Waldorf Without Walls

Royse Crall

Royse has taken one class through Spring Garden Waldorf School (grades one to eight) and has just completed grade 6 for the second time. Royse taught Waldorf lessons in painting, knitting and history to fourth graders in the public school from 1995-1997. She taught Waldorf main lesson blocks to homeschooled children grades kindergarten to 5th from 1997-1999. She received her Waldorf training from the Great Lakes Regional Training Center (2000-2002) and has attended numerous Waldorf grades trainings and conferences from 1993 until today. She has taught at Taproot Farm since 2007. Royse has three grown children of her own. She loves knitting, Eurythmy and drama, and working on her art.

Barbara S. Dewey

Barbara, of Waldorf Without Walls, consults with homeschooling families throughout the world, publishes a newsletter, writes publications, provides training workshops at her farm, and spends her spare time with her husband, Quimby, family and friends, enjoying her unique solar home, and developing her farmland. She is the mother of four and grandmother to six. Barbara holds an M.S. in Waldorf Education from the Waldorf Institute of Sunbridge College in Spring Valley, N.Y. She has been teaching for 54 years.

Alison Manzer

Alison Manzer resides in Austin, Texas.  She has been homeschooling her three sons with Waldorf inspired ideas and methods for the past eleven years.  Sam, now twenty three, is pursing a doctorate in Chemistry at Berkeley.  Jack is eighteen and off to college next year where he hopes to study philosophy and creative writing.  James is sixteen and is passionate about the environment, science, and keeping fish.  While Rob, her husband, does an amazing job of keeping this rather eccentric household together!

     Alison is passionate about studying history and literature and endeavors to use this enthusiasm to inspire her family as well as her other students.  Currently, she teaches world history at a local home schooling academy.  Alison has homeschooled in three different states, and over the years has gained experience in adapting the Waldorf “head, heart, and hands” ideal of education to a variety of children and educational settings.

Jean Miller

As the mother of three home schooled children, Jean has been on this Waldorf-inspired journey for 20 years. She has a Master of Arts in Teaching and has taught in public and private schools, home schooled, and taught small groups. She has also been a leader in a number of Waldorf-inspired groups over the years — Bridgeways, Cedar Creek Community School, and Rainbow’s Edge, a small Waldorf-inspired cooperative. Jean recently launched a website, www.waldorfinspiredlearning.com, to share with others on this path. Since 1992, Jean has been studying and practicing Waldorf methods; she has attended local and national conferences and workshops, read extensively, planned and implemented many lessons, and enjoys writing and exploring curriculum. For the past seven summers, Jean has taught at the Taproot Teacher Training. She lives in Northeastern Ohio with her husband of 26 years and their youngest child who just finished ninth grade; her two older children are out on their own. Jean also loves to sing, garden and bird watch. And she loves meeting people from all over the country who come together at Taproot for a weekend in the summertime!

John Quimby

After earning degrees in Entomology and Forestry from the University of Michigan, he was the State Forest Entomologist and Chief of the Forest Health Program of Pennsylvania for 30 years, and a Forester for the U.S. Forest Service in Alaska, Minnesota, Michigan, Colorado, and South Dakota for five years.

Since retiring from forest entomology in 1999 'Quimby' (as he is called), has been devoting his time to cabinet making, planting trees, social action, and environmental education for youngsters. He has worked part time/full time for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and was named "Environmental Educator of the Year" by that organization in 2007. Several past summers have been spent guiding canoe trips for youngsters in the Adirondacks of upstate New York State. In that capacity he has run workshops on wildflower identification, tree identification, and other environmental education themes, as well as taken youth out into the wilderness for a week at a time. This will be his fifth summer teaching as Taproot, where he has built several buildings from materials on the farm. The content of Quimby's sessions will be determined by the needs of the group. Come with your science questions in mind!

Jenny Sage

Jenny is the director of Maple Tree Waldorf, a program for homeschoolers in upstate New York. She went through the grades herself as a student in a Waldorf school, where she first began seriously studying the recorder. She went on to obtain a Bachelor of Music in performance on the recorder from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and has been teaching private music lessons to all ages for nearly fifteen years. She is also a graduate of Resonare, a Foundation in Music out of Anthroposophy, and has taught as a first grade teacher in a small Waldorf school. Having attended the Taproot training for two years as a student, Jenny joined us the past two years to teach recorder. We are happy to have her back again this year!