Congratulations to the following students who have recently completed the WISC training program and are now graduates.
This page may be especially helpful to Waldorf schools which are looking for qualified potential teachers to hire. For inquiries, e-mail: info@waldorfteaching.org
Heike Adamsberger-Kosta: I am a third-year student at the Waldorf Institute of Southern California and will be graduating in May 2010. Supporting my teacher training at WISC, I have been working as a full-time kindergarten assistant at Highland Hall Waldorf School since August 2008.
For as long as I can remember I have been attracted to professions that involve nurturing and healing. Starting out as a Radiology Technician, I worked in Radiation Therapy at University Hospitals in Germany.
My love for children led me to teaching in 1996. I enjoyed every minute with my students, being the Lead Teacher at a pre-school for five years and a Kindergarten TA for two years. During this time I studied for my advanced core certificate in Early Childhood at UCLA Extension and had a particular interest in the pre-schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy.
Still I was questing for more, while little did I know that what I was searching for was a spiritual component in my daily work.
The birth of my children led me back to Waldorf, and I refer to “back” because it was like coming home for me. Having had the good fortune to spend a large part of my childhood with my Austrian grandparents, I found everything that was right and good in my own childhood again - here at Highland Hall.
I enrolled in the WISC training one month after my son started kindergarten. It seemed to me that everything that happened in my life up to that point had led me here, and everything came together. My experience here at WISC has been profound on many levels. I feel renewed and elevated as a teacher, parent and as a human being. And I feel that the journey has just begun.
For September 2010 I am looking for a full-time position as an Early Childhood Educator at a school that works deeply and sincerely out of Anthroposophy. I am hoping to share my gifts and experience and to find a place with strong collegial support, where I can blossom and grow.
heikeadamsbergerkosta@gmail.com | 818-357-2445
Cheryl Bommarito Klein: I began in education through Teach for America, teaching kindergarten to low-income children on the south side of Chicago. It was an incredibly difficult, powerful and profound experience that ultimately led me on a search for a different way of educating children. A friend suggested that I look into "that Waldorf thing I was always talking about". I took their advice, found a teacher training program nearby, and immediately signed up. Moving back to California has led me to WISC, to finish my last year of training.
I am currently in my third year as a Waldorf Early Childhood teacher, and my second here in California, at the Westside Waldorf School. Both my Waldorf training and teaching have been a joyous path of growth and self-discovery. It is such an honor to work with, nurture, and learn from the children. The wonder of Waldorf education is that it is a gift for everyone who touches and is touched by it - children, parents, and teachers alike.
cherylbk@gmail.com | 805-259-8311
Ann Marie Boyle: Hello! I am a third year WISC student, currently working at the Valley Waldorf City School as a games teacher and aftercare provider. I have also worked at the Westside Waldorf School as a 6th grade assistant and aftercare provider/organizer.
I graduated with a B.F.A. in illustration from Parsons School of Design in 1983, and started out working in the city doing boutique window display, as well as writing and art directing photo shoots for the then new culture magazine "Paper". I studied Photography and French in Paris, then returned to New York and recorded a Pop album. In 1993 I moved to Los Angeles and began scenic painting and art direction for film and television. Unfulfilled with work in the film industry, I moved to Catalina Island in 2002 and worked as a substitute teacher in the public school there, in all grades, for four years. During this time I continued with my set design and painting work, creating five sets a year for the local children’s theater group, Kids@ Play, and the Avalon High School drama club. I also started a monthly newspaper that was brainstormed, written, and edited by the kids in Avalon, "The Catalina Skiff". Summers on the Island, I worked as an art teacher, counselor, and journalism teacher for the Catalina Performing Arts Foundation Summer Camp.
I decided to study Waldorf education to develop myself as a teacher. I found that working on creative, collaborative projects with young people was extremely fulfilling and was a great match to my own talents as an artist, publisher, decorator, lover of music, and champion of the beauty all around us.
Ideally, I am looking to work with kids on projects that will help them realize their inherent artistic abilities, be they visual, written, or performing, with an eye toward developing programs that can move into the communities and reach all of our children. To this end I have been working on an idea for a “camp” that functions year-round and that may include programs such as a travelling children’s theater group(stops at juvenile facilities?), to a design-your-own “home” interactive field of cabins....I am so excited for this !
I am open to all employment options and would love to meet and talk with like-minded people in the hope of furthering these ideas.
annmarie2006@sbcglobal.net | 310-699-7330
Bianca Brousseau: I was born and raised by anthroposophists in Southern California. I attended Highland Hall Waldorf School and then Oberlin College. After my freshman year I gave birth to my son Dylan and continued my education on an academic scholarship at the University of California Santa Cruz. During this time I fell in love with history and creative writing, completing an internship teaching creative writing to continuation students in a public high school. I graduated from UCSC with a BA in World History.
Following graduation I moved to Berkeley and sought work that was active, social and compatible with motherhood. For two years I worked in a home that housed and educated developmentally disabled adults. Then I spent a year in a school for children on the Autism Spectrum where I tutored students ages seven to eighteen. The following year I assisted teenagers with Asperger’s Syndrome by helping them adjust to academic and social life in an Oakland public middle school. I loved working with these students who, through their altered perceptions, were helplessly honest and struggled with navigating a social world where words change meaning through body language, and where “normal” human beings lie. I felt that while mainstream special education established a much-needed, painstakingly logical approach for these students to navigate the school environment, it gave no deeper means for them to develop lasting human relationships and ignored their spiritual experience in the world.
While working in special education I was encouraged by a friend to visit the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training. This close-knit, loving community and its edgy teaching made me enthusiastic to become a grades teacher, to embrace the spiritual side of education and perhaps find answers that were lacking in my work life. I trained for two years at BACWTT and assisted in the kindergarten at the East Bay Waldorf School. Then my partner found a wonderful new job in New York and we moved. Here I am completing my Waldorf Teacher Education long-distance through the Waldorf Institute of Southern California, and I am currently in my second year assisting in the kindergarten at the Rudolf Steiner School of New York City. I will be seeking a class-teaching position.
bianca.brousseau@gmail.com | 516-486-0782.
Anjela Dermenjyan: I was born in Armenia to an Armenian father and a Russian mother. My family and I lived in Armenia during the Communist regime. During the summers my mother would take my sisters and me to Russia to visit her family, my grandmother, aunts, uncles, etc. When I was nine years old my family and I immigrated to the United States. It is here that I finished my primary education, graduated high school, and went on to get a bachelors degree in fine arts from Otis Parsons.
Upon graduating from college, I got married and pursued a career in fashion design, and later moved on to toy design. It wasn't until I had kids that I took special interest in education, and that is how I discovered Waldorf. Immediately I was drawn to it. The philosophy behind the education was of particular interest to me, and that is how I ended up at WISC.
Currently I am homeschooling my eight year old. I have a kindergartener at Pasadena Waldorf School, and a two-and-three- quarter-year-old at home. I am deeply committed to personal self-development as well as to my family. I am taking it one day at a time. I don't really know where life is taking me, but I'm trying to stay malleable and go with the flow. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine that I would be a mother, let alone an educator, but here I am.
anjela@sbcglobal.net | 818-720-9692
Karine Dermenjyan: I was born in Armenia and came to the U.S. when I was five years old. I started my education in the Los Angeles Unified School District from kindergarten all the way through the 12th grade. I then went to Glendale College and Cal State Los Angeles where I got a BS in Nutritional Science. I worked at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles until I got married and moved to San Diego. There I studied yoga, thought and mentored. We then moved back to Los Angeles and had two kids, and that led to the discovery of Waldorf education. My son started preschool at Pasadena Waldorf School in 2007 on a Thursday, and I stared WISC that same Saturday.
This being my last year I’m still not sure where this is going to take me, but right now I am available part time. My ideal teaching position would be high school pottery. I love pottery.
karin-d@juno.com | 323-913-0441
Lori Duckstad: I grew up the twelfth of thirteen children on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, where I learned to knit, crochet, and sew, and developed a love of working with my hands. I have a Bachelor's Degree in Occupational Therapy and a Master's Degree in Counseling and Human Development. I worked in a variety of social service, school, and hospital settings for eleven years, before I discovered Waldorf education when looking for a preschool for my eldest daughter. I have over thirteen years experience as a Waldorf teacher, working as a Class Teacher, Handwork Teacher, and Music Teacher. I am currently teaching the third-fourth grade at the Sanderling Waldorf School in Encinitas, California. I am the mother of Kelsey, a college student, and Sarah, a junior-high student. I love to read, travel, and do handwork in my spare time. I plan to stay in the Southern California area.
loriduckstad@yahoo.com | 619/729-5971
Marzia Lombardo: In childhood at home I lived in the realm of talking chairs and teddy bears. The broom was my friend whom I had to console each time it got too old and got ostracized to the garage. The perfectly painted porcelain doll terrorized me in my dreams by trying to get all of the toys to kill me. In school I never understood a word my teachers said until I reached seventh grade. Until then tests were just sheets of papers where I would wonder, what am I to do with this?
And so I carried with me a deep compassion for children like me. When I asked myself what I wanted to do on the eve of my college graduation day, I wanted to be a teacher to help those little creatures, God’s greatest treasure: children. Now, coming from an Italian heritage, and having thus a fiery temper, I needed to tame the lion of my emotions. It took me four years of teaching Junior High in a Catholic school to get to a place of peace and calm no matter what the children would bring. Now the spiritual realm deemed me ready to be directed to WISC and discover Waldorf education.
After quite a few ah-ha moments and after a couple of years of practicing singing and story-telling in the Junior High, I felt courageous enough to go to where I always wanted to be, in the preschool as a teacher. I am now teaching my second year of Preschool at Valley Waldorf School.
mlombardo8@adelphia.net | 323-828-3856
Sara Maun: I came to teaching after graduating from Sarah Lawrence College with a concentration in the visual arts and history. Upon entering the working world, I just couldn't find the right path, nothing felt quite right. With the loving advice of a dear friend and mentor who suggested I make toys and do puppet shows for children, I dove into teaching in LAUSD while getting my credential at UCLA. It was a far step from puppets! But I loved the children and loved how much teaching challenged me to grow, and could never imagine it otherwise. Luckily as the fates would have it, I connected with Ocean Charter School in its opening year and began taking classes at WISC. Discovering Waldorf education has been and always will be a transformative journey that I travel with gratitude. It has been my greatest joy to teach kindergarten at Ocean Charter these last 6 years. During this time I have deeply loved pursuing my studies and certification at WISC. I have also received my MA in education with a concentration in early childhood from Bonnie River's program through Rudolf Steiner College and Touro University. I feel blessed to be ceaselessly inspired by the joyful wisdom of the many teachers I have had through Waldorf teacher training. I look forward to the many years ahead!
saraseashells@yahoo.com | 310-562-2776
Lauren Mazzilli: I have fond memories of my childhood, growing up as the youngest of three in a small town outside New York City: blackberry picking with my father, exploring in the woods with my family, knowing most of the people in town, always being around my aunts, uncles, and cousins and running around my grandparents’ house in Yonkers, New York. I remember being surrounded on the holidays by family and friends, enjoying listening to my Italian family members talk in Italian and loving the desserts that came after the many coursed meals. I was an adventurous child who loved to learn new things as well as experience new things with friends and family.
Throughout my life I had to overcome many things including a speech delay that meant learning how to talk in full sentences, and having surgeries on my foot and my eyes to correct my vision. But the most severe thing I had to learn to deal with was a learning disability that my kindergarten teacher recognized, for which my parents had me tested. Although I had a rough time making friends, and my peers weren’t sympathetic about my having a learning disability, I still enjoyed school and tried not to allow my peers to bring me down. Because of my disability I was taught many skills and techniques that helped me throughout my learning and got me where I am today.
I received my bachelor’s degree in liberal studies at Cal State Northridge. After college I decided to try my hand at acting. After four years of enjoying it, but not getting where I wanted to go in the time I allowed, I decided to pursue what I always knew I was eventually going to do - teach children. For the past two years I have been working on getting my special education credential at Cal State Channel Islands while doing the WISC teacher education program.
While attending WISC I have been working two jobs. I am fond of my work at Chime Charter Elementary School. The school implements a program called inclusion in which children with a variety of learning disabilities such as Down syndrome, autism or emotional disturbance are in a regular classroom with typically learning children. I am called a paraprofessional and work one on one with a child who has a disability, helping them with their modified lesson while assisting the teacher by helping other students who are typical learners with their work.
There is more than one path I am interested in exploring on completing the WISC program. I would like to become an assistant to the grades or become an assistant to one teacher and eventually move on to becoming a classroom teacher. But lately I have been interested in becoming a special education teacher for Waldorf schools. I think my background of having learning disabilities, and understanding how it feels to be a child who has a disability, helps me relate to children who have a difficult time learning. Because of having a learning disability I am able to be more supportive, kind, sympathetic, and compassionate to children and the many struggles they have growing up. I don’t think having leaning disabilities is a negative aspect of my life, but more like a gift because I am able to relate with children and the many frustrations that they experience in learning.
laverne.maz@verizon.net | 805-405-5347
Aimee Miter: A native San Diegan, I had never heard of Waldorf Education until I stumbled across it looking for something different for my children. I truly felt that I had found my community and have never looked back. I now have children in 6th and 1st grade and can see what a difference it makes. I have worked in the healthcare analytics field for most of my career and am currently a systems administrator for Kaiser San Diego. I look forward to bringing those skills to the next phase of my life- teaching! I began the WISC program because I truly feel that I want to be a part of bringing this gift to the world. It has been an incredible experience and I have grown in ways I never thought possible. Studying Anthroposophy and Steiner’s indications on teaching, has helped me understand the stages of human development and how to apply this using the Waldorf curriculum. My particular areas of interest are handwork and early childhood.
I am deeply grateful to have such incredibly wise, compassionate and experienced instructors in the WISC program. They are guiding lights on this path that we students have chosen.
spudnsprite@cox.net | 619-665-5599
Vanessa Mori: In the summer before 11th grade, I was given the choice by my parents to stay in public school or go to an “alternative” school called Highland Hall Waldorf School. I chose well, and was thus introduced to the rich world of Waldorf education. I went through the rite of passage of graduation in this conscious environment with an awakened sense of what lies behind, beneath, and beyond what we see in ordinary life.
Following my passions for singing, performance, and music, I pursued my Bachelor’s in Vocal Performance at New England Conservatory of Music. My next stop was a two year degree from Longy School of Music where I received a Graduate Diploma of Opera launching me on a professional career as a soprano soloist.
My interest in world music, performance art, and the creative impulse of new music eventually led me to begin interpreting international folksongs and original music of various new composers. I entered the recording world and released a solo album of international folksongs with the group “Vimala” and then two recordings of original music by Victory Mori with the group “Inkplot.”
Meanwhile, with a growing family, I started to turn my gaze back towards education. The imprint left on me from my involvement in the Waldorf movement made this my absolute first choice when I considered my own children’s education. Re-entering the Waldorf environment with my young children, I was hit with the powerful beauty that exists in these small havens of early childhood and I was moved to begin my studies as soon as I could.
In my last year of the WISC training, I look back and feel grateful for the huge wealth of knowledge that has been further revealed to me. I feel enriched, enlivened, and ever curious about the difference we can make in the world, about what gifts we can bring to children as we hold this wisdom and this vision that is Waldorf education.
Now on faculty at Highland Hall as the Singing Teacher in the early grades, the privilege of engaging children in the magical and moving world of music and singing has become one of the great joys of my life. The opportunity to integrate the depth of my passions, my education, my love of children, and my interest in the best future for our world presents itself as a full circle.
vanessavimala@gmail.com | 323-839-8166
Jessie Ericson Onuf-Rabius: I was born in Washington D.C., but grew up in the Virginia countryside where I was enchanted by rolling hills and beautiful changing seasons. In high school I discovered one of my life long passions, theatre. I found that I actually preferred being behind the scenes as a director, stage manager, lighting crew, etc.
I went to NYC for my college education and attended the New School for Social Education. Over 9 years, I earned three degrees including an MA in psychology and an MFA in theater direction. I came to Los Angeles after getting married in 1998 and felt a calling to become a teacher. I got a teaching credential from Los Angeles Unified School District in special education and worked in the district for seven and a half years.
In 2004, I was graced by having fraternal twins, Nicky and Julia. Since I was already working within the public system, I knew what I didn’t want for my twins’ education and I began my search for something better. A friend of mine who was searching as well sent me an article about Waldorf education and it was love at first sight. In January of 2006, I joined the Waldorf Institute of Southern California.
In January of 2007, I was lucky enough to get a chance to do a long term substitution assignment at the Westside Waldorf School. I was also able to do some of my practice teaching there that semester. In September of 2008, I took the eighth grade class of the Westside School and was able to take them to their graduation. This school year my relationship with Westside Waldorf continues as the middle school support teacher and educational support teacher.
I would like to continue to do educational support and I am currently enrolled in the Extra Lesson/Remedial training course at Rudolf Steiner College with Ingun Schneider. However, I love teaching the grades and would be open to the prospect of class teaching as well.
jonuf@hotmail.com | 310-836-9362
Peggy Reilly: My artistic leanings began to flower in high school as I found expression through dance and visual arts, and in the company of a group of like minded individuals. After graduating in 1980 from California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California with a BFA in Dance, I pursued a career in Film Post Production, realizing that behind the scenes work was my area of strength, more so than performance. This was the first thing that I learned about myself professionally.
The second thing I learned did not come until many years later, after my three children were raised and had finished high school. I learned that I was both an artist and a teacher. I had been teaching dance part time for many years while my children were growing up, but I needed to start a new career, and I chose to get a Multiple Subject Teaching Credential from the State of California which I received in December of 2005. When I tried to get hired in the very competitive environment of the Santa Clarita Valley, no one would hire me, even when I tried to downplay my creative side. I didn’t understand what was happening then, but I was destined to find Waldorf education, and to enter into this movement.
I owe my discovery of Waldorf education to one of my original artistic friends from high school who had placed her children in the Waldorf School in Charlottesville, Virginia. I called Highland Hall and learned that typically students enter the teaching profession at Waldorf schools by attending a teacher training program such as WISC while working as an assistant in the classroom if possible. Pasadena Waldorf School needed an assistant for the sixth and eighth grades, and I was hired in August of 2007. I started WISC that fall as well.
After assisting for one year, I was asked to take the First Grade class in the fall of 2008, and I accepted the challenge. A better match could not have been found for me as a teacher and as an individual. I am daily amazed at the depths by which I am able to penetrate the work, because of the emphasis on the arts, the curriculum itself, and by the spiritual work that is the cornerstone of Rudolf Steiner’s intentions.
Now it is a matter of completing my third and final year of the WISC training, as I journey with my class in Second Grade. I am grateful for my colleagues at the Pasadena Waldorf School and for their support, and to receive guidance and instruction from the professionals in the teacher training program at WISC Los Angeles. I have also attended the summer sessions in the Art of Teaching Grade One and Two at the Rudolf Steiner College in Sacramento, California for two consecutive years. As the children say at the end of Main Lesson, so it is for me, "If I have done my very best, wisdom, love, and strength will grow, and I shall give to all I know". How lucky for me that I love my job and the people with whom I work and learn.
ptr11004@aol.com | 661-406-1684
Adriana Westerbeke received her Bachelor’s Degree from the United States Naval Academy. Her travels have taken her from Europe to Asia and Central America. As a child she received a Waldorf kindergarten and grade school education. With her wide variety of schooling, Ms. Westerbeke has a passion for teaching and an enthusiastic commitment to learning. She is currently working as an Early Childhood Assistant at the Waldorf School of San Diego. She enjoys nature, art, meditation and gardening. She’s a delightful colleague and a joy to work with.
Upon graduation from the Waldorf Institute of Southern California she plans to move north to the San Francisco Bay Area. With her Waldorf teacher training she is excited, willing and able to join a Waldorf school as a long-term grades teacher and faculty member.
a.westerbeke@yahoo.com | 619-886-8870