Ken Smith has strong and substantive international experience as a Waldorf educator, educational program developer, and artist. He is dedicated to the anthroposophical principles underlying Waldorf education, to the strengthening of Waldorf education, and to the importance of integrated learning in educating the whole human being. Ken began his working life in New Zealand, training in horticulture and landscape design. Then, following a period of world travel, he attended the Foundation Year at Emerson College in England in 1988-1989. This started him on a path of artistic training, and he graduated from the Visual Arts and Sculpture Course with the Waldorf Pedagogical component at Emerson College in 1993. After teaching in Waldorf schools in England, he returned to Emerson College to be Course Leader of the Visual Arts and Sculpture Course for 8 years, until 2007. Since then he has been active internationally teaching at Waldorf schools, adult education programs, and conferences in Europe, North America, New Zealand and Asia. In the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training, he teaches numerous courses in the weekend program, and Art History and Sculpture in the summer.

Diane David received her B.A. in Dramatic Art from U.C. Davis and completed her kindergarten training at the San Francisco Waldorf Teacher Training of Rudolf Steiner College under Dorit Winter. Diane, herself a mother of 6 children and grandmother of 14, is a retired kindergarten teacher from the San Francisco Waldorf School. She is now the Early Childhood Director and carrying faculty member for the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training. She is a Northern California co-representative and Teacher Education Committee member of the Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America (WECAN), a founding member of the Magic Lantern Marionette Theatre, and mentors and evaluates teachers and early childhood programs throughout Northern California. At BACWTT, she teaches The First Three Years, Pedagogical Studies and Practicum Preparation classes in the early childhood track.

Kristine Arrigona Deason grew up in France and Germany. She has an M.A. in French Studies, an M.A. in Literature, and a California High School Teaching Credential. She taught literature and composition at the university level, then worked as a technical writer and programmer for ten years before returning to teaching in both public and private schools. She received her Waldorf teaching certificate from the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training in 2004 and was a class teacher at the Marin Waldorf School, taking two classes from grades 1-8. In the teacher training, Kristine teaches The Kingdom of Childhood, The Child’s Journey through the Grades, Chalkboard Drawing, and Study of Man. She also oversees practicum preparations for students in the second year and directs the choir.

Jeff Loubet graduated from Clark University with a B.A. in philosophy in 1975 and completed teacher training at Rudolf Steiner College in 1992. Jeff was a class teacher at the East Bay Waldorf School for 24 years. He taught grades 1 – 8 twice and grades 1 – 6. After retiring in 2017, Jeff continued to offer classes at EBWS as a guest teacher in 7th and 8th grade. He currently teaches blocks and mentors at the Wildcat Canyon Community School, and teaches Study of Man and Grades Practicum Preparation for BACWTT.

Liz Turkel Vose was born and raised in the Bay Area.  She is a teaching artist with over 20 years of experience working with children and adults in performing and transformative arts.  It was through her work teaching Michael Chekhov based drama in the inner-city public schools of Brooklyn and the Bronx that she was introduced to the ideas of Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy.  She went on to study at Emerson College in England and later served on the faculty there in the School of Storytelling.  She holds a BA from UC Berkeley, is a graduate of Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre and completed her graduate work in Women’s Spirituality at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology.  She has served on the faculty of many international arts organizations as well as running her own courses and camps for both adults and children. Liz currently co-carries the Foundation Studies course at BACWTT and works with the 2^nd and 3^rd year students in Biography and the art of Storytelling. She lives in Sonoma County and is the mother of two young Waldorf students.  

Carol Adee grew up in a musical and nature-loving family in California and Oregon. She taught Music and Orchestra at Marin Waldorf School for 14 years, graduating from BACWTT in 2009.  She currently teaches at Dominican University and Enriching Lives through Music, as well as a number of Waldorf programs and her private studio of flute, cello and composition students. Her interest in Waldorf education started with her children’s enrollment at Marin Waldorf and was nurtured by many hours as a parent volunteer. At BACWTT, Carol teaches First Year Music and Recorder, introducing students to musicality through singing, dancing and an array of pedagogical instruments she made in workshops with Manfred Bleffert. She holds a M.M. from Yale School of Music and a B.M. from Chapman University, and has performed and recorded with professional orchestras, chamber groups and as a flute soloist throughout the Bay Area.

Tom Bickley grew up in Houston, sojourned in Washington, DC (studying music, religion, and library and information science) and came to California as a composer in residence at Mills College. He is on the library faculty at CSU East Bay, and has taught for the San Francisco Early Music Society. He plays with Gusty Winds May Exist, Three Trapped Tigers, and directs the Cornelius Cardew Choir. His work is available on CD at Quarterstick and Metatron Press and via https://tigergarage.org. Tom teaches the advanced recorder class at BACWTT.

Christiaan Boele exhibited strong musicianship early in life that was a solid foundation for future study and his life’s work in music. He currently lives in Finland and conducts courses, schooling of the voice sessions, master classes, and choirs around the world. He has been     connected to Werbeck singing for over 50 years.

Annie Bosque is the teacher and creator of the Outdoor Kindergarten Home School Program at Golden Valley River School. She completed a Master’s in Education at Rudolf Steiner College with a focus on how to create and support parent teacher partnership. Annie has taught for BACWTT for several years, mentors new teachers, and has led various workshops at a variety of conferences. For several years, she facilitated an outdoor parent child program for two to six year-old children and their parents.

Ramona Budrys moved to the Bay Area in 1988, completed her law degree at Santa Clara University, and worked as a prosecutor for several years. Motherhood led her to Waldorf education, and she completed her Waldorf teacher training at the Waldorf Institute of Southern California. Finding the classroom infinitely more interesting than the courtroom, she has been teaching since 2004. Ramona hopes the children entrusted to her at WSP find her love of learning infectious.

Christine Burke, Logodynamics Practitioner & Creative Speech Artist, lives in California. Her passion for words began at a young age and has led to and through theater and English litera-ture, a degree in Linguistics, Waldorf teaching in the US and Sweden, Rudolf and Marie Stei-ner’s “Sprak Gestaitning,” and the Michael Chekhov approach to acting (in England). Christine is currently teaching Communication Studies at Ventura College. She teaches Creative Speech/Logodynamics privately and in groups, performs, and speaks at workshops and conferences.

Dr. Paolo Carini received his BA in physics at the University of Rome in 1988. He then moved to the United States to continue his research in theoretical physics at Stanford University, where he later received his Ph.D. in Physics. He spent two years in Massachusetts working at Amherst College with Professor Arthur Zajonc on problems of crystal growth and pattern formation. His interest in Waldorf education started from conversations with Professor Zajonc and led him to become one of the pioneer teachers of the San Francisco Waldorf High school in 1997. He then entered the Waldorf Teacher Training program in San Francisco and completed it at the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training.

Dagmar Eisele, bio coming soon.

David French is the 7th Grade Class Teacher at Summerfield Waldorf School and Farm. He has a strong background in Waldorf Education as a class teacher, in addition to various committee work, mentoring and teaching in teacher trainings such as the Sunbridge Institute and the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training.

Karen Gallagher graduated from Eurythmy Spring Valley, New York, and obtained a bachelor’s degree through the eurythmy school in Oslo, Norway. In addition to eurythmy, she has 28 years of classroom experience in a variety of subjects, including Spanish, choir, theater, and life skills. Karen currently resides in Point Richmond, California and serves part-time on the faculty at Marin Waldorf School and Wildcat Canyon Community School. For ten years she supported the Waldorf teacher training program at the Center for Anthroposophical Development in Cuernavaca, Mexico and is now a member of the BACWTT faculty.

Margrit Haeberlin was born and raised in Switzerland. After graduating from High School she completed the 2 year teacher training there, and earned her BA in teaching. One year of teaching lower grades followed, begore she began her artistic studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule Basel-CH. This intailed the one year foundation course and to years of textil design. Her diploma in textile design she earned from the Kunstgewerbeschule Zuerich-CH were she had transfered to, wanting to experience the different stiles of the two Art schools. Leading the Design studio at Ruckstuhl AG (carpet factory in Langenthal-CH) gave her practical experience in the field of textile design.

Becoming a mother led Margrit to Waldorf education. She studied at BACWTT receiving her Waldorf teachers certificate in 2010. Since then she has worked as a Waldorf Parent and Child teacher and Preschool teacher at former EBWS, has taught art and art history at SFWHS as well as home schoolers in art, math, and handwork. Margrit is a faculty member at BACWTT since 2016.

Kate Hammond is a Waldorf is a Waldorf alumna and has a Bachelor of Arts (Honors) in Applied Linguistics. She studied Bothmer Gymnastics in England in 1995. While class teaching at the Calgary Waldorf School, she also completed her movement training with the Spacial Dynamics Institute in 1999. She graduated from Emerson College with a certificate in Waldorf Teacher Training specializing in Early Childhood Education, and has taught kindergarten, preschool, parent and child classes, and infants. She has also taught adult literacy, parent classes, children with special needs and movement workshops. She has had a lifelong interest in adult education and has enjoyed living in many anthroposophical communities all over the world. She carries the Roots and Shoots Birth to Three program at Summerfield Waldorf School in Northern California and is the intrigued mother of two teenage boys.

Maria Helland-Hansen, born in Norway, received her eurythmy diploma in Sweden in 1985 and has been active as a eurythmist since then. After completing her therapeutic eurythmy training in Dornach, Switzerland in 1993, she moved to San Francisco and became a therapeutic eurythmist and eurythmy teacher at the San Francisco Waldorf School. She also has a private practice and is co-director of the Therapeutic Eurythmy training of North America (TETNA). At the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training, she introduces therapeutic Eurythmy, constitutional polarities and ways of working with and understanding the child.

Dr. Carmen Hering is an osteopathic and Anthroposophic physician specializing in integrative medicine and childhood development, and has been in private practice in Albany, CA since 2006. She completed her medical training at Touro University, College of Osteopathic Medicine in 2003 and then went on to complete a 3-year residency at St. Barnabas Hospital in New York City. Encouraged by a medical student while in residency to study Anthroposophic medicine, Dr. Hering visited the Threefold Community in Spring Valley and attended a physician conference there. Once in private practice, she went on to complete a 5-year training program in Anthroposophic medicine and became certified to practice AM in 2012. Dr. Hering has taught at New York College of Osteopathic Medicine and Touro University College of Osteopathic Medicine, where she continues to serve as adjunct faculty. She mentors pre-med students, trains medical students and residents in her office, serves on the PAAM and ACAM boards for Anthroposophic medicine and is faculty for the annual International Physician Medical Training (IPMT) program and the Clinical Mentoring Program for Anthroposophic medicine in the US.

Laurence Jaquet grew up in France and Switzerland. She graduated in 1987 from the Architecture School of the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich. She practiced architecture in Europe, Asia and the United States before enrolling in the San Francisco Extension Program of Rudolf Steiner College in 1998. Mrs. Jaquet has been a teacher at the San Francisco Waldorf School since 1999, first in the kindergarten and high school, then as a class teacher, and lastly as the Upper Grades Resource Teacher.

Patrick Kennedy is a director of the Seminary of the Christian Community in North America and serves as a priest in the Toronto, Ontario congregation. Patrick attended both the Sacramento and Kimberton Waldorf Schools and taught 4th grade in the Chicago Waldorf School. He lives with his wife and fellow priest, Kate Kennedy, along with their two daughters in Toronto.

Monika Leitz, bio coming soon.

Donni O’Ryan has been teaching movement and environmental education classes at Marin Waldorf School since 2006, when she joined our faculty from the East Bay Waldorf School (now Wildcat Canyon Community School), where she worked for 12 years. Donni graduated from Rudolf Steiner College in 1994 and completed a movement teacher certificate at the Spacial Dynamics Institute in 1999. A teacher of teachers, she has taught at the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training, where she focuses on the anthroposophical approach to healthy movement. She is the founder of beloved summer program Trekkers Bay Area and she is a Traditional Form and Compass Feng Shui Practitioner, certified by the Golden Gate Feng Shui School. Mother, grandmother, wife, and dog mom, Donni had a range of careers before discovering Waldorf education, including sign painter, picture framer, grocery clerk, cocktail waitress, and property manager. 

Andrea Pronto holds a diploma in Special Education from the Independent Music School at Rudolf Steiner Seminar in Germany, and has been the music teacher at Live Oak Waldorf School since 1986. She is on the faculty of Rudolf Steiner College, has completed singing training from the School of Uncovering the Voice, and received a diploma in Therapeutic Singing.

Anna Rainville, MA, the author of Singing Games for Families, Schools and Communities, lifts spirits worldwide with singing games and mentoring the creative core of the Waldorf curriculum. An experienced class teacher and kindergarten teacher for almost 40 years, she has been a well-known instructor at the Public School Institute at Rudolf Steiner College where she received her remedial training. With her mother, Betty Peck, she has co-directed the popular Kindergarten Forum for 27 years in Saratoga, California. Currently she travels, mentors and teaches widely.

Carla Schaareman grew up in the Netherlands. She received her BA/MA in fine arts from the Willem de Kooning Academy in the Netherlands in 1990, after having studied at several other art institutions, including The Royal Academy in Den Haag and De Vrije Academie in Den Haag. Until 1998, she worked in her own studio on commissions and developing her own work. In the summer of 1998, she and her family moved to California.

Carla completed the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training in 2006. Her teaching experience includes 3 years of printmaking, veil painting, figure drawing and stone carving at East Bay Waldorf High School, and clay modeling at the Novato Charter School. Since February 2009, she has been teaching at the San Francisco Waldorf High School: 9th/10th grade drawing, 11th grade veil painting and 11th/12th grade electives in oil painting, cooking, advanced drawing and printmaking. Since 2015, she has been teaching painting and high school arts at BACWTT and wet-in-wet method watercolor painting at Lifeways and Rudolf Steiner College.

Willow Summer has been gardening and farming since she first learned to plant a corn patch with her father at age four. After college she moved to the Bay Area, where she founded the nonprofit urban farming program City Slicker Farms, which grew from one empty lot garden in 2000 to seven urban farms and the Backyard Garden Building Program, supplying thou-sands of pounds of urban-grown organic produce each year. Willow went on to start The Berkeley Basket, an urban community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm. In 2011, she coau-thored The Essential Urban Farmer and received a teaching certificate from the Bay Area Cen-ter for Waldorf Teacher Training with the goal of inspiring children and adults through farm and garden education. Willow currently runs Three Springs Community Farm, a Biodynamic CSA and educational farm with her husband Lew in Bodega, Sonoma County.

Judith Thomas was one of the founding parents of the East Bay Waldorf School and a member of the faculty as a class teacher (1985-1993) and handwork teacher (1994-2007) in both the lower school and in the high school. She has been a weaver and fiber artist for many years and currently teaches Japanese-style fabric mending classes and weaving workshops in the Bay Area. She teaches the Waldorf Handwork Curriculum in the BACWTT 2nd Year class.

Gail Weger began her work in Waldorf education in 1994 through a home preschool she created out of a need in her children’s community. She went on to take her first class at the Live Oak Waldorf School from first through fifth grade, and her second and third classes through graduation. She is currently teaching Third Grade at the Marin Waldorf School, where she has been for the last seven years.

Gail has been a mentor and teacher of teachers since 2001, in the Midwest, Bay Area, and through Rudolf Steiner College and BACWTT; and served as the Pedagogical Chair at the East Bay Waldorf School in 2013-14. Gail is a practicing artist and holds a BFA in Printmaking and Art History. She is, as well, an avid follower of biodynamic and permaculture practices, and explorer of the natural wonders of California. She has three grown Waldorf-educated daughters, a wonderful husband, Mathias, and is a grandmother of one — soon to be two –grandchildren.