Download the article: Biography in Education

Published in Education as an Art Vol. 29, #1 – Fall/Winter 1970-71

We are all individuals. Occasionally we fiercely defend our individual rights and freedom as a unique entity -a centric being which we call "I." Often we feel imprisoned within the physical vessel we call a body - sometimes striving to protect itself from other bodies with a will and independence of their own. We can easily sense the meaning of Schweitzer's 'reverence for life.'

'I am the life that wills to live in the midst of other life which wills to live.' Yet as we set great store by our independence, so do all men possess a deep desire to transcend the personal and unite with the lives of other beings around us. We bear the polarities of independence and social need and desire. We are caught in, or suspended within, a dynamic tension between our self and our fellows about us. The personal and the self transcendent are a rack we are hung upon by the very nature of our humanity. There is a deep desire in man to know and to love his fellows, in spite of his weakness, and the frailties of his companions. Here lie the real roots of our need for biography. We can glimpse for a moment or two the correspondences between men. We can measure and reaffirm the nature of our humanity - that we belong with all other men to mankind.

These verses were written for the students I taught at the Hartsbrook School in Hadley, MA from 1991 to 1999. They were inspired by the indications in Heinz Millers, Healing Forces in the Words and it's Rhythms. Students were given the verse on their birthdays or half-birthdays for those who had summer birthdays. For the following year, the students recited their birthday verse in class on the day of the week on which they were born, with Saturday and Sunday birthdays distributed among the other days.

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Download the article: Bread Making in Parent-Child Groups

Published in Kindling, Issue 8, Autumn 2005 (UK)

Bread making is one of the most satisfying activities to do in Parent and Child groups,
not only for the child but for the parents and carers.
It is one of the most basic ancient and comforting tasks that humans have created
through many transformations of ways of making it, owing to the fact that changes in
human consciousness bring about dietary change. To read more about this very
interesting journey Rudolf Hauschka’s book on Nutrition is very revealing about all
aspects of diet.

Download the play Briar Rose

Briar Rose, a play for First Grade

Author's note: This play is one of a group of plays written for the classes I taught at the Rudolf Steiner School in New York from 1982–1991 and at The Hartsbrook School in Hadley, MA from 1991-1999. The theme of each play was chosen to address a particular class’s issues and interests, and the characters were rendered with specific students in mind.

When other teachers and classes have performed my plays, I have encouraged them to adapt or revise the play as necessary to derive the maximum pedagogical value from it. Other class’s performances have showed me artistic dimensions of my plays that I could not have imagined, and I have always been grateful to see that my work has taken on new life.

I have posted my plays on the Online Waldorf Library as Microsoft Word documents (contact the OWL for a Word version)so that they can easily be downloaded and changed. I have purposely given few stage directions so that teachers and students will make the plays more their own.

Dear Colleagues: I hope that these plays will serve you well as inspiration, as a scaffold on which to
build your own creation, or as a script to make your own. Please don’t hesitate to take whatever
liberties you wish so that the play may serve you in your work.

Keyword: plays, fairy tales, drama, 1st grade