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Meet Us |
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WSP High School Faculty and Staff
Cecelia Lathe joined the high school faculty in fall 2007 to teach math, science and P.E. She received her Bachelor of Science in chemistry and education from the University of Nevada in Reno. She has a teaching credential in chemistry, mathematics and general science and is currently teaching high school math, science and statistics and coaching basketball and track in Zephyr Cove, Nevada. She has also worked extensively with teenagers doing wilderness camping, ropes courses, sea kayaking, and river rafting. As a Waldorf student herself, and having grown up on a small self-sustaining farm, Cecilia always wanted to become a teacher because she wanted to share her love of all aspects of nature, as well as her holistic view of the world—the interrelatedness of everything. "I studied chemistry because it is a link between the world of numbers in mathematics and the physical world we see," Cecilia says. She has a passion for helping young people understand chemistry so that they can truly understand the world around them.
Mark-Daniel Schmid, PHD joins the faculty as a music teacher. He received his Ph.D. in Music History from Northwestern University, his Master of Arts from West Chester University, and a Diploma in Piano Performance from the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart, Germany. Prior to coming to the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, he was an associate professor in music history and piano at Mansfield University in Pennsylvania, where he taught music history for nine years. He is the editor of the Richard Strauss Companion published by Praeger Publishing Group and was also a contributor to the International Dictionary of Black Musicians, published in 2001. He is also an accomplished pianist and has accompanied recitals in Germany and Switzerland as well as throughout the United States. Having taught piano to young children for many years, Dr. Schmid looks back fondly on his days as a student at the Waldorf School “Uhlandshöhe,” the very first Waldorf school, in Stuttgart, Germany, and feels that the wonderful experiences he had there destined him to become a teacher. “I can always tell when a young adult has attended a Waldorf School,” he says. “They have a certain glow about them, a deep curiosity about the world and its citizens, an open mind to new approaches, and a knowledge beyond the physical world.” Lisa Babinet, PHD will teach math in the high school. Lisa received a PhD in science education from the University of Pennsylvania. She has three Master’s degrees including one in secondary math education from the University of Pennsylvaina, and one in applied psychology from the University of Santa Monica. She has taught mathematics in middle school and high school for many years. Lisa’s most recent experience has been as a math teacher, director of educational programs, and dean of students in the middle school at Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough. Her son and her daughter are students in our school.
Michaela Bergmann will teach Eurythmy in the high school. She completed a five-year training course to become a stage eurythmist and eurythmy teacher for all ages, including adults, from the Eurythmeum Stuttgart. She also has a diploma from Micheshof Hepsisau, Institute for Therapeutic Pedagogy and has studied acting and drama. Michaela has been a eurythmy teacher for 10 years, and she recently taught kindergarten to sixth grade eurythmy at the Westside Waldorf School in Santa Monica. While at Westside Waldorf, she also taught handwork for all grades. Michaela is experienced in working with children with special needs using therapeutic eurythmy techniques. Michaela joined our school in 2003. Alecia Dodge has been teaching handwork and working with children in grades 1-8 for the last 14 years at the Waldorf School of Santa Barbara. She graduated from Sunbridge College's Applied Arts Program for handwork and woodwork teachers. She has a Bachelor of Science in home economics from University of California Davis. For the past three years she has been a teacher and program coordinator for the Handwork Teacher Training Program at Rudolf Steiner College. With her experience as a member of a college of teachers, Board of Trustees and faculty, she has a wealth of knowledge in governance, administration and working as part of a team. Alecia will teach the basketweaving.
Mary Jane DiPiero re-joined the school as High School Coordinator in January 2007. She was a founding parent of Waldorf School of the Peninsula, was a class teacher for five years and enrollment director for two. She completed her Waldorf Teacher Training in 1998 and also has an M.A. in English and a California secondary teaching credential. She taught high school English and journalism in Maryland and Vermont, and had a teaching Fulbright in Italy. She also worked as a university press and technical editor for many years. Kelly Leahy McKeown, MA, is the high school counselor. Kelly is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and holds a California Pupil Personnel Services Credential with a specialization in K-12 School Counseling. She received her masters from St. Mary’s College with a dual emphasis in School and Marriage, Family and Child Counseling. Kelly discovered Waldorf education when one of her graduate school professors taught the temperaments and assigned a hand-written reflection paper that required page borders to be decorated with beeswax crayons. Kelly is currently enrolled in the Community Learning Center Foundation Studies for Waldorf Teacher Training through Rudolf Steiner College. Prior to joining the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, Kelly spent nine years at an independent high school, and four years at a 4th-8th grade public school. Kelly was a teacher, counselor, director of service learning programs, coordinator of health education curriculum, and facilitator of peer counseling and mediation. Kelly also researched, developed and facilitated domestic and international cultural and service immersion adventures where she gained extensive experience working with adolescents outside the classroom. She has a passion for student leadership development and has ushered many emerging leaders through the process of setting and realizing their goals. Erica Goss will teach the English track class in the high school. She was born in Germany to a family of writers and artists. She teaches English at Waldorf high school. She received her B.A. in English and her M.F.A. in creative writing from San Jose State University. She won both a Sibley and a Phelan award for poetry, as well as the first Edwin Markham award, from San Jose State. She is co-editor of caesura, the literary magazine of Poetry San Jose. She has taught English at San Jose State, and currently teaches poetry at Saratoga High School. She feels that literature has the power to reach young people by allowing them a means of expression that is both personal and powerful. Erica has been married for twenty years to her husband Don Peters; they are the parents of two children. Visiting FacultyLeila Allen, currently high school drama teacher and admissions director at Summerfield Waldorf School in Sebastopol, will be teaching the 9th grade Comedy and Tragedy block in the fall and doing improvisational drama work with the students throughout the year. Leila has diplomas in speech formation and theater education from the Stuttgart School of Speech and Drama, as well as a diploma in therapeutic speech. In addition to teaching drama and directing high school plays, she has been a visiting speech formation teacher in Bay Area Waldorf schools and a therapeutic speech practitioner. She has also been instrumental in planning a number of international youth conferences.Beth Allingham will teach Chemistry in February and March 2008. Beth has been teaching biology and chemistry for 12 years in Honolulu and has taught chemistry blocks in several other Waldorf schools. In pursuing her Ph.D., she taught microbiology at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. She has also taught costuming, hula, lei-making, basketry, sewing, and yearbook and serves as the college and career counselor in her school. She has a B.A. in Spanish, an M.S. in plant sciences, and an M.S. in plant pathology. Harald Hoven, director of the garden at Rudolf Steiner College, master gardener, faculty member, and founder of the Biodynamic Association of Northern California, will be the principal instructor for the October agricultural week at Rudolf Steiner College. Trained in Germany, Harald has received his certification in horticulture and has apprenticed in biodynamic farms and gardens in Europe. He has been at Rudolf Steiner College for more than 23 years and is well known as a regional and international speaker on biodynamic farming and gardening. The students will travel to Fair Oaks, camp in the olive grove near the Sacramento Waldorf School, and have seven hours of instruction a day, learning about the complete farm ecosystem through hands-on activities and lectures conducted by Harald and the farm apprentices. Van James will teach History of Art for three weeks in May, as well as an art track class. He will cover the origins of the visual arts from the Paleolithic to the high Renaissance, exploring cave art, ancient Egyptian, Greek, and early European art, not only in terms of artistic styles, themes, and techniques but also as indications of cultural changes and the development of human consciousness. Van has worked at the Honolulu school for many years, as high school art instructor, class teacher, upper school art instructor and then as a founding teacher of the high school. He's the co-director of the teacher-training program Kula Makua, chairman of the anthroposophical society in Hawaii, editor of Pacifica Journal, author of books on art and archaeology, including Spirit and Art: Pictures of the Transformation of Consciousness, and a freelance artist. He lives in Honolulu with his wife and has four grown children and two grandsons. Hans Schepker will teach the Geometry: Platonic Solids block and an art track class in February 2008. Hans is from New Hampshire and has developed a unique melding of geometry and glass work. He is considered a "mathematical artist" and is invited to participate at national math conferences where he lectures and demonstrates his craft. As a math and physics Waldorf teacher, he has traveled throughout the U.S. and to Germany—including to our school, where he taught a couple of 8th grade Platonic solids blocks several years ago. He also conducts residential workshops at his home. In one of these sessions, for example, the students discuss the geometries of Plato, DaVinci, and Kepler, then build jigs and grind, cut, foil and solder glass to make a box in the shape of a great dodecahedron. James Staley will teach Revolutions in the Modern World: From Ideal to Realization in September 2007. He taught English literature and history for more than 25 years at the Sacramento Waldorf School and will start out the school year with a history block on Revolutions, plus an English track class. He graduated from Yale University with a degree in history and religion and studied theology and history at the University of Edinburgh and Yale Divinity School before studying at Rudolf Steiner College. He was also a journalist for many years, with the Associated Press, the Sacramento Bee, and other newspapers. He currently lives in Latvia, where he has taught English and served as a consultant to Waldorf schools.
Todd Elworthy, PHD will teach a life science block in the high school. He is a native Californian having grown up in the San Fernando Valley, Encino and Tarzana, respectively. He attended a small Lutheran church school from kindergarten through sixth grade and then attended Los Angeles Unified School District schools for middle and high school. His baccalaureate studies in Biochemistry were completed at the University of California Davis in March 1985. He was awarded a Ph.D. in (Organic) Chemistry from the University California Santa Barbara in August 1990. He has been motivated by the interest to understand the interplay of chemicals, the living cell, and human physiology which has led to a 14 year career in the discovery of human pharmaceuticals. Consciously supporting the healthy development of self and those in his family have been powerful, motivating principles for Todd. He has served as a board member since July 2005. Carolyn Siegel will teach an art block in the high school. She is a licensed Marriage Family Therapist (MFT) with a passion for clay. She began seriously working with clay in 2001, has taught small groups of students, and shows and sells her sculptures locally. She is bringing the 9th grade a six-week block of ceramic art, specifically hand-building. Carolyn has been a parent at Waldorf School of the Peninsula since 1998 and currently has an eighth grader at the school. She is also enrolled in the Waldorf High School Teacher Training through Rudolf Steiner College. "I didn't think of myself as an artist until I got my hands in clay," says Carolyn. "Then the artist in me sprang to the forefront. Clay's forgiving nature is a great medium to birth the unseen but felt inner ideas and emotions into the world of the seen and expressed." Jennifer Nori Ahlgrim is teaching African style hand drumming and rhythm at the high school. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Interior Architectural Design from the California College of the Arts in Oakland and San Francisco. She practiced in the architectural field for many years before moving on to raise two children. Her children have been students of the Waldorf curriculum since preschool and are currently in the eighth and sixth grades at the Waldorf School of the Peninsula. She is enrolled in the High School Teacher Training program at Rudolph Steiner College. She is the manager of Hearts Delight, the retail gift store at the Waldorf School of the Peninsula. She has been studying African style drumming, rhythm and dance for the last decade. In addition to her class at the high school, she is currently teaching drum classes to adults as well as an elective drum class to the middle school students at the Waldorf School of the Peninsula. Douglas Struble is teaching three art blocks at WSPHS this year: black and white drawing, printmaking, and paint pigments. Born in Fresno, California, Douglas has a BFA in Art Studio from the University of California at Davis. In August 2006, he graduated from the San Francisco Waldorf Teacher Training Program. He has worked as enrollment director at Waldorf School of the Peninsula, as after-school program instructor at the San Francisco Waldorf School, and as an art camp instructor at the Waldorf School of the Peninsula and the Napa Valley Waldorf Charter School. In addition, he served as a studio director, art instructor, and curator for the Prague Social Cultural Center. While living in Prague for two years, Douglas formed an ad-hoc art salon called EtcTea, which he continued hosting once a month after moving to San Francisco. Having grown up on a farm in Loomis, California, Douglas loves working outside, gardening, hiking and traveling. Indoors, he enjoys making art, doing graphic design, reading, playing chess, and sharing conversations with friends over tea. WSP High School AdvisorsLisa BabinetWaldorf School of the Peninsula
Lisa teaches math practice periods in grades 6, 7 and 8. Lisa received a PhD in science education from the University of Pennsylvania. She has three Master’s degrees including one in secondary math education. She has taught mathematics in middle school and high school for many years. Lisa’s most recent experience has been as a math teacher, director of educational programs, and dean of students in the middle school at Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough. Her son and her daughter are students in our school. |