Karen Smith

In 1999, Karen was smitten with Waldorf education when she walked into her four-year-old daughter's pre-school kindergarten class at The Waldorf School of Atlanta. The following year, Karen joined the WSA faculty as a kindergarten assistant, and in 2001 she stepped forward to become a lead teacher in a mixed-age kindergarten. She earned her Waldorf Early Childhood Teaching Certificate at Sunbridge College in New York and spent almost 17 years in the classroom guiding, laughing, and singing with her treasured 3 to 6 year-old students. She believes Lotus & Ivy can meet the ever-changing needs of young children by honoring the unique gifts of each student.

In 2021, our initial year of Lotus & Ivy, we welcomed Karen into our faculty to teach our mixed-age kindergarten (4 to 6 years old). Additionally, she stepped forward to teach our Hand Sewing and Woodwork Complements (Kindergarten through Class 2).

Karen was born to older parents who took an early retirement just after her birth. With a 16-foot travel trailer hitched to the back of their car, her family drove across the country for two years, finally settling in rural Mississippi to live next door to her grandparents. Karen's family continued their love of travel and regularly enjoyed extended trips in their camper RV exploring the national parks of the West and Midwest. Telling stories, moving to music, making crafts, baking, and painting were activities that filled her life as a child. Living a simple childhood with much time spent outdoors filled her heart with fond memories and adventurous stories!

Karen attended Mississippi State University and graduated with a degree in Graphic Design. After moving to Atlanta, she worked at Turner Publishing for the next six years designing books of all kinds. She’s kept her hand in graphic design throughout her life, and now she helps Lotus & Ivy with social media marketing and occasional design projects.

Karen and her husband have two daughters who live in the Atlanta area. Her older daughter and her husband bestowed the title of grandmother on Karen, and she now has three precious grandchildren. Her younger daughter enjoyed a K-12 Waldorf education in Atlanta. She spent her college career at Auburn University, where she graduated with a degree in Industrial Design. 

These days, Karen’s two beloved dachshunds keep her chuckling, and she has noticed that Oscar and Remy's antics often remind her of exuberant Kindergarten children! She spends quite a bit of time in her backyard garden growing vegetables, in her kitchen baking sourdough bread, and in her front yard greeting neighbors who’ve stopped by to claim a book at the “Little Free Library” that she maintains.

By experiencing the rhythm of the seasons, celebrating simple traditions, observing nature’s quieter revelations, and enjoying the family-like feeling of a play-based kindergarten, we offer the ideal platform for young children to build foundational skills that will help them evolve into well-rounded individuals. Karen is delighted to bring her genuine interest in the world around us to her online students in ways that create beauty and preserve their wide-eyed sense of wonder. She also feels it is equally important to work with parents to provide them with the same nurturing, guidance, and soul warmth that she brings to her students.

Vivian Jones-Schmidt

Vivian has been teaching for over thirty years, and this will be her sixth First Grade class. She never planned to be a teacher; however, her college mentor suggested that she explore early childhood education, and she did. After graduating from the College of William and Mary with a degree in Government, she travelled up the road to the University of Virginia, where she received her Master’s degree in Education. Having discovered that she loved teaching, she was one of the first Kindergarten teachers in Virginia’s new public Kindergarten program.

As music and especially singing had always been part of her life, Vivian sang in the College Choir and in Gilbert & Sullivan productions throughout her undergraduate years. G&S called to her again in Charlottesville, and that’s where she met her husband, a college history teacher. She then worked as an artist for several years before their daughter was born.

One day, Vivian walked into a Waldorf Kindergarten and felt she had found Heaven. When their daughter, Rebecca, reached Kindergarten age, Vivian started studying the education. She knew she was drawn to the school, but what was this unknown education about, anyway? Finally satisfied that, in fact, the school’s practices resonated with everything she’d always thought an education should be, she began teaching Handwork at the same time Rebecca entered Kindergarten.

After a few years as a Handwork teacher, class teaching called her, and she started with her first class of sparkling and challenging students, most of whom she is still in contact with, and some of whom now have children of their own. Vivian has spent most of her teaching years at the Charlottesville Waldorf School but was also privileged to teach for two years at the Richmond Waldorf School. She has also served in many leadership positions at CWS. She has mentored several teachers, and she was one of the earliest members of the Editorial Board of Renewal: A Journal for Waldorf Education, for which she has written several articles about Waldorf Education. She has written many poems and songs for her classes, and a few of her middle school plays have been gathered into the book Three Plays for Small Classes.

Vivian is blessed with two adorable granddaughters.

Daniel Packer

Daniel studied philosophy at Tufts University, and the evolution of consciousness in graduate school at the California Institute of Integral Studies. His studies traced the metamorphoses of cultural worldviews throughout the course of history, involving the integrated developments of arts, sciences, and religious expressions over time. He has applied this perspective in the context of human development, by working intensively with Rudolf Steiner’s educational indications as a class teacher, high school humanities teacher, and mentor at Waldorf schools. He teaches as adjunct faculty in Sound Circle Center’s Waldorf teacher training program, and he created a new high school program at Eastside Community School in Issaquah, WA that is trying to reimagine education for our time.  He is now deepening his commitment to Anthroposophy and his own evolution by undertaking a rigorous four-year Eurythmy training. Daniel reveres the task of education as a true vocation, which is nothing less than the practice of the evolution of consciousness. The students (and teachers alike), as developing human beings within a morally significant world-process, are the very beings who carry the past, present, and future within them. Parents and teachers carry an enormous responsibility in this regard, and Daniel hopes to inspire and cultivate a love for this mighty task, along with the capacities to meet it.

Mary Jo AbiNader

Mary Jo AbiNader’s journey as a Waldorf teacher began in 2002.  She remembers her first class of 30 students so well in those beginning days of first grade.  Those children are now grown, just about 25 years old and doing marvelous things out in the world.  That class went on to high school the same year that Ms. AbiNader’s daughter finished high school and went to college.  Ms. AbiNader then went for an adventure in Hawaii at the Honolulu Waldorf School bringing her class from second through eighth grade. These students have graduated high school now and keeping in touch has been awesome to see how they are taking their strengths and applying them in higher education and life through perseverance, creativity, initiative and courage. Now back in Portland, Ms. AbiNader supports children in one-to-one sessions in her private practice called Space & Grace Learning.  She is excited about continuing as the third grade teacher with Lotus & Ivy in the virtual classroom.

Prior to receiving training at Rudolf Steiner College, and working towards a Masters of Arts in Human Development from St. Mary’s University, Ms. AbiNader earned a BA in Theater Education, taught theater arts, creative dramatics and directed plays and built curriculum with teachers in public schools to integrate music, art and drama in the classroom—for a total of 18 years in Washington, D.C. and the Greater Portland Oregon area.  This background has brought a richness into her classrooms over the years.  Ms. AbiNader continues to study to stay connected to new trends in education and deepen her understanding of Waldorf pedagogy.  She is currently working toward a certificate in Educational Support from Association for Healing Education with the intent of understanding and supporting the needs of all children, especially as we attempt to recover from the years of pandemic stress and uncertainty.  Social-emotional learning can be supported through the arts and storytelling. 

Ms. AbiNader’s daughter lives and works in the Portland area, having been bolstered by her strong education in Waldorf Kindergarten through twelfth grade.  Ms. AbiNader enjoyed the sunshine and beaches while living in Hawaii.  Here in Portland, her loves include biking, bookstores, and hiking through the forest and her plants both inside and outside. 

She is looking forward to meeting the parents and children of each third grade class at Lotus & Ivy and to working collaboratively with parents to create a rich, nurturing environment for the children’s education bringing the education to life in every way. 

Amberly Barry McGee

Amberly Barry McGee has always been drawn to teaching and working with children. As a child she went from playing school with her dolls and younger sisters to organizing theater groups for her sisters and the many children she babysat in her neighborhood during high school. From there she went on to earn a Bachelor’s of Art in Psychology and a Master’s of Art in School Psychology at the University of Memphis. Though she loved the field of psychology, and her experience teaching at the college level, something was missing. She found that missing piece when she learned about Waldorf education. It seemed to fulfill all the things research continues to find about how children learn (by engaging the whole child).

Amberly taught at a Waldorf school for two years (grades 4 and 5) and had two years of Waldorf Teacher Training at Rudolf Steiner College. She was so inspired by her students and by the material she was teaching that she felt healed, creative, and wanting to learn more. 

Amberly and her husband, Robert, have spent most of their married life in Georgia. Amberly has been homeschooling their daughter using a Waldorf-inspired curricula and methodology from the beginning. In fact, her daughter was part of the first Lotus & Ivy Grade 4 class! Amberly has been teaching since 2018 at The Dreamers’ School of North Georgia, an in-person Waldorf-inspired sister-school of Lotus & Ivy. She also offered teacher training and parent training in-person and online workshops for The Dreamers’ School of Orlando, FL. Forever a learner, she has jumped on many opportunities to continue her education through conferences, homeschool teacher trainings, and virtual courses. Amberly has four cats and a dog that enjoy being included in some aspects of homeschool life. She also enjoys fitness, handwork, writing, drawing, and painting.

Olga Domokos

Olga found Waldorf Education as she was searching for a school for her first son. She wanted his school to nurture his talents, keep his curiosity alive, and be a place he loves. The school offered all of these things and much more. Leaving behind a career in business, Olga turned to fulfilling her newly found passion of bringing developmentally appropriate education to children. She completed her Waldorf teacher training and Masters Degree at Sunbridge Institute in NY.

She has now raised three children who attend Waldorf schools and has served in various roles at the schools. She enjoys teaching middle grades classes, especially main lessons in math, physics, chemistry, geography, language arts as well as math and cyber civics track classes in grades 5-8. Her first Class Teacher position was for an 8th grade class, and this is where she has developed a keen interest in working with adolescents. She is delighted by their sense of humor, curiosity about the world, their developing reasoning capacities and independent thinking.

The math curriculum she brings supports these qualities naturally. Geometry lets us experience balance, harmony, polarities, and the universal laws of nature. Artistic representations of geometry and arithmetic provide for engaging with concepts deeply and activating one’s long-term memory. Learning math the Lotus & Ivy way also includes learning about the great questions that have puzzled humans for thousands of years, like patterns in nature. Number games and stories turn math into a fun and engaging subject. Finally, biographies of famous mathematicians offer encouragement and motivation for teenagers as they approach adulthood. Math is Olga’s favorite!

In her free time, Olga enjoys kayaking and reading. She lives with her husband and children in South Florida. 

Young Sook Kim, Certified Facilitator, Biography & Social Art

Young Sook Kim originally came from South Korea. She studied Library Science and worked as Librarian before moving to the USA. Since she moved to the USA with her family in 1997, she found her passion through Waldorf education and was involved in the Waldorf community for many years as a parent and teacher.

She studied Therapeutic Puppetry as a healing art, Therapeutic Early Childhood Education, the LifeWays Child Care and Human Development, and Biography and Social Art. She published two books about Waldorf Education in Korea. She has been working as a researcher at Science Walden Center in Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea since 2018. She loves to learn, play and work with children and parents.

“Biography work is a way to become active and awake to our own life story, entering into a dialogue with it, questioning and listening to it so that it begins to reveal to us its secrets and riches…it enables us to find a new, free relationship to our past so that we can awake in the present and meet what comes towards us from the future with openness and expectancy.” Margli Matthews – Biographical Counselor

Jean Miller

Jean Miller is the homeschooling mentor Art of Homeschooling. As the mother of three grown kiddos, she homeschooled for 25+ years and now helps parents build a homeschool life they love that’s simple, inspiring, and doable. Jean hosts the Art of Homeschooling Podcast, offers online courses and mentoring, and has a membership community, Inspired at Home. With a Master of Arts in Teaching, Jean has taught in every possible setting from public and private classrooms to homeschooling co-ops and her own home.

She’s also a certified Simplicity Parenting Family Life Coach and incorporates the principles of making small doable changes into everything she does. When she’s not supporting homeschooling parents and teachers, you’ll find Jean out for a hike with her husband and their sweet dog, Gus, stirring up a yummy new dish in the kitchen, reading poetry, singing, or birdwatching

John Brauer

John's path to teaching started during his senior year at the University of Maryland. There he met Dr. Clopper Almon who presented a course on the work of Rudolf Steiner. John was thinking of a career as a teacher and it just happened that Dr. Almon was one of the founders of the Washington Waldorf School. After a school visit, his path was set.

John trained at the Waldorf Institute of Mercy College in Detroit, Michigan. By the fall of 1975 he met his initial class of first graders. John has taught four complete classes, had "relief pitching appearances" in four other classes, served as a movement teacher, athletic director and coach. John has also taught U.S. history blocks in the high school.

The fall of 2021 brought retirement for John and his wife Mary. This was a short period due to phone calls from a former student, Victoria Mansuri, and a former colleague, Sarah Meyers. They spoke with him about Lotus and Ivy and teaching his favorite subject, history.

Hannah Straubel

Hannah Straubel discovered Waldorf education through volunteering at Camphill as a teenager. Here, she learned to spin wool and work on a biodynamic farm alongside adults with disabilities. From there, her curiosity and love for anthroposophy and Waldorf ideas grew and led her to England to work and attend training at a Camphill School. In the last years, Hannah has continued teaching in South Korea and the United States at Princeton Waldorf School and at Lotus & Ivy. She finished her Masters in Waldorf Education and Handwork through the Freie Hochschule Stuttgart in Germany and has a Bachelors in Sociology and Anthropology with a minor in TESOL.

Hannah has taught grades 1-8 Spanish classes with Lotus & Ivy since we opened our doors. She has also taught 2nd grade, and middle school language arts and main lessons. Recently, Hannah spent two months in the Yucatan Peninsula, working alongside a Waldorf school in the Mayan Jungle. It was a wonderful opportunity to practice and continue improving her Spanish.

Keeping an international mindset and open appreciation for the richness of cultural diversity, Hannah is passionate about creating a nurturing and consistent classroom space that supports students from various cultural backgrounds. Dedicating her Masters thesis to exploring the questions around decolonizing Waldorf curriculum, Hannah has been working with Waldorf schools and families across the United States. Her dream is to continue researching and developing a curriculum that brings a local and global emphasis to the classroom instead of a predominantly Eurocentric one.

A bookworm since childhood, and daughter of a librarian, Hannah holds space for students to fall in love with reading and find books that support them in their interests, development, and understanding. She looks forward to bringing history, geography, and both classic and contemporary literature into the lessons. She enjoys setting the stage for books by building a scaffold of contextual and cultural understanding so that students gain a broader scope of how we can relate to the world around us.

With a heart for creativity and sustainability, Ms. Straubel continues to give Lotus & Ivy Spanish students the tools to become more confident with Spanish and scaffold their interest and passion for language learning. Outside of class, Ms. Straubel enjoys textile design, sustainable making, bike riding, yoga, gardening, and cooking.

Samantha de Leca

Samantha de Leca is a long-time Waldorf homeschool parent and teacher. Eighteen years ago she began her homeschool journey with her firstborn son. Her eldest two children have completed their Waldorf schooling and are embarking on their life’s journey with a true love of learning and a confident sense of self. She has a 14-year-old rising 9th grader and an 8-year-old rising 2nd grader.

She has dived deeply into hundreds of Waldorf books, spent years working closely with Waldorf teachers, and eventually qualified as a Waldorf teacher with a degree in Early childhood education, and a postgraduate in Waldorf pedagogy and anthroposophy. She has taught in multi-level classes in global brick and mortar and online Waldorf Schools from South Africa, to Canada, USA and Ireland.

She has taught two Waldorf cycles of class 1-9 with her own children. She taught grade 7 at the Village Waldorf School in South Africa. She taught grades 1,2,3,4 and 5 at the Dublin Steiner school in Ireland. She taught grades 1 through 6 at the Kildare Steiner School in Ireland, and she supported the grade 1 teacher as a mentor at the Squamish Waldorf School in Canada. She taught grade 6 online in 2020 and she is currently teaching class 7 and 8 online.

She is a lifelong learner, continuously attending courses and conferences, adding what she learns to her live lessons. These lessons are organic, evolving every year with the children that are placed before her. She is passionate about the lesson content and curriculum that she delivers. She is happy to be part of the Lotus & Ivy teaching team and looks forward to sharing meaningful lessons with her students.

Angelika Di Pasquali

Angelika Di Pasquali was born and raised in Germany and lived in Germany until 1992. She holds two citizenships, German and Italian, and has spent many years living in Italy. She graduated as a Waldorf teacher in Mannheim, Germany, and begin her teaching career in Italy in 1992. She taught grades 3, 4, and 5 and, after that, took on with another class in grades 5, 6, 7, and 8 as their class teacher. 

After this, she taught exclusively German in a private High School in Bolzano for over 10 years and gave classes for all levels, including adult classes in the evening in a training center. At the same time, she studied modern languages at the University of Trento, Italy and became an examiner for the international Goehte Institut, which releases certificates for German studies. 

From 2015 until 2018 she was the German teacher in the Spring Valley Waldorf School in Beijing, China and also gave lessons in the teacher training center of Spring Valley for Movement, Rhythms and Bothmer. In the year 2019,  she was the leader of a summer camp for the Worldwide Waldorf Sommercamps in Yunnan, China. In addition to teaching German to Lotus & Ivy students, she is also the Class Teacher of Grade 4 at “Freie Waldorfschule Innsbruck“ in Austria. The time difference allows her to be a class teacher by day and a German teacher in the evenings!

Angelika’s greatest passions are watercolor painting and travelling. She looks forward to the new experience of teaching children online at Lotus & Ivy.

Victoria Mansuri

Victoria Mansuri started her journey with Waldorf education when she became a first grader at the Washington Waldorf School.  Twelve years later, she graduated with its pioneer high school class.  After completing her degree in English and Theatre, she embarked on a career of Waldorf teaching. With more than 20 years of teaching in Waldorf schools, Victoria decided to bring the joys of Handwork to the greater community. 

The pandemic demanded Victoria pivot and transform hands-on, community-oriented classes to a virtual experience. The result has been enlivening and warm online Handwork classes for children and adults. Victoria now splits her time between teaching Handwork at the Orchard Valley Waldorf School in Central, VT and teaching with Lotus & Ivy. Her Handwork Complement Classes include skills and projects that leave the students feeling accomplished and proud.

Joanna Novosedlik, B.Mus.A. B.Ed. RYT

Joanna is a classical vocal musician, devotional music singer, teacher and life coach who shares her passion for helping those she serves to find their soul connection through vocal sound, movement, expressive arts and nature therapy. Her scope of work includes elementary school teaching, private music lesson teaching in voice and piano, vocal performance, facilitating sound healing with the voice, yoga sound and movement teaching, and facilitating both sacred circle dance and Eurythmy for self-development.

Her work with children involves a holistic hybrid of movement and sounding processes aimed at supporting healthy human development at the levels of body, soul and spirit. Incorporating indications from the work of Rudolf Steiner into her therapeutic and teaching work as well as her personal soul journey has been a primary focus for the past 22 years.

Her life mission: I strive to be a healing force in the world and a mirror of the joy of the Divine in all beings.