Dear Colleagues,

These are challenging, difficult days for our country. We are a diverse movement, but I imagine that the weight of current events is weighing on all of us - and on our families. I hope every one of us is finding as much balance and strength as possible as we remain available and present for our children and our school communities.

The weather is not helping: many of you are buried in snow and ice. We hope that you are warm and safe. We had a vivid picture of our tremendous geographic diversity at our in-person conference as we saw colleagues in shorts, reveling in the Los Angeles sunshine, in the same space as colleagues from Hawaii who were really cold! It was a good lesson in relativity. 

We continue to feel and express great gratitude for everyone who planned, prepared, traveled, presented, shared, zoomed in, and participated in our conferences. In Los Angeles, we were really fortunate to enjoy contributions from students: drumming to open the conference on Friday night, a fifth grade chorus on Saturday morning, a beautiful map of the United States, also fifth grade, with schools invited to locate themselves, and evidence of student work all around. These were great reminders of the purpose of our work! Many words, phrases, and scenes continue to resound, including: respect, responsibility, reverence, responsiveness, connection, community, restorative, humor, laughter, play, satiated…. I am sure we all have our own lists. Our task now is two-fold: to assess, review, and follow up on many details from the conferences and to look ahead: how can we keep the enthusiasm, new learning, colleagueship, and sense of “we” alive as we are all back in the busy-ness of our schools; and how can we discern needs and hopes across our schools to support the future of our shared work?

We welcome your help with each of these. Your reflections on either conference experience are warmly welcomed and helpful. Many thanks to conference attendees who have already completed an evaluation. It is not too late; we will keep these open for a few more days. We are also interested in hearing from you if you didn’t attend; what prevented you, what could make this easier or more inviting in the future? I ask this because our conferences once again affirmed the importance of coming together, of participating in inspired professional development, of the impact of all the connections and conversations that take place. We can feel isolated in our classrooms and schools - they can become a world unto and in themselves. The words of a Hopi Elder, spoken by Kristy Mack Fett, our remarkable host at Ocean Charter, are a great reminder of our need to connect and collaborate, especially in challenging times (abbreviated here, but a true resource that we can all draw from - I recommend looking up the full quotation): “Where are you living? What are you doing? What are your relationships? Know your garden. Create your community. Be good to each other. See who is there with you and celebrate. The time of the lone wolf is over…. We are the ones we have been waiting for.” Life overall is too hard right now to go it alone; our work is demanding yet so rewarding, and provides daily opportunities for meaning and purpose for students and adults alike.

We are planning to make a few conference-linked offerings available in the next weeks and months. Please watch for opportunities with David Sewell McCann, storyteller and keynote presenter for our virtual conference. He is reflecting on his experience and thinking about what could be most helpful. Feedback so far tells us that David created a warm, inclusive space online and provided scaffolding and development for storytelling, choice of stories, and our all-important presence in our work. Also from the virtual conference, Joe Provisor is offering scholarship rates for us in an upcoming Circle Ways training. See below for a link to the flier and scholarship details. There will be more to come: we are very grateful for these generous offerings and are happy to offer these connections. These are not Alliance-sponsored programs, but opportunities for ongoing professional development connecting back to our conference themes. 

There will be more to come as fruits of our conferences; for now, I hope all of us who participated are holding on to the warmth and inspiration that united us. Please be safe, and remember every day that we are doing important work.

Liz Beaven

Executive Director

Upcoming Circle Ways Training Information

Training begins February 7th.

Joe Provisor

For more information:

Liz Beaven, Executive Director 

Carly Fedor, Administrative Assistant

Alliance for Public Waldorf Education

40 4th St., # 274

Petaluma, CA 94952

Public Waldorf is a service mark of the Association of Waldorf Schools

of North America and is used pursuant to a license.

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