Program Co-Director / Completion Track Lead Advisor

Program Founder; Director Emerita

Susan founded the Sunbridge Early Childhood Teacher Education program in 1984 and served as program director and faculty member until her retirement in 2018. The coordinator and a Board member of WECAN, Susan also works as one of three Coordinating Group members of IASWECE (the International Association for Steiner/Waldorf Early Childhood Education, based in Dornach, Switzerland).  She is a co-founder and former board member of Research Institute for Waldorf Education and is a member of the WECAN Teacher Education Committee and the IASWECE Working Group on Teacher Education.

Susan has served as editor for The Developing Child: The First Seven Years of Life (WECAN Publications, 2004), Working with the Angels: The Young Child and the Spiritual World (WECAN Publications, 2003), and The Young Child in the World Today (WECAN Publications, 2003), and as co-editor for Research Bulletin, Research Institute for Waldorf Education (1996-2000). Among her published articles are “The Essentials of Waldorf Early Childhood Education,” “Mentoring in Waldorf Early Childhood Education” (WECAN Publications, 2007; reprinted in Renewal magazine, 2008), “New Research on the Power of Play” (Research Bulletin, Spring 2007, Vol. XII, Number 2, Research Institute for Waldorf Education).

Susan earned her BA in German and Child Study from Tufts University, from which she graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa. She holds an MA in German through Eberhard Karls University, Tuebingen, Germany and an MEd in Child Study. In 1977, she received a graduate fellowship from Rotary International, to study alternative and pre-school education in Germany.

Anthroposophical Studies

Judith is an RN, Anthroposophical Nurse Specialist, and Rhythmical Massage Therapist. She has many years’ experience as a co-worker at the Fellowship Community and is past president of the Board of Directors of the Threefold Educational Center.

 Child Development, Therapeutic Education

Laurie is lead kindergarten teacher at The Denver Waldorf School and mentors Waldorf teachers around the country. She has been teaching Waldorf  kindergarten for 27 years and is Director Qualified in the state of Colorado. Laurie is co-author with Nancy Blanning of the book Movement Journeys and Circle Adventures: Movement Enrichment with a Therapeutic Emphasis for Early Childhood. She earned her Associate’s degree in Early Childhood Education, attended the Teacher Training program at Rudolf Steiner College in Sacramento, California, and completed her remedial training with the Association for a Healing Education program.

Anthroposophical Studies

Liz is a member of Sunbridge’s Elementary Teacher Education faculty; she is also sixth grade teacher at Green Meadow Waldorf School where she has been a class teacher since 2006 and is a member of the school’s Collegium and the Teacher Development Committee. Prior to joining the Green Meadow faculty, she was a class teacher and lower school chair at the Waldorf School of Baltimore. Liz holds a BA from Earlham College, where she double-majored in English and Spanish and minored in Art History; an MA in Education and Waldorf Certificate 1-8 from Antioch New England Graduate School; NH certification 1-6; and a Certificate of Curative Education from Camphill Special Schools, Inc.

Rhythmic Games and Music

Dyanne has been a member of the faculty at the Whidbey Island Waldorf School since 1997.  She also serves as adjunct faculty for Sound Circle Center for Anthroposophy in Seattle and is actively involved in the Northwest regional Waldorf Early Childhood movement as a WECAN representative and mentor. Dyanne earned a BA in Psychology from Central Washington University, her Washington State teaching credentials from the University of Washington, and an MSEd in Waldorf Early Childhood Education from Sunbridge College.

Singing

Jana has been a faculty member of Sunbridge’s Elementary Teacher Education program since 2002 and its program director since 2009; she also directs our Elementary Music Teacher Education intensive and oversees our World Language Teacher Education intensive. Since 2006, Jana has been on the faculty of Green Meadow Waldorf School, where she has been a class teacher and lower school music teacher and a member of the Teacher Development Committee. She has been a visiting faculty member at several Waldorf teacher training institutes in the U.S. and abroad and spent 14 years on the faculty of the Whidbey Island Waldorf School, teaching music and main lessons. She has led workshops in movement, singing, and composition, and is a contributor to The Mood of the Fifth: A Musical Approach to Early Childhood, a WECAN publication. Jana earned her BFA in Music from Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, WA, and her MSEd in Waldorf Elementary Teacher Education from Sunbridge College.

Sculpture

Art of Speech

Helen has been active as a speech artist/educator in Waldorf teacher education and other anthroposophical adult education settings, in Waldorf classrooms, and as a therapeutic speech practitioner for 27 years. She completed her training at Novalis School for Speech and Drama and at the School for the Art of Speech and Speech Therapy (both in Germany) and did a post-graduate year at the Goetheanum (Switzerland). She also completed the International Camphill Seminar in Curative Education in Perceval – Centre de Pédagogie Curative, and has 10 years’ experience in this field, including as a class teacher.

Helen is the founder and coordinator of Speech and Drama in Waldorf Schools in North America (now in its 20^th year), an initiative devoted to developing the speech component integral to Waldorf Education through annual school visits to North American Waldorf schools, working with teachers, classes, staff, and individual students, as well as offering lectures/workshops for parents and the wider community. Her many other accomplishments include: speech artist-and-therapist-in-residence at Karl-Schubert-Schule (Stuttgart); faculty of the School for Pedagogical and Therapeutic Speech (Switzerland), current chairperson of Creative Speech North America (association of speech artists); representative of the Performing Arts Section (Eurythmy, Speech, Music, Puppetry and Drama) on the North American Collegium of the School of Spiritual Science; translator, editor, author, and actor. An alumna of Green Meadow Waldorf School, she holds a BS in Special Educational Studies, a BS in Speech Pathology and Audiology, and an MA in Human Development.

Eurythmy

Melissa has been teaching at Sunbridge since 2011 and has worked as administrator of WECAN since 2000. Before the birth of her daughter, she taught eurythmy in Waldorf schools in Connecticut and New York. Melissa first encountered eurythmy as a student at the Waldorf Institute (Sunbridge’s predecessor), and she continues to marvel at what eurythmy reveals about life and the reality of being human. She is a 1997 graduate of Eurythmy Spring Valley.

Gardening, The Child in Nature

Mac has been the director of the Pfeiffer Center in Chestnut Ridge, NY, since 2007 and has farmed and gardened biodynamically for more than thirty years, working with the land on every scale from hand work to field-scale vegetables, tending an orchard to managing dairy cows. He was the resident farmer at the Fellowship Community’s Duryea Farm from 1997 until 2005, and a co-worker at the Camphill Village in Copake, NY, from 1972 to 1974, where he did therapeutic community work and also taught nature and games at the fledgling Waldorf school there.

As a co-worker in the Fellowship Community beginning in 1975, where he learned biodynamic methods directly from former co-workers of Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, Mac helped start the Third Grade farming block at Green Meadow Waldorf School, and taught that block for fifteen years; he also helped initiate the Pfeiffer Center’s public school outreach program, The Outdoor Lesson. Mac graduated from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania with a degree in psychology.

Practical Activities

Carol has worked in Waldorf early childhood for many years, with a focus on parent education. An experienced mentor, workshop presenter, and adult educator, Carol resides in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she runs Calm Parenting, a birth-three program of parent/infant and parent/toddler playgroups, which she founded in 2008. Previously, she established Morning Garden, a parent/child program in Southern California for at-risk families, ran an in-home preschool program, and worked as a lay chaplain in children’s hospitals.

Carol completed her kindergarten training at The Rudolf Steiner Centre, Toronto, in 1988, and worked at the Toronto Waldorf School for ten years, pioneering the Nursery program in 1991. Over the last decade she has been trained in the RIE / Pikler approach to infants and toddlers, which has become an integral part of her work. In her spare time, Carol enjoys spending time with her 8 grandchildren, doing handcrafts and playing trombone in a concert band.

Puppetry/Marionettes

Motria is Director and Founder of Acorn Waldorf School, a WECAN school located in Accord, NY.  Her fourteen years of experience working with young children include nine years at the Mountain Laurel Waldorf School in New Paltz, NY, where she worked in the nursery and kindergarten and served as the Pedagogical Chair for three years. With a special interest in the art of puppetry, Motria has staged shows for conferences, festivals, and other community events. A graduate of Sunbridge’s Early Childhood Teacher Education program, she also completed a three-year Advanced Therapeutic Course for Early Childhood Educators in Denver, Colorado.

Hand Gesture Games

Lynn is a Waldorf early childhood educator who first came to the singing and movement games of Wilma Ellersiek in a workshop offered by Kundry Willwerth at the 2008 WECAN East Coast  conference. She went on to co-teach courses with Kundry and now continues this work worldwide.