloomington's Urban Greenspaces program by helping to manage invasive plant species.
SAM(ANTHA) STIMER, TEACHER
Sam holds a B.A. in English with a minor in Education with a concentration in Teaching English as a Second Language from Anderson University. After working with IPS for one year performing language interventions for students throughout the district whose first language was not English, she decided a change of scenery was needed and moved to Beijing, China where she began an exciting journey. She arrived in Beijing in August of 2019 working for Disney English, only seven months before the pandemic began. What she envisioned as a one year adventure swiftly turned into a five year experience as she was hired to work at an international school as the head English teacher for 3rd and 4th grade. She then moved on to work as copy editor for two years before deciding to move back to the States. It is then that she joined the team at Bloomington Montessori School in the Walnut classroom in 2024.
When not at BMS, Sam enjoys walking her dogs, cuddling her dogs, training her dogs, going to the park with her dogs, and reading a good book… to her dogs. She also has a passion for theatre work and loves a good movie!
JAI HOLT, TEACHER
Jai Holt has a passion for connecting students of all ages to nature. She spent 3 years as an apprentice with the Vermont Wilderness School where she learned wilderness survival, naturalist, and leadership skills. As an apprentice, Jai taught homeschool students during the school year, facilitated workshops for adults, and spent summers teaching camps that provided immersive nature experiences. She has also worked locally at Wild Nature Project. Jai’s passion for nature started at a young age and reminds her of the importance of valuing even the youngest students’ unique gifts and contributions to the community. She began her journey in the Hickory classroom, then moved to the Walnut lower elementary to continue inspiring, teaching, and connecting children with nature.
Jai holds a B.S. in Business Economics from University of Louisville and a M.S. in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Illinois Champaign Urbana. She enjoys spending time with her 2 daughters, gardening, hiking, camping, learning new skills, attending women’s group, and caring for her 2 cats and 5 chickens.