AHE Winter 2021 Newsletter 
                             Letter from the President

Dear Colleagues,

I hope this edition of the AHE Newsletter finds you and yours healthy and safe during these ever-changing and challenging times as we approach the Holiday Season.

With the changing circumstances the pandemic has brought about and the additional demands coming towards us as teachers and therapists, there is a realization that we must find ways to rejuvenate our forces. Working in the elements outdoors can be physically demanding, not to mention the many hours of screen time we find ourselves engaged in. Therapeutic Eurythmy, Yoga, Qigong, Meditation, Extra Lesson exercises, Nature studies, and a dedicated Rhythmic Life represent some of the ways our etheric forces can be strengthened.  In this way, we may continue to fruitfully serve the children and parents in our care, as well as each other.

I believe this quote, though written over two thousand years ago, is quite relevant for the present moment as we find our way of moving forward in our chosen profession to meet today’s world:
 

“The Secret to change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new”. --Socrates

In this edition, I wish to express gratitude for the articles written by teachers who have embraced the challenge of working in a new way with children. With courage, they have created and engaged in methods that are sustainable with respect to the individual child with support, joy, and inspiration. 

Please do visit our website: http://www.healingeducation.org
 
Have an Inspiring  and Healthy Holiday,
Betty Jane Enno 
President, Association for a Healing Education                                                                             

              Working with Adolescents - Generation Z
                               A Course with Paul Gierlach
                                                     Connie Helms

In mid-October 2020 our cycle 12 cohort was joined online by several guests who teach in Waldorf high schools as we came together for a three-day course taught by Paul Gierlach, experienced Waldorf teacher, mentor and teacher in high school programs. Besides the US, we welcomed a few teachers from Chile, Ecuador and Canada. We began each day doing eurythmy with Susann Eddy from the Detroit Waldorf School. The "I Think Speech" exercise engaged our inner strength in working with the Pedagogical Law described by Rudolf Steiner.

Paul Gierlach’s overarching theme was to understand who the adolescents are that stand before us, known as Generation Z, and how to teach them. Not only are the students different with each generation that arrives, but this generation was born into a world of technology. Some of the younger participants spoke about technology bringing instant access, but inherent in this is the negative information along with the positive. Therefore, one’s world view can be colored early on with negativity and a mistrust of the media. On the other hand, this generation exhibits much compassion for others and is very invested in recognizing issues of social injustice. They are also passionate, sensitive and anxious but may not necessarily be strong willed in their actions or do carefully detailed work. Paul referenced an article in The Economist that cited Generation Z as being more educated, but also more stressed and depressed. With their consistent experience of the digital world, they are looking for a community they can really trust, that will result in satisfying connections that reach beyond the superficial layers often experienced on social media platforms.

Paul told a striking story of a twelfth grader who did a research project on the computer and when he asked his mother what she thought of computers she replied, “I use it as a tool.” The student was a bit perplexed in his reaction; in his generation’s mindset a computer is not a “tool” but rather an extension of one’s self, essentially representing an appendage in one’s pocket. Paul commented, “Is it a tool or an element of my identity?”

For several years, Paul has stressed the importance of teaching to the etheric body of the adolescent when we consider the four sheathes of the human being. This is done in various practical ways, including maintaining rhythms and bringing artistic work such as drama, speech and Dynamic Drawing in brief but consistent ways. The bar is set high, however; if a spoken verse lacks precision and genuine feeling one must ask the class to repeat it until it is clear they are putting their will into the effort.

If you have not experienced Dynamic Drawing with Paul, it is a challenging yet refreshing way of working with form, memory and making mental pictures. There are specific tasks that pertain to grades 7-12 that any teacher can use to both bring the class to harmonious form as a group and strengthen the etheric. In this world of ubiquitous technology, our work with adolescents becomes: how do we help this generation to move beyond making associations or “links,” given the vast array of information, to a place where they enliven their thinking to make true connections in community ?

For inquiries about Paul Gierlach’s lectures over these three days, please inquire to Connie Helms’ email -- registrar@healingeducation.org.

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Here is a snapshot view of a “special circumstances curriculum”, developed due to the necessity of our times and in response to COVID at the Austin Waldorf School, Austin, Tx.

Working in Early Childhood During the Pandemic 

Betty Jane Enno

In these extraordinary times, we find ourselves doing things we would never have dreamed of; zooming with kindergarten children and recording video and audio stories and puppet plays.

In Austin, the "high tech capital" of Texas, we found we needed to meet our particular parents' needs at our school. So, yes we did the unimaginable with imagination. We took a few cues from Mr. Rogers, and zoomed live classes with our little folk, oh my... and it was predominantly a positive experience. Many of the children shared quite naturally on the screen. We even had a "bring your pet to class day", or journeyed together in nature!

Online, in advocating the Foundational Senses and the Sense of Warmth, I found that if we had engaging movements demonstrated in Circle, Eurythmy, and Bean Bag rhymes, the children were able to imitate quite well, especially if they had an adult next to them whom they could observe in-person. This was followed by a creative activity such as drawing, beeswax, origami, or a seasonal craft, where then the children settled in and engaged artistically. Twenty to thirty minutes of zoom was quite enough time for this.

Now that we are back on campus, in person, I find that the skeletal foundation was set for Circle movement in the Zoom, and now the children are "plumping it out" in person. The joy currently is in having “pod” classes so that we truly have time and space to connect on a deeper level with each child. Our program is mostly outdoors with the backdrop of Mother Nature, paying special care to place-based education and healing any residual effects from the screen time the children were engaged in. Our wish is to make the children feel safe, secure in their environment, and appreciated for who they are and what they each offer to the group. Through their outdoor activities we see the children growing stronger, becoming more agile and growing in self-confidence.

The children are gently encouraged to wear masks indoors and when not social distancing outdoors. They do come to the mask-wearing easily, we have little purple break-away lanyards so the children have their masks handy at all times. Not one child has complained about wearing a mask!

We have hammocks and chair hammocks set up in the trees, tunnels, balance beams and boards, juggling stix, clay sculpting, woodworking, etc., ready for the children in our outdoor locations.

We have been able to do our Grade One Observations, drawing and journeys all outdoors. They have told their parents they LOVE coming to school - we are extremely grateful and quite happy to have them back as well!

To support parents I have sent a teaching video geared toward the 6 yr. old of the “Three-Fold Spiral Exercise”, to assist in calming their children and helping with any sleep disorders that may have arisen due to stress.

We know we have a long road ahead with the uncertainty that abounds, but we do trust in the Child's Angel and our own Inner Guidance. The Point and Periphery Meditation seems quite strengthening these days in particular. We strive to move forward, bringing what is healthy and in the best interest of the beautiful, courageous children we have the honor to guide during these exceptional times.

Betty Jane Enno has been a Grades and Kindergarten teacher at the Austin Waldorf School since 1983. She is a graduate of AHE's Educational Support Program and an LMT in Pediatric Massage with training in Brain Gym, Cranio-Sacral Therapy, and beginning level Einreibung.

Finding Balance through Belonging in the Lower Grades
Aaron Adams, M.Ed.

Similar to other Waldorf schools, the Lower Grades teachers and Student Support teachers at the Austin Waldorf School work closely with each other when a student’s needs necessitate extra measures of support along the path of development. One of these Lower Grades teachers is Ms. Julie Barsam-Cummings, my dear colleague and a peer participant in  AHE's Cycle 12 Educational Support certification program.

In addition to the balancing activities and body geography games brought to the students during the current model of online learning, Julie and I have discovered that one of the most nurturing supports we can offer a child who comes with vestibular challenges is to strengthen the child’s sense of belonging by fostering the sense of awareness. We start at the foundational level with tangibles: jewels, small school supplies, and main lesson books, items that the student can touch, see and manipulate. In fact, Julie and I have rediscovered the value and comfort which an organized workspace provides to a student, and in the many remote learning places of today, these spaces often need to be cultivated through the teacher’s warmth and the familiar feeling of an in-classroom setting.

While on zoom from afar, Julie uses carefully chosen words and tone, engaging facial expressions, and well-measured gestures, to patiently and consistently directs the students how to organize and care for their materials within their immediate workspace: a bedroom, the kitchen, a snug breezeway in the home, or a corner in the living room. For the young student, having and maintaining specific places for personal materials fosters a sense of control, ownership, and boundaries: here is my workspace; here will I work; here will I be. Use and replace; use and replace; use and replace~ a simple habit or life pattern which also strengthens the etheric and builds personal joy out of caring mindfulness and independent functioning. The visually calming order of a clear and tidy workspace rightly anchors the child into the day’s work, and the child is grounded in his or her space, now able to experience a new kind of balance within the world of remote learning.

Aaron Adams, M.Ed., serves in the AWS Grades Student Support Program as coordinator for mathematics program, organizing and providing targeted instruction for students with learning differences, and helps to bring movement blocks into the lower grades. She also provides Academic Language Therapy and oversees the Kindergarten readiness transitions into First Grade. Aaron is completing year 3 in AHE's Cycle 12 Educational Support certification program.
 

Middle Grades Student Support on Canvas
Carol Toole

Teaching through the Canvas online platform this fall has been challenging. The experience has underscored for me the courage and hard work of this population of students, especially without the community support of the classroom and the nearby ego presence of the teacher. First, students must show up at the right time: eager 3rd graders have popped on to Zoom many minutes too early while I must trust that the temporal arc for distracted middle schoolers will bend toward timeliness.

My sessions include small remedial reading groups, one on one dyslexia therapy, strategic tutoring for those with different learning styles, writing support, and assessment. Many essentials do not translate across electrical currents: clear speech, group recitation, eye contact, and physical touch. Also, the “I do, we do, you do” where the child gains courage by our proximity and holding of the space. One 3rd grader, ever drawn to the periphery and by a need for movement, may disappear off-screen, returning with an apology that he had to scratch the poor allergy-suffering dog!

What has generated lively interaction? A 6th-grade student and I can both view the student’s writing on-screen, and the distance somehow fosters objectivity as we read it aloud. We listen for clarity, rhythm, transitions, sentence structure, and I delight as my student’s ear attunes to nuance and just the shaping that is needed. A 7th grader, working on visualizing skills, describes an object in his room, trying to place a picture in my mind’s eye, and realizes he is noticing more details and expanding his sensory perceptions and descriptive vocabulary. Likewise, concept imagery can be practiced by sharing our inner pictures of an expository paragraph, line by line.

Still, essential to well-being are frequent movement/relaxation breaks that include eye cups (looking into the darkness while cupping hands over the eyes), face tapping, cross pattern walking in place, finger hug n’ tugs, and stretching. Children can be more attentive when they engage in an aerobic activity or weight-bearing exercise before sitting for a Zoom meeting. Some children have a mini-trampoline nearby. During screen time, the 20/20 rule helps: every 20 minutes look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds; and sit at least 20 inches from the screen. As this pivotal year 2020 comes to a close, we are transitioning to limited campus reopening with sounds of children’s voices mingling and feet pounding on our boardwalks once again.

Carol Toole is currently co-coordinator of Student Support at AWS, overseeing the literacy program and providing Academic Language Therapy, movement therapy, and strategic tutoring to students with learning differences. She also coordinates and teaches the Creative Living with the Young Child parenting series as preparation for enrollment in our kindergartens.

Connecting During Distance Learning - High School

Linda Halbreich M.Ed.

In the Austin Waldorf High School Student Support program, we coach our students in self-awareness of their strengths, challenges, and learning styles. They are encouraged to persevere and problem-solve, to seek balance in their lives between academic and artistic pursuits. Students are encouraged to get to know their teachers by seeking them out for clarification and support. Likewise, our faculty seek out the students during study halls, lunchtime, and clubs for conversations to learn their interests and personalities. Outdoor activities are folded into the student experience, our school mental health counselor supports students as needed, and a weekly mindfulness class with our Games teacher rounds out the developmental experiences. Distance learning has changed these relationships and communications.

For 9th graders, this is an essential transition year from their middle school experience where their class teacher provided support through the structure, tasks, scheduling, and by being an ever-present role model and ego presence. We support skill development in note-taking, the organization of school materials, time management, study techniques, test preparation, and creating a high school level main lesson book. Online learning requires greater student independence.

Typically, a gradual transition to word processing and other computer science skills develops in the 9th grade and beyond. However, the student journey began last spring for 8th graders as they entered the Google Classroom realm, and later, all students and parents converted to the Canvas Learning Platform. The learning curve has been challenging for all, but extraordinarily difficult for students who experience learning challenges and high anxiety levels.

As our High School Student Support Coordinator, I hold student check-ins and tutoring sessions via Zoom. Building and continuing relationships with students require efforts to create an enlivened experience to build trust on this platform. I strive to connect by consciously using positive facial and body gestures, and look for a social response from my students. Active screen-sharing allows student guidance through the various small steps of navigating each of their classes. Side by side instruction can occur. For students with executive function challenges, modeling through active practice is vital. Follow up check-ins to offer assistance and to praise successful efforts is crucial. Many students also seek support from school recommended tutors who form a partnership with the student, their parents, their teachers, and myself as coordinator. Gradually, students learn to self-advocate.

Our teachers actively consider how to:

· bring the feeling, thinking, willing aspects to their distance learning

· reduce screen time

· engage students in new ways

· add movement activities

· consciously add diversity, equity, and inclusion awareness to their social and curricular planning.

· Modify assignments if needed

· Encourage alternate activities for showing knowledge of course concepts

Distance learning has upended how we bring an enriched Waldorf high school education to our students while virtual learning continues for our high school until January or beyond. Hopefully, the new platforms can allow us to redouble our efforts to meet students' social, emotional, and academic needs in new, creative ways, always respecting the humans' positive, spiritual development in our charge.

Linda Halbreich M.Ed., is the High School Student Support Coordinator at AWS, overseeing students with diagnosed learning differences or other support needs. Linda teaches Organizational and Study Skills for 9th grade students and provides strategic tutoring along with dyslexia therapy as needed. Linda has training in Brain Gym, the Handle approach and Curative Education. As an advocate, Linda also creates Individual Student Support plans and requests accommodations for college testing.
     Picking Up a New Class and a New Way of Teaching

Dana Fleming

Working online with my inherited fifth grade class was stressful for the children, especially as the weeks wore on. My weekly drop-off visits helped us stay in contact, and allowed us to do more hands-on, experiential learning (which requires specialized materials). Natural dyeing and block carving were two favorite experiences. We spoke outside together for a few minutes each time, 10 feet apart, and the children described it as “weekly Easter Bunny deliveries”. Yet sitting in front of a screen, on camera, with the omnipresent sense of exposure, wore them out. Many started sitting at an oblique angle, trying not to see themselves on the screen. An extrovert shut down almost completely, turning off her camera and microphone and wandering during lessons. An introvert became livelier and stayed highly visible and connected—yet the parents reported increased fatigue and lethargy after all the screen time. A student with tactile and emotional issues tried endless ways to get negative attention. Mixing movement breaks into our lesson time was essential. Delivering beanbags (for Move in Time exercises) and racquetballs (for Bal-A-Vis-X) really helped all of us. They moved away from their cameras for this work, often, due to space restrictions at home, but I could hear them counting along with me. I tried to pack Zoom German lessons with Simon Says and similar movement work, as well.

The silver lining was the benefits reaped from our twice- or thrice-weekly individual Zoom calls, 30-45 minutes in duration. Students felt free to speak more openly about their Covid-era challenges in the one-on-one setting, even though we were still online. We worked on math each time, I had them dictate weekly class newspaper articles to me, and practiced language arts challenges particular to each child, etc. I could watch the progress of each child with the racquetballs and hear them recite. We could practice reading music together, or tackle any areas of challenge, without any other eyes or ears on us. The children responded very positively to this personal attention. Some made significant leaps in math. Another benefit: having students read lesson material aloud from slides kept them involved and enabled me to hear how well they were reading more complex texts. They prepared several independent reports; the choosing of their own topics kept them interested long enough to finish such extensive assignments.

Knowing that I would inherit another group of rising fifth graders this fall, I spent the summer conducting weekly individual Zoom meetings with each child. We were thus able to start the year knowing each other much better, having read chapters of a class reader together, worked on math problems on the white board, etc. before school ever started.

We all felt that we had been subjected to an odd sociological and psychological experiment. This year I have a wilder, noisier group, needing extensive movement breaks. If we need to move online at any time, they will certainly benefit from my experiences last spring. Meanwhile, the relief at being together again—in person--is palpable. Having been deprived of recess together for months, there is true appreciation (even among the more entitled children) for sheer human contact.

 AHE Board member and Cycle 10 graduate Dana teaches 5th grade & German at Great Oak School, Tomball, TX grade & German, Great Oak School Tomball, TX

                Educational Support at Green Meadow Waldorf School

Jenna Lieberman

All of the sessions begin with a quiet moment of standing tall and imagining star light shining down our bodies as we balance on our toes and heels: “I lift my toes up in the air and place them down with great care…” as they do Lifting One’s Weight from the Extra Lesson.

When indoors at desks in first grade, the back door and the many windows are open. In first grade we are strengthening our hands by crab walking across our desks, thumb twirling and other finger games. Once our hands are warmed up, we begin the Scribble exercise which we have been doing with 3 crayons, then 2, and now 1, and we are about to begin a new variation of Scribble: The Rainbow!

The first-grade outdoor sessions begin with the children carrying their chairs from their indoor classroom to the outdoor tent (heavy lifting and down a few stairs) and a fun game of “Simon Says”. I make sure to incorporate the upside-down world, balancing on chairs, desks, jumping and lots of body geography.

With the second graders in their tent, following “Simon Says” we do a lot of orienting in space by closing our eyes and pointing in the direction of the gym or field… (as I name building structures, roads and common spaces). I also ask children, "Who is sitting behind you today? What color is their hat/mask/shirt?!"

In second grade, we are indoors at desks once a week for the rhythm of the “Eye/Hand painting” series. The slow snail passes from blackboard to window, blackboard to window for each of the past 6 weeks.

Large motor body integrative movements are also incorporated into the first and third grade class sessions, as the children move from one side of the room or tent to the other, on our matts as crawling leopards, crafty crabs or slippery tadpoles.

Jenna Lieberman works in Educational Support at the Green Meadow Waldorf School
(I visited there in early October and observed the early grades in their tents and in one classroom. The children seemed very accustomed to their new routines and masks, and teachers reported that the children were so very happy to see each other. At recess, they were not always six feet apart but were wearing their masks and quite active. ~Connie Helms)

Thoughts on Returning to School During the 2020 Pandemic

Arlene Kamo, June 12, 2020

In a recent phone consultation with the Healthy School Culture Care Coordinating Group at the Trillium Waldorf School, Kim John Payne, M.Ed. shared some of his insights with regard to “Returning to School” in September after these months of social isolation. As Kim maintains close working relationships with schools in China, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, he was given a preview of the experiences of several schools that reopened during the past spring term. With Kim’s blessings, here are some of his reflections:

Schools that heavily used live and online learning platforms (e.g., Zoom, Google Classroom) had different experiences from those that did not. With Kindergarten to Gr. 4 students, more behavior problems were observed with the former group. This is to be expected in consideration of current brain research telling us that dopamine levels (pleasure hormones), cortisol and adrenaline levels are much higher in people who engage in computer activities on a frequent and regular basis.

Those students whose parents personally delivered curriculum to them exhibited less behavior problems in the classroom once they returned. It was also noticed that these students needed more “warming” up with their teachers and classmates; the return to school was experienced like it usually is at the beginning of the school year when warm relationships between teachers and students and between classmates need to be built up once again.

As many students were heavily involved with social networking online/text and “backroom chatting”, Kim suggested that group learning stations (as offered by Montessori Schools) may be a good transitional method to be used in our Waldorf school classrooms as group project based learning situations could provide an effective way back “in” for the students after being socially isolated. This approach would offer a semi-social learning environment that allows students to talk with each other while also setting boundaries. Each group would have a set of 4 or 5 tasks to do with books available in their pod for completing research together. Groups would be asked to give presentations to the whole class; a panel could be used to provide feedback to the presenters.

Ask parents to ensure that screen time is lowered over the summer months to a bare minimum in order to optimize the children’s readiness to learn once returning to school in September. Do not let the trajectory of more and more screen time continue over the summer. Dopamine levels need a lengthy period of time to readjust to their pre-isolation normal levels.

Some schools in Australia are incorporating more outdoor work into their curriculum with successful and healing results by using half day splits where students spend half of the school day in the classroom with their class teacher and half of the day outside. Class teachers are presenting the main lesson material twice a day. Parent volunteers and subject teachers have been enlisted to help with supervising the outdoor classes.

Incorporate pedagogical/healing stories more intensively and extensively in the daily/weekly curriculum by using a more dynamic approach:

o Write a story pertinent to your class (play-back /action-based theatre)

o Potentize the story (e.g., paint it, draw it, act it out)

o Action-based theatre - act out the parts, give lines

o “What would happen if ….” - change the outcomes/situations of the story to better or worse scenarios; this could encourage kinder more respectful behavior between students and within the classroom.

Arlene Kamo is co-director of the HEART program in Toronto and also works at the Trillium Waldorf School in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. She wrote this summary after her school consulted with Kim John Payne, M.Ed. in the early months of the pandemic.
AHE Board News
 
We are actively planning new ways to serve teachers in schools via online consulting; look for more details on our website in 2021, http://www.healingeducation.org and please contact us if you are interested in online consulting with our faculty and other experts to assist in developing academic and developmental activities that will serve children with learning differences.
Teachers seeking consultation can be teaching strictly online, or in person, or in a hybrid model. AHE will also supply useful teaching materials and videos relevant to a teacher's particular situation to be used with students and include activities for parents assisting their children's education at home. 
Other AHE Board news -- our longtime membership and newsletter coordinator, Mary Fettig, stepped off the board after over five years of steadfast service. We now welcome Erin MacNamara from the Sandpoint Waldorf School in Idaho and a cycle 11 AHE graduate, onto our board.
 
New Initiative
This fall we launched a new online monthly zoom meeting to offer discussion topics for teachers and homeschool parents. Meeting the second Sunday of the month with participants from several time zones, we have thus far delved into observations of children we know or work with, looking at various manifestations of their foundation senses.
While this is not a course, the participants have much to offer our conversation as we find the relevance of Waldorf principles in child development. The seminar is hosted by Connie Helms, Elyce Perico and Rennie Greenberg. New people are welcome, the fee is prorated to reflect when one joins. For more information please contact Connie Helms at registrar@healingeducation.org.
.
AHE Cycle 12

AHE's cycle 12 cohort has adapted well to an online format which unites us across all the time zones including Alaska and Hawaii. As we have been online since March, we are accustomed to working this way as we explore topics. In July we partnered with the Waldorf Learning Support program to host Joep and Erica Eikenboom as they brought their gems that we always appreciate in our trainings. The theme this year was Building the House:  Supporting the physical body to learn and develop in order for the soul to mature within.  Our rich week with Joep exploring insights from the Extra Lesson and its influence on development was enhanced by our painting work with Erica. 
As we go through the months, we are checking in more frequently online to stay connected and continue our themes. We anticipate being in Ann Arbor this July for our final session of this cohort although the practicum visits may still carry into the fall of 2021.  Also, we look forward to the start of Cycle 13 in the fall of 2021, whether in person or online;  the northeastern US is under consideration for an onsite location.
The current cycle of AHE's three-year Educational Support Program started in October 2018 and will conclude in July 2021. The course is offered in a series of sessions (modules) that take place during extended weekends in fall and winter, with longer sessions in the summer. We began offering the modules online when we were unable to meet in person.

Forthcoming Sessions

Module 10 April 15-18,  2021
HEALTH AND ILLNESS  with Dr. Bruno Callegaro

  • Autism spectrum children
  • Environmental influences
  • Alternative therapies
  • Nutrition

Module 11 July 19-23, 2021

TUTORING from a WALDORF PERSPECTIVE and Extra Lesson in Practice

  • On Reading and Writing - Dr. Karl Konig
  • From inner speech to comprehension and the role of language
  • Putting it all together: observation, assessment, goals, implementation

Module 12  July 26-30, 2021

EDUCATIONAL SUPPORT in SCHOOLS - Working with Teachers and Parents

  • Education for Special Needs lectures by R Steiner
  • Case Studies
  • Pedagogical stories
  • Sleep: Its Influence on Health and Education
Cycle 13 is scheduled to begin October 2021, please contact Connie Helms for details, registrar@healingeducation.org

OUR MISSION STATEMENT

  • To bridge the expertise between the medical profession, art therapists,
    and remedial professionals
    in the service of healing.
  • To foster remedial education with the pedagogical principles of  Waldorf Education.
  • To deepen and further
    the study of human development as described
    by Rudolf Steiner and to incorporate appropriate modalities of mainstream methodologies.
  • To facilitate cooperation
    and exchange between therapeutic educators, classroom teachers,
    caregivers, parents and individuals trained in
    curative education.

 

WHO WE ARE

For over thirty years, the Association for a Healing Education has served as an agent of change in the culture of education for children with individual needs. It has acted as a “listening ear” to the needs and questions of classroom teachers, parents and therapists who are involved with providing care for the child of today. Our main work is with children in regular classrooms who, faced with the challenges of their destiny and the world environment, often require some help for a time. Our intent is to help caregivers provide right practices in education, therapy and medicine through a deeper understanding of child development and hindrances to that development. We also serve as a bridge to the Camphill movement for Curative Education.
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SERVICES
The Association provides the following services: workshops and lecture presentations; Remedial Teacher Development programs, which are
part-time three-year programs in the U.S. and
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Manual; activity books for teachers and parents; workshops for parents; and school or individual consulting services. If you are interested in these services, please contact us.

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We are a non-profit organization and rely on memberships, gifts and volunteers to complete our work. Membership is open to everyone and includes the newsletter, notification of conferences and discounts on conferences and publications.          
 
BOARD MEMBERS
President: Betty Jane Enno    
Vice-President: Elyce Perico           
Treasurer: Rob Kushler
Mary Jo Oresti
Connie Helms
Renni Greenberg 
Dana Fleming
Barbara Bresette-Mills 
Erin MacNamara 

CONTACTS
Administration Office:
Connie Helms
Co-director AHE-ESP Cycle 12
registrar@healingeducation.org
Membership Office:
2886 Mountain Road, Bristol, VT 05443