The role of the Waldorf teacher is to discover the way each child relates to the world. The word "educate" originates from the word "educere" which means "to draw out" rather than to put in. Knowledge already exists within each human being, and with patient, conscious teaching methods, the child's inherent capacities ignite. The goal of Waldorf teaching is to awaken and encourage the unique gifts that every student brings to the world as well as to create a joyful learning environment. Waldorf education ultimately enables children to become adults who realize their highest individual path through life.

The teachers

Kelly Hogan has been studying Anthroposophy since 2004 and received her Waldorf teaching certificate from the Micha-el Institute in Portland, OR. She has an undergraduate degree in Psychology and has been teaching since 2005. She ran her own Waldorf-inspired in-home preschool for 2 years and then began teaching at the outdoor kindergarten when it started in Fall 2007. She is a resident of the intentional community at TLC Farm and lives there with her two children, Talon (born Feb. 2000) and Yarrow (born April 2002). Her work at TLC Farm integrates her passions for nature awareness, primitive skills, animal husbandry, permaculture, rite of passage work and social ecology.

April Blair has been interested in Waldorf education since her first experience with it in 1999 when her son Dakota (born May 1996) was in preschool. She began volunteering in the classroom after her daughter Sierra was born (September 2001). Since then she has led summer camps and after-school programs for the Corvallis and Portland Waldorf Schools, trained with the Micha-el Institute in Portland, OR, taught a year each of preschool, kindergarten and parent child classes in Michigan, and taught supplemental homeschooling classes to Waldorf grades children. Having always had a passion and reverence for the outdoors she has found a perfect marriage of her passions in outdoor education and has been lead teacher of Mother Earth Kindergarten since Fall '08. In Fall 2011, April will be hosting a kindergarten program from her home in SE Portland.

TLC Farm

Tryon Life Community Farm (TLC Farm) is a not-for-profit education center demonstrating techniques for urban sustainability. It is owned by a land trust and is a forum for the surrounding community to share skills, ideas and inspirations toward creating a stable counter-culture in which caring for the Earth and for each other is priority. One of the many projects of TLC Farm is Mother Earth School (MES). MES is run autonomously by Waldorf teachers, but shares the non-profit status of TLC Farm.

TLC Farm has working groups that meet bi-weekly or monthly. Every 2nd & 4th Wednesday at 7pm, representatives of each working group meet in the upstairs barn office for a Spokes Council meeting. All decisions involving the land and the non-profit are made by consensus. All TLC Farm meetings are open to the public. For more detailed information, please visit the TLC Farm website at www.tryonfarm.org.

TLC Farm is closed on Mondays as a courtesy to those who live in the intentional community that is on the land. Visitors are welcome on weekends for self-guided tours from 9am to 6pm. There are often land and garden work parties happening on weekends. All work for the non-profit is done on a volunteer basis and everyone is welcome and encouraged to be a part of the TLC Farm community.

Information about visiting Mother Earth School can be found in ‘How to enroll’.