Happy New Year, Everyone!
Wow, it’s 2023! I wrote my first blog post on January 1, 2013. That does not feel like a decade ago! But a lot has happened during that time and I am so grateful to all of you for being part of this journey. Want to take a walk down memory lane with me?
This is going to be a long email with highlights and stats, so if you’d prefer to skip ahead to how I’m celebrating this blogiversary, please scroll to the bottom, or head over to Instagram!
2013
Did I ever tell you why I started a blog? It’s because I was trying to improve the SEO for my school’s website. I needed some content so that other sites would link back to mine. Deb Chitwood of Living Montessori Now graciously began sharing my posts with her readers and because of this, Trillium reached a larger audience than I expected and my goals shifted from SEO for my school to creating content for the broader Montessori community. I ended up publishing a few products on TpT, started the Trillium newsletter, and created the first set of freebies for the Resource Library. Check out the top posts of 2013 here.
2014
This is the year I created the majority of the printables you see in the Trillium shop. Yes, some of them are long overdue for an update, but they were awesome when I first made them hah! The Continents A-Z series made its way into thousands of classrooms and I can’t tell you how special it is to be a part of your environments in this way.
2015
This is the year I delved into online webinars and courses. That spring I hosted Jonathan Wolff for a live 3-part series on Optimizing Parent Relations. Then in July I woke up one morning and thought it might be fun to make a course about how to get ready for back to school. I sent out a newsletter asking if anyone would be interested and over a hundred of you said yes. So, I spent the next three weeks recording myself in the mornings, writing the course emails in the evenings, and scheduling them out for the next day. And thus the Bootcamp was born. To date, the Bootcamp still stands as our most popular course and a few hundred teachers make it part of their annual back-to-school-prep routine each summer.
2016
This was the year of Trillium’s very first online conference: The Summer Summit! We had almost a thousand attendees, a virtual exhibit hall and daily giveaways, lots of affiliates and so much more! That was a lot for one person to coordinate and organize. But I learned a ton! And I also met the most amazing Montessori Entrepreneurs and Bloggers who continue to inspire me today.
2017
We hosted the Homeschool Summit in January. In the spring we launched the first edition of the Montessori Assistant Toolkit and I made a new best friend, Tammy Oesting. That summer we launched the Musically Montessori course with Carolyn Lucento (she’s the best!) and a series of masterclasses with Jonathan Wolff.
2018
The summer of 2018 is when I finally closed my school so I could live life at a slower pace (hey, a gal can dream.) I started posting on Instagram that fall and we kept rolling with new online courses.
2019
I convinced Katherine Kabral and Yuliya Fruman to let me join their awesome Hands-on Kids Activities (HOKA) printables subscription program as a collaborator which turned into one of my favorite partnerships! That spring I started looking for someone to create an Elementary version of the Bootcamp and Jana Morgan Herman introduced me to Letty Rising. The rest is history, ha! That summer Leanne Gray began helping me create printables so I could keep up with the schedule for HOKA. What a life saver!
2020
Where do we even begin talking about 2020? From launching the P2P subscription with Tammy, to the Coronavirus Survival guide, to the P2P Summit, to Montessori Everywhere, to major new courses… the list is long! I’ll direct you to this Year in Review post for more details of the busiest year in Trillium history. Oh, and I also bought a house that December (I’m hoping I’ll finally be able to share more about this house in 2023)
2021
The pandemic kept on rolling and things did not slow down. We launched numerous new courses and did another P2P Summit. Sales tax collection became a thing and it took me to the brink of throwing in the towel. I finally hired a team of 3 people to help with all the back end aspects of running this beast and it changed my life!
2022
I had hoped that 2022 would be a slower year but we ended up adding 4 new members to the team, launching 10 new courses, starting a podcast, adding 2 more weekly newsletters to the schedule (for elementary teachers and school leaders), and collaborated with Loyola University’s department of continuing education to get many of our courses approved for CEUs! But because of the amazing Trillium Team handling so much of the day to day operations, I have finally reached the stage where I can do more than think about Trillium during my waking hours.
Today
This brings us to today, wrapping up ten years of what was supposed to be a little SEO side project. During this time we’ve passed some pretty cool milestones:
- Over 100,000 people have signed up for the Resource Library which means that we’ve had over a million downloads of our free resources
- Over 45,000 people have registered for our free webinars
- We’ve issued over 50,000 certificates to help teachers meet their professional development requirements
- We’ve helped Trillium course creators earn well over a million dollars by making their expertise available to the broader Montessori community, without exploiting their labor (don’t get me started on this…)
So, I’m in a celebratory mood! Join me?
Today through January 15th I’d like to offer a daily flash freebie from the paid products in my printables shop.
I’ll be announcing the freebie of the day over on Instagram.
Everyone who signs up for any of the freebies will also automatically be entered to win the grand prize! One winner will receive:
- Lifetime access to a special bundle of Trillium Courses: 3-6 Bootcamp, 3-6 P2P Library, Phonetic Reading
- We will also make a $1,000 donation to winner’s choice of the following Montessori organizations: MPPI Montessori Public Policy Initiative or NCMPS National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector or BMEF Black Montessori Education Fund
Winner will be emailed on January 16.
Let’s get this year started!
Seemi
Seemi holds a Master's degree in education, and an AMS Early Childhood credential. She has twenty years of experience in Montessori as a teacher, school administrator, and school owner. Seemi is the founder of TrilliumMontessori.org.