Mia White is the Executive Director of Canterbury Community Nursery School in Richmond’s West End, but she is quite a bit more. Most who know her have seen her contagious smile and are made comfortable by her easy way, but might not realize that behind all that is a raw food dynamo who has written a book to help guide those new to raw yet also gives ideas to those who have been in the game for a while. Mia, who is incoming President of the Richmond Area Preschool Directors Association, is a dynamic leader and educator of young children. I got together with Mia earlier this summer when she was hip deep working with CharacterWork’s master camp, an intensive program where high school kids have two weeks to put together a complete stage production. As the stage mom for this summer’s West Side Story, Mia was there every day, 8 hours a day, with her children. Son Luke was show stopping as Tony in his final performance with the group before he heads to college, and daughter Audrey wowed in a supporting role in the cast. Personally, I was blown away by the performance and thoroughly impressed by what these kids could achieve in just two weeks.
Back to Mia. In an earlier career, Mia worked in orthodontics, but found herself concerned by the number of the teens she saw struggling with depression and anxiety. She thought, what if we could catch this when they were young? Upon returning to school, she discovered that the real social and emotional part of us develops when we are young. A fire was lit, and Mia became singularly focused on early childhood education.
When she first started teaching young children she found they were under constant pressure from this adult driven ethereal idea of perfection. Out of that, she has developed a sort of mantra: kids are perfect just the way they are and want to be loved, supported and secure. By holding close to that, she believes, children can explore, create and ultimately learn without the worry of making a mistake. Children develop 90% of their personality between the ages of 1 and 5 years old, so Mia believes this is the time to teach them to fail (which is really success) so they can learn to be dirty and fearless and develop a strong foundation of confidence that will give them a leg up on life.
This means, she says, children shouldn’t get a trophy all the time, they shouldn’t get the grade if they don’t do the work and ultimately they should have teachers they don’t like. By accepting this, we adults can curb our need to put our vision on our children’s lives, and instead give them the opportunity to learn whether or not they can handle challenges. Ultimately, Mia believes, this allows children to come into who they are with a sense of security.
I had to ask Mia the hard question: what is the most frustrating thing she sees in her job as director. I couldn’t have agreed more with her response: parents who are missing the moment. The preschool years are the most delightful, beautiful years with children and it is just a blip in time, soon to be gone, never to be repeated. I have to agree as I watch my youngest leave for college. You don’t know how great the preschool years are until you look back on them — one of the ironies of life. So Mia argues parents should embrace every sleepless night, seeing it as the blessing that it is: spending extra time with children during this amazing time in their lives! They should say YES! when their kids want to play with them — while they still want us to play with them, listen fully to them and recognize the beauty in all their messiness.
I also asked her what she values most as a director, and she melted into humility. She is grateful every day to walk into her job with 24 amazing women — dedicated and engaged teachers, who help her realize Canterbury’s goal of giving kids the skills for a social and emotional foundation that will make them happy, confident adults. Upon leaving school at the end of every day she feels the thrill of knowing that the 25 of them have made a difference in children’s lives. Instead of saying she loves her job, Mia says she believes in her job.
At heart, though, Mia is a raw foodie which started with her own journey of finding health. Then as an educator, she realized that kids weren’t eating well at all — lots of sugar and processed foods — so she went back to school again and got a degree in nutrition to help educate parents on better food alternatives for kids.
Mia Kirk White and Mimi Kirk
The icing on the cake is that Mia initially went on her raw food journey with her mom, Mimi Kirk. Mia was 100% raw for about 6 years and felt better than she had ever felt. But eventually, as a single mom running a preschool, she began to drift away from it. She was still vegan, but not raw and she found she was lacking energy.
The problem, she recognized, is that eating raw can be daunting as it requires staying organized and well planned. So she reached out to her best raw food counterpart, her mom, and together they decided to go 21 days raw, each planning a week of meals working on the third week together. The result was the book Raw-vitalize: The Easy 21-Day Raw Food Recharge. This raw food plan is the direct result of the two of them working together to remind themselves the benefits of eating raw. The book includes shopping lists, make-ahead prep ideas and tips for eating on the go.
So not only did Mia get to reignite her raw food lifestyle and feel better, she got to experience this journey again with her mom. A year in the making, they spent a lot of time face-timing, emailing and collaborating to nail down the details. They would lay cards of recipes and ingredients on the floor and move things around until they were sure they got the right balance of nutrients or to make sure one day wasn’t all nuts, or all zucchini. They analyzed each day to make sure even runners, or hard core athletes would get plenty of calories and nutrients. Most importantly, each recipe had to take 5-10 minutes so even the busiest of us could tackle raw food living and win! And the positive book reviews are rolling in!
Mia does worry our culture believes that reaching healthy goals is time consuming and expensive. But she points out that we are instead perfectly happy to shell out significant amounts of time and money for doctors appointments and medications. She finds it humorous, (but let’s be honest, she has a bit of a gleam in her eye when she says this) doctors are always shocked that she isn’t on any medication. Her response: she is shocked that they are shocked.
If she could be anything in the world, Mia would like to be a public speaker sharing what she knows about parenting, healthy living and longevity. Wouldn’t you agree she is doing a mighty fine job at that already?
You can get Mia’s book here.
