Tag Archives: Waldorf graduates

Travel, Adventure and a Passion for the Environment

Posted on by
Reply

Sarah Cabot-Miller graduated from MWS in 2010. We are delighted that she remains a regular visitor at our events and look forward to hearing more about her life as her career unfolds.

It is crazy to think that it has been ten years since my class graduated from Meadowbrook. A lot can happen in ten years. Here is a short description of what I have been up to since then.

Directly after graduating from Meadowbrook, I attended North Kingstown High School where I took part in Adventurer’s Club, joined in some small theatrical performances, and spent a lot of my time playing in a band with some friends. I took a handful AP classes, one of which being AP Environmental Science which sparked my passion for what I ended up studying in college.

 

 

After graduating from North Kingstown High School, I enrolled in the School of the Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont. There I majored in Natural Resource Management and minored in International Community Development. This combination of major and minor pinpointed my enthusiasm for understanding how communities around the world interact with natural resources, and what decisions across society can aid in shaping sustainable natural resource use and management. This area of study provided me with many incredible opportunities including organizing sustainability-focused community events, working hand in hand with local organizations, a large number of hands-on-learning courses, individual research opportunities with professors, and many travel opportunities.

While on campus, I was involved in the school’s rock-climbing team, the Vermont Student Climate Coalition, the Horticulture Club, and was intertwined in the local music scene through a few student bands. I worked at the Office of International Education, helping place local students with study abroad programs, and organizing activities for international students and study abroad returnees. Though I loved being in Burlington with all my heart, I spent two semesters abroad, expanding my international and interpersonal experiences. This included a seven-month abroad experience, studying and living in Spain, during which I worked on improving my Spanish, visited some relatives throughout the country, and hiked El Camino de Santiago. For my second term abroad, I participated in a field-based, environmentally focused program, during which we traveled throughout Australia studying the sustainability movement and different forms of environmental action across the country. During this time, I deeply increased my understanding for climate action and green decision making. These experiences thoroughly fueled my curiosity, and my passion for travel, international community involvement, and experiential learning.

Upon graduating from UVM, I spent some time working for Brown University’s Superfund Research Program in partnership with the Narraganset Tribe. We organized and analyzed data concerning fish, water, and sediment contamination from two main ponds on the Narraganset reservation and worked towards understanding how tribal individuals interact with fish and/or water from these two ponds. As part of this project, we crafted workshop materials and created lesson plans that will serve to help educate tribal members about contamination found in those specific ponds. Though my working full time for this program has come to an end, I now volunteer a few hours a week, contributing toward the final report for this project.

Most recently, I have accepted a position as the Park Naturalist for Burlingame Campgrounds. As I understand it, I will be organizing educational environmental programs to offer campers throughout the duration of their stay. As you can tell, I thoroughly enjoy working with people and, to me, the most rewarding work is when I get to share my love and enthusiasm for the environment with others in a way that can make a lasting impact! As I move forward, I hope to continue following my passion for the environment and community action and see where it takes me.

An Alum Reflects on His Journey

Posted on by
Reply

Deven Bussey is the eldest of five siblings who have attended, or still attend, MWS. We are glad that our alumni stay in touch and share their news with us. Here, Deven reflects on how his Meadowbrook experience prepared him for his unique career path. 

I graduated from Meadowbrook Waldorf School back in 2004, and while there are a lot of things that have led me to where I am today (which is Taipei, Taiwan!), Meadowbrook played a big role. I moved to Zhuhai, China in 2012 after graduating from Skidmore College. I lived there for two years, teaching English at Sun-Yat-Sen University, before moving to Chengdu for the better part of five years. During that time, I studied Mandarin and worked as a college counselor, before moving into video production work, which is my current focus. I moved to Taipei in February to pursue more opportunities in this area.

Over the past four or so years, I’ve produced and directed music documentaries, shot a pilot for a TV series, traveled around China shooting a tourism project, filmed concerts, music videos and much more. My next project will be a web TV series in Taiwan about a group of students learning how to produce electronic music and market themselves as up-and-coming artists.

I’d say the most exiting project was a documentary I shot with my friend called Break The Wall, about the history of underground dance music in China. For that film, I had the chance to travel to places such as Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai Yunnan among many others, and interview some of the most influential people in the electronic music scene in that part of the world. Finally, I was able to attend ADE (Amsterdam Dance Event), when the film premiered there!

Throughout this journey, I like to look back on how I came to be doing these things. They weren’t things that I planned to do but more the result of “hey, that sounds interesting and unique, why not do that?” This way of thinking is something I attribute to Meadowbrook and my Waldorf education. For example, there were many opportunities I got in China just by being willing to speak Mandarin and try something outside my comfort zone. I went to smaller cities to play guitar and sing at events where a lot of the people had never seen a foreigner in the flesh before! I gave a speech in Chinese about tourism in Sichuan for a forum attended by many of the regional governors. My proudest fun moment may have been when I made it onto the pages of Vogue Taiwan modeling a winter jacket for a marketing campaign that some of my friends were doing!

To me, these experiences, while a bit out-of-the-box, have been some of the most worthwhile as they led me to meet people and explore places that I would have never had the chance to normally. I can also see how a different version of myself would have dismissed some of these opportunities as “not worthwhile” or “too strange”, just as some might view Eurythmy (though I can’t imagine my 10-year-old self ever thinking that Eurythmy was not the best use of my time…).

I was back visiting Rhode Island this past summer, and I remember talking with my younger brother, Will, who had just graduated from Meadowbrook and was looking forward to starting at The Prout School. He enjoyed his time at Meadowbrook but he was telling me how excited he was to do more “typical” things, like join sports teams etc. I understood what he meant, but I also had to smile a little, having gone to the same high school myself. I went on to tell him that, of all my educational stops (including the Catholic high school and a liberal arts college), Meadowbrook is easily the one that made the greatest impact on me, and is the experience that stands out the most, even 15 years later. There’s nothing wrong with “typical” but the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve been able to see the things I thought I may have been missing out on as a middle-school student were just that: typical.

Betty Merner and the Class of 2004 (Deven in the black hat)

Talking with my brother also got me thinking about how some of the unique things that I learned at Meadowbrook have helped me in really practical ways. I’ve become quite comfortable doing public speaking and voice-over work, and I know that the yearly plays I participated in at Meadowbrook set a foundation for that. So much of what we learned at Meadowbrook was also taught through the form of stories and I truly believe that helped me build up a strong sense of narrative structure that has helped me a lot with my recent film work. We were even decorating a set for a music video recently and I was brought back to one time when we decorated our classroom as a “crystal cave” for gnomes!

Finally, as someone who was never a math lover, I can confirm that I still do simple multiplication in my head using the rhymes that I was taught in 2nd or 3rd grade! I will never forget that “9 times 8 is seventy-twoooooo, then 80, 88, 96 and we’re through!”

Last summer, I had a chance to reconnect with my teacher Mrs. Merner and a few of the students from our graduating class. One thing that really struck me was how, for such a small class, we had all ended up following very different and interesting paths that strayed away from normal or, god forbid, boring! That’s what I’m most grateful to Meadowbrook for. For instilling this sense in me that different isn’t bad and that trying things I may not love, or that I initially would have dismissed as uninteresting, have led to some of the best opportunities and experiences of my life.

 

 

Play is Serious Business

Posted on by
Reply

Imaginative play is essential for the healthy physical, emotional, social, and academic development of the child. Waldorf Education recognizes that when children are given a safe and beautiful environment they use the power of their own imaginations to create learning experiences. Hasbro invited Meadowbrook kindergarten teacher, Su Rubinoff, to share her expertise with its innovation design team.

Su at Hasbro (1280x1022)

Hasbro is a leading global play products company based in Pawtucket, R.I. with many well known brands including Play–Doh, Transformers, Scrabble, and My Little Pony. Most of us will remember games such as Monopoly and Candy Land from our own childhoods but Hasbro has since added a new generation of electronic toys and digital gaming, and continues to look for new ways to play. MWS alumna, Ceileidh Siegel, is currently the company’s Director of Imbedded Innovation and leads a team working on design ideas intended for production 3-5 years from now.  Ceileidh says her job is a mix of the Tom Hanks role in the movie Big, where a 12 year old wishes himself into an adult body then lands his dream job of professional toy tester, mixed with Shark Tank, the television show that ruthlessly investigates the viability of new product ideas.

Playstand PoniesIn 2015, Ceileidh’s team hosted a Hasbro “Summer Camp” focusing on the reinvention of two core brands.  Her group worked with members of the company’s Marketing, Design, and Engineering, teams with the intention of providing timeless favorites, Baby Alive™ and FurReal Friends™, with a timely new twist. These lines feature play characters for young children that encourage patterns of role play and imagination. As a foundation for their work, Ceileidh felt that an in depth perspective on children’s innate need for play was essential for the group. She particularly wanted them to understand the importance of nurturing role play and what it brings to the developing child.

Cassandra with her doll

Cassandra with her doll

Having experienced play–based Waldorf education at Meadowbrook from early childhood until graduating from grade 8 in 1997, she decided to invite MWS kindergarten teacher Su Rubinoff (known hereabouts as Miss Su) to share her expertise with the Hasbro group. Su has worked with children for more than 40 years and holds a Master of Science degree in remedial education. She has devoted many years to the study of child development, investigating the connection between sensory and academic learning. Su, who has known Ceileidh since birth, was honored by the invitation but also a little nervous so she enlisted the help of another MWS alum, Cassandra Duda, for technical assistance. Cassandra graduated from Meadowbrook in 2013 and is currently a junior at the Lincoln School. After researching the school archives, she created a PowerPoint presentation with photographs of young children at play to accompany Su’s talk. She also brought along her favorite childhood toy, a doll named Ellie. Ceileidh says that Cassandra’s input was tremendous, “She brought the team on a lovely digital journey from the forest kindergarten, through Su’s trips around the world, to show the global drumbeat of play.  She was poised and articulate speaking about her connection to the doll, the weight of its bean bag body and the rituals associated with it including purchasing clothes and accessories on family visits to Germany each summer”. In reflection, Ceileidh shared how her Meadowbrook education prepared her for the presentations she gives today. “Making my own textbooks reinforced that I really needed to know the subject from the inside out and from every angle.  It gives me a great sense of calm because, if you know the material the way we are required to at Meadowbrook, there are no “gotchas”… you literally wrote the book (well, now it’s a PowerPoint) .”

Hasbro CS (1280x799)

Su received an enthusiastic welcome from the Hasbro team. She explained that play is not just something children do for fun or to pass the time. Play enables children to make sense of the world and it establishes the foundation of future learning. Unstructured, imaginative play activates the entire brain resulting in the building of new neural pathways. Activities practiced in play that are associated with communication, memory, self regulation, and problem solving, help to develop the part of the brain responsible for executive functioning and critical thinking. Play is also essential in learning how to interact with others, promoting social as well as self development. Children learn by exploring their environment through their senses, translating what they see and feel into a picture of the world and their place within it. For healthy development, it is important to surround the young child with beautiful and meaningful experiences that encourage trust and confidence in the goodness of the world.

Su told the group that children learn predominantly from imitation in their early years. They are not ‘little adults’, although they are driven by a strong desire to behave like the adults around them. Children imitate daily living when playing with dolls or stuffed animals, thoughtfully recapitulating the tending and caring they themselves have experienced. Children as young as one year old can be seen bending over a little crib to kiss a doll. New skills are also learned in this way. When feeding, brushing hair, or dressing their ‘babies’, children are learning how to care for themselves.

Dolls appear throughout history and in every culture, made from a wide variety of materials including cloth, grass, corn husks, plastic and clay. Children’s touch is sensitive so the intrinsically warm qualities of natural materials, such as wood or silk, make for a deeper connection than might be formed with toys made of synthetic materials. Children also see themselves in the doll, bringing it to life through their own imagination. Waldorf dolls have tiny eyes and, perhaps, a simple stitch for a mouth. Su described how these small, neutral features allow the child to explore a wider range of emotions and experiences through creative play.

Six months later, the Hasbro group is still talking about the insights Su provided. Building on the knowledge that play where the child takes the role of nurturing a toy is instinctual, they are considering ways to augment imaginary play instead of replacing it with lights, sounds, and motion.  Ceileidh surmises, “Su really made it abundantly clear that the power of play and imagination is the strongest force in childhood, and the foundation for growth and success later in life.”

Ceileidh calls Meadowbrook the place where she learned how to learn. She credits Meadowbrook with helping to develop her innate internal motivation and is convinced that Waldorf Education’s consistent focus on what you do with knowledge, rather than on reciting the facts you know, resulted in her being very well prepared for work in the innovation era. “At Hasbro”, she says, “We have the privilege and responsibility for making some of the world’s best play experiences”. When it comes to the essential business of children’s play, that sense of ethical responsibility carries great importance. No word yet on what changes will be made to Baby Alive and FurReal Friends but, as a Waldorf alum leading the way, Ceileidh will likely succeed with her persistent request that a toy be just as much fun when the batteries are dead.

Click here to see some of the photos Su showed at Hasbro

 

 

What Makes Our School Unique

Posted on by
1

Jennifer Farrelly, the Meadowbrook Waldorf School Administrator has been a part of this community for many years in various capacities.  She has two children currently enrolled and is the mother of three alumni. 

cover (476x640) We are proud of our school and the quality of the education we offer here and it’s a pleasure to be able to share it with those who visit us to attend an Open House, Visitor Day and other community events.  Meadowbrook was recently granted accreditation by both AWSNA (Association of Waldorf Schools in North America) and NEASC (New England Association of Schools and Colleges).  AWSNA is the national affiliate of the worldwide Waldorf Education movement and NEASC is the oldest accrediting institution in this country.  We’ve always known by the quality and character of our graduates that we are doing a worthy job of educating children however it is very satisfying to have an independent group of educators and administrators validate our work.  In celebration of our school’s 35th birthday  I would like to share with you four things that I believe make us unique.

First of all, from the time I was a new parent in the school with a 3 year old in tow the school has been an incredible resource for me as a parent.   The teachers here consciously take up helping parents navigate the trials and tribulations of raising children.  Because the class teacher journeys with the children from grade to grade they get to know the child and the family quite well!  In a sense each one of my children gained a 3rd parent, luckily for them a parent who has been formally educated in child development.  This partnership between the families and the school creates a stable environment in which children can learn and make mistakes.  This partnership has meant that my children have

  • another adult in their lives who knows their strengths and weaknesses intimately,
  • another adult dedicated to helping them to overcome their daily challenges so they can reach their full potential as individuals,
  • someone actively setting an example that learning is a lifelong process,
  • someone who understands how important it is to be worthy of imitation because children need adults they can look up to and emulate.

Imagine the impact on society if all children had adults consciously holding them in this way.

SSim (640x506)The second thing I would like you to know is that the children are held in the center of every decision we make at Meadowbrook.  We work with a different management model from the typical top-down institutional hierarchy.  All work begins by considering “How will this benefit the children?”  “Is this what is best for the children?”  This practice encourages us to think creatively rather than defensively while identifying priorities.  Parents participate in shaping the life of the school through our active parents association that works with faculty and staff .  Our shared child-centered approach in all areas allows us to make extraordinary educational experiences available to the students.

The third thing you should be aware of is that Waldorf education is not meant to be a private education only available to the well to do.  Our mission statement says that we strive to offer this education to those who seek it here and invite a community which reflects the breadth and diversity of humanity.  We honor that portion of our mission statement by keeping our tuition as affordable as possible, currently at 50% of other RI independent schools.  We also have a tuition adjustment program that honors each family’s individual circumstances and ability to pay.  This can make annual budgeting challenging but we manage every year through the generous support of our community.

The last thing I would like you to know about us is that we are a learning community preparing to meet the future.  All of the adults that serve the mission of the Meadowbrook Waldorf School are committed to a path of self development and thoughtful engagement with the world.  With life becoming ever more complex we recognize that today’s children require more than intellectual training if they are to be successful.  We are a community that consciously strives to live the values that prepare children to meet the future as hopeful resilient individuals.

089 - Copy (640x417)