Towards compassion and creativity & Joy and confidence – living trustfully in our body | Original EN

Towards compassion and creativity · Kathy MacFarlane
Joy and confidence – living trustfully in our body · Michael Ben Shalom

A lecture by Kathy MacFarlane followed by a lecture by Michael Ben Shalom, both held at the World Teachers' Conference 2023 at the Goetheanum on the 12th of April 2023.

Children, young people and adults need inner strength, health and resilience. They need intellectual, emotional and social skills to understand and accept the earth, themselves and their fellow human beings. What can we renew in our educational practice to develop what is needed to live together?

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She is a kindergarten teacher at the Titirangi Rudolf Steiner Kindergarten where she has been teaching for the past 34 years. Kathy was born in South Africa where she attended the Michael Mount Waldorf School her parents helped found in Johannesburg. She then joined the South African Ballet company where she met her husband Gear, a new Zealander. Together they attended Emerson College in England. With their three children they left South Africa to go to England in 1988.
She is one of the coordinators on the Steiner/Waldorf Early Childhood training course in New Zealand and has supported the growing work in China, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Thailand. She is the representative from New Zealand for the International Association Steiner/Waldorf Ealy Childhood Education (IASWECE) and the representative for Early Childhood Education on the Steiner Education Aotearoa/ New Zealand (SEANZ).
She has three grown children who have completed their education in Steiner Schools and now has the pleasure of her own grandchildren in the school and kindergarten. Challenges are giving enough time to the different aspects of early childhood education while enjoying the diversity of the work.