Waldorf in the Home

[Rahima Baldwin Dancy is an author, Waldorf early childhood specialist and parenting educator. After having worked for many years as a midwife, she now works as director of Informed Family Life and as a LifeWays consultant. She wrote this in December, 2004.]

I have been involved with Waldorf education since 1980, when I first did the Waldorf teacher training and early childhood training courses at the Waldorf Institute in Michigan. There I was given the "task" to interpret Waldorf and Steiner's indications for parents, and the result was , You Are Your Child's First Teacher. Not only has it proven to be a valuable guide for thousands of parents on the insights of Rudolf Steiner on children from birth through age six, but it is being translated into four languages and will also be published in a British edition in 2005.

[Cynthia Aldinger is a Waldorf early childhood and parenting educator and Director of LifeWays North America. She wrote this in January, 2005]

When I was pregnant with my firstborn son about three decades ago, I developed a passion for learning all I could about Waldorf education and child development. When he and his brother were 9 and 7 years old, his father and I had the privilege of moving to Sussex, England where I completed my Waldorf teacher training at Emerson College.

Since then I have been involved professionally in Waldorf, first as the founding teacher of Prairie Hill Waldorf School in Wisconsin and now as Executive Director of LifeWays North America. You can learn more about LifeWays at www.lifeways-center.org . I have also served on the Board of the Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America for ten years.

I loved being a kindergarten teacher--especially the nature walks, the stories and the festivals. However, when I was on my sabbatical in England, a good friend, a successful businessman, asked me one of those life-changing questions. The question: "What are you going to do about child care?" He and a number of his business acquaintances were concerned about the quality of child care in Great Britain and the States, feeling that childhood itself was at stake. They felt there was too much emphasis on formal learning and not enough on quality of life and practical life skills.

In 1998, with the help of many individuals, I opened the first LifeWays Child Care Center in East Troy, Wisconsin, supporting families who needed care for their children from three months to six years old. I also began laying the groundwork for the development of a LifeWays training for parents, grandparents, child care providers, parent educators and preschool teachers.
Now, in addition to nature walks, stories and festivals, I enjoy spending time with children and adults creating "home-ness" through domestic and nurturing activities.

In 2000, I moved with my husband back to my birth State of Oklahoma and became an active LifeWays consultant, traveling throughout North America and abroad. We now have trainings in three locations - Wisconsin, Maine and at Rudolf Steiner College in California.

Recently, I was blessed by the opportunity to live with my parents and my grandmother who is 104. Having the chance to help with the care of my grandmother reminded me of the importance of having predictable routines and rhythms in daily life. It provides a sense of security to both young children and the elderly. In many ways, it truly is the simple things in life that count!

In fact, having just moved back to Wisconsin, I find that the same holds true for me! With the upheaval a cross country move creates, I found that cooking, cleaning, and decorating my home were all I really wanted to do. I knew I needed to get "back to work" on the book Rahima and I are writing and to other important LifeWays business, but in reality, I just wanted to do the things I was writing about!

Returning from an evening walk after a new-fallen snow last week, I heard the church bells begin to ring just as I reached my front door. I listened as I recognized the music - "Ode to Joy" - by Beethoven. It felt like an affirmation. I look forward to working with Rahima and to sharing experiences with all of you about joy in simplicity.

Esther Leisher shares:
Four children shared their lives with my husband and me in this rambling old house and this lovely mountain setting in New Mexico. They are grown up now, but when they were young so much living, so much family life, went on that I would hardly know how to begin to speak of it if people did not ask me specific questions.

Those questions come up in chats around a kitchen table, in Waldorf study groups, or during the questions and answers after a craft workshop. When the chats are by e-mail, some things get written down. I encourage people to add comments or suggestions, then pass it around. A file results that is a collection of ideas--women talking together about their lives.

Susan Johnson, M.D.
I was born in Seattle, Washington and grew up in Claremont, California. I graduated from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota with a major in Biology. I attended medical school at Northwestern University and completed a three-year pediatric residency at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. I then moved to San Francisco in 1987 to complete a three-year fellowship training in Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. I worked for seven years as the Physician consultant at the School Health Center in San Francisco evaluating hundreds of children from the public elementary and middle schools with learning and behavioral difficulties.

The birth of my son and his challenges with sensory-motor integration and learning led me to Waldorf education and I became a certified Waldorf teacher through the San Francisco Waldorf Teacher Training Program in 1999. I then traveled to Arlesheim, Switzerland to begin my studies in Anthroposophical Medicine at the Lukas Klinik. I now work as a behavioral and developmental pediatrician for Waldorf schools, write parent newsletters about preventative health, and give community lectures. I have a private practice in Behavioral and Developmental pediatrics at Raphael House where I see children two through 18 years of age with their parents for developmental, behavioral and learning concerns. I strive to bring the best of both traditional and complementary forms of medical therapies.

[Learn more about Susan's work by visiting the website of Raphael House].

Nancy Foster has been a Waldorf kindergarten teacher since 1973 at Acorn Hill Waldorf Kindergarten and Nursery in Silver Spring, Maryland, where she now works with parents and children in parent/ child groups. She also lectures, offers workshops for teachers at Waldorf kindergarten conferences, serves as a mentor for new teachers, and is on the visiting faculty of Sunbridge College in Spring Valley, New York.

Susan Silverio - A Short Biography

Susan's homestead kindergarten, "Spindlewood," which she began in 1986, continues as a branch of Ashwood Waldorf School and a model of a LifeWays center. Already a seasoned Waldorf early childhood teacher, Susan completed the LifeWays Early Childhood and Human Development Training, and has gone on to offer workshops at Waldorf Early Childhood Association conferences at Sunbridge College. She also taught "World Citizen: The Child from Birth to Three" at Rudolf Steiner Institute with Cynthia Aldinger in 2005. She is the East Coast Director of LifeWays Training and will be offering a one-year intensive training for those who care for young children, beginning in July 2006 at Merriconeag Waldorf School in Freeport, Maine.