Professional Biography

I completed my teacher training at Rudolf Steiner College, in Fair Oaks, California.  Rene Querido was my teacher.  During the time of my training I worked at the Sacramento Waldorf High School, directing the High School Musical.  I then attended a Kindergarten Seminar in Bern Switzerland.  After that I took a class at the Marin Waldorf School, working with the same group of children from Kindergarten through to Eighth Grade.   

During my time as a kindergarten and then grades teacher I became more and more aware that there were a few children in my care for whom my best wasn’t good enough.  These students needed more than I had been trained to provide for them.  Although they may have received every kind of therapy I know of nothing really changed their condition thoroughly.

This was the question I took into my sabbatical; what do we do for the children who need more?  I went to work with Sunny Baldwin, who then had Somerset School, near Colfax, California.  Sunny’s program was based on Steiner’s Curative Education.  As soon as I went to work with her I realized I had finally found something that changed lives.  The children who came to Somerset got better.  Healing happened.  Although my original intention was to stay a year, I ended up staying for four years.  This was my training in Curative Education.  After four years at Somerset I started Mulberry Classroom. Mulberry Classroom was formed in 2003 and continues to thrive in Northern California. Additionally, there are now more than a dozen small initiatives working our of Steiner’s intentions.

Many years ago I started a training for Curative Educators.  The interest in this training keeps growing, and so I am growing the program to meet these needs. I am now offering a new course called “Curative Education in the Classroom.” This class is intended to support teachers to really understand the Steiner’s picture of child development and how to use that in their work in the classroom. In addition to Steiner’s Curative Lectures we also look at his Pedagogical Lectures and see how the two streams can work to together to support all aspects of our work with children.