Hard Beeswax: Experiences in Waldorf Education

episode-3-waldorf-beginnings-taylor-s-story
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Matthew: [00:00:00] Hello, I'm Matthew Burritt.

Taylor: And I'm Taylor Romans, and this is Hard Beeswax, Experiences in Waldorf Education.

Matthew: Welcome to episode three of Hard Beeswax, where I interview Taylor about her Waldorf origins.

Taylor: We realize that we are just two individuals who are part of this global educational movement, and we want to be very clear that we are only speaking from our own experiences and from our own impressions. We do not presume to speak for the Waldorf movement as a whole.

Matthew: Taylor let's talk about your Waldorf journey. What were your earliest experiences in Waldorf education?

Taylor: So my parents who had kind of met later in life, both of their second marriages coming together, they met through work and they met a woman through [00:01:00] our local Methodist church where we went, and she told them about the Austin Waldorf School. I was in Austin, Texas. And my parents went to visit and they took me and I just remember walking into the classroom. I still remember the kids who took me aside in the kindergarten and took me. There was the wooden little play stands with the arch over the top and there were silks big clipped to it.

And it was like going into a magical world. And for whatever reason, it rang true with my parents and I proceeded to join the kindergarten and I went two years, two years of kindergarten at the Austin Waldorf school.

Matthew: Nice, nice. And so can you describe a little bit of what kindergarten looked like for you?

I mean, you talk a little bit with the silks, but talk to me more about just your daily life.

Taylor: Oh man, it was it was really, the imaginative world was real. There were, you know, the [00:02:00] playground had this thick wood behind it and there was a pond and there were frogs that would come out of the pond and we called them peepers.

They were these tiny little frogs and we would make them homes. There was a .Shed we could distantly see in the woods, and that was the witch's hut. And there were all these stories about, you know, not disturbing the witch. We'd always be quiet in that corner of the playground. I just remember... You know, the smell of fresh baked bread, the birthday muffins, the singing, the the softness of the classroom, the, the real materials, the wood, the, the sheepskin, the felt .I have vivid memories of washing napkins, washing our cloth napkins on the traditional washing board, it really spoke to me for what, for whatever reason, I think that it really it really clicked for me. One piece of my kindergarten experience was that both of my parents worked full time.

And so I had a classmate, Bailey and her mom was a kindergarten assistant, Ms. Joan, and [00:03:00] in the summers, when my parents were working full time, I would go to Ms. Joan, and Bailey was one of my best friends still, but her mom had an old VW bus with the backward seats and the wooden beaded seat covers, and she would just pile us in this bus, and it was almost like a continuation of my Waldorf kindergarten experience, but through field trips and she'd drive us around Austin and we'd go swimming. And, and so it really very, very quickly became an all consuming community for my family, for whatever reason, something clicked and immediately my parents just dove in. And so for me, there's a very distinct before and after, as far as what home felt like and looked like and what we did with our time, how we spent our time as a family.

Matthew: Did you name the days of the week after the meals that you had?

Taylor: I don't think that I did. I don't think I made that connection. I do remember they never gave me enough maple syrup with my oatmeal. I did not like oatmeal, [00:04:00] but yeast, man, I loved yeast and it immediately went on everything, right? The rice, the popcorn, the millet. I was insistent that my parents get yeast. I'm sure they called my kindergarten teacher being like, what is she talking about? What is this stuff? You're giving our child yeast? What? But yeah. To this day, I make yeast popcorn.

Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about how you met your first grade teacher.

Taylor: Oh, you know, I don't necessarily remember meeting her. I remember more of the ceremony around it with my classmates. I have a vivid memory of lining up outside the first grade for the ceremony. I remember, I remember her. Just so, so fondly and with so much respect, because as you kind of alluded to, there was just a really wild spirit that emerged when all of us as a class were in the group, in a group together.[00:05:00]

And she just, she just met us so humbly. You know, and, and just with genuine effort, right? And you know, I remember she would wear these scarves cause she would get sore throats almost every winter, but she was a trooper. She was singing. She was, you know, reciting poetry. Nancy Campos. She was really amazing. And we were her first class. She had been a class assistant before, and she was our, we were her first class.

Matthew: Nice.

Taylor: And she met us.

Matthew: So tell me about. You know, your early grade school years, did you play recorder? You know, what stuck out for you and your experiences then?

Taylor: I think the the main lesson. The main lesson books, jumping rope, I think that we really jumped a lot of rope as, as I now can understand why, but yeah, I, I was really enchanted by it. Like you, I was really drawn in by stories. I do remember [00:06:00] even at a young age there. They're, you know, I spend a lot of time thinking about this, about the why and the kind of the, the bigger karmic things that were going on, but the group of students I was with, we could really sniff out an insecure teacher.

And I mean, I even remember as first graders. Organizing collectively to all ask to go to the bathroom during German class. And so one by one she let, I mean, and, and it would just completely derail a class. It was this, this double sided thing where in so many ways it was just this beauty and surrender and we did have so much life.

Our plays were generally quite amazing because we had all of this energy and enthusiasm.

Matthew: How many were you?

Taylor: We were 31 to start. And but also there was definitely an edge of early rebellion.

Matthew: Yeah. So could you talk a little bit about your experiences with reading in [00:07:00] particular, because oftentimes a criticism is that, you know, reading is often delayed. How was that experience for you learning to read?

Taylor: So I think that I my family TV broke in quotations around the time when I started in kindergarten. And even then we hadn't been we hadn't watched a lot of TV. I remember my mom has a saying about TV that's rot your body, rot your mind, kooka racha about TV that it was like rot you out from the inside.

So, so she was already, you know, the reason I'm bringing that up is because then in our home we read. And they would read, we would all read a book aloud at night. And I was an only child and I remember sitting in the middle in the king size bed and we would read. And so that was really kind of the creative theatric thing that we consumed as a family.

And I was in maybe second grade when I quote read for the first time, but I'd really just [00:08:00] memorized the cat in the hat. I was reading independently by the end of second grade, I remember, with, with a lot of surety and and then proceeded to be a voracious reader. And I think a lot of that came from being an only child.

I was really imaginative played a lot of creative games by myself. And and I think reading really fed that and, and it was also, you know, I think about, I remember watching my parents reading. Yeah. It was what was done. It was it was around me and my family. So I think in that way, it it came pretty quickly to me.

Matthew: Nice. Nice. And so what... What blocks or classes did, were you drawn to in your middle school, you know, going into your middle school years?

Taylor: Oh, I, I loved the Renaissance. I, I think a lot of that was because I think I probably would be characterized as having been good at main lesson books, right? That the artistic piece was I loved it.

And so, you know, doing the, the illuminated letters. I mean, my, my main lesson book page [00:09:00] pages just oozed with opulence from in the Renaissance. so I remember that really fondly. I also really liked geometry. I think I fell a little bit prey into the kind of the math stereotype that because I wasn't fast at it, I wasn't good at it.

I think I definitely was one of the people who experienced that. but geometry really clicked because of the visual component of it. And and let's see, I, I just loved learning about the world. I remember in sixth grade when we were learning about Rome, that we did traditional debate. And we were given a topic and I was assigned to defend slavery.

And as a sixth grader, you know, it was such a, it was actually weirdly a really formative lesson that that to be able to defend something means that you really, it takes argument out of opinion. It removes the role of structuring an argument out of personal belief, [00:10:00] and I think that served me really, really well just writing more technical essays later in my educational career.

But yeah, I really liked history and and just the storytelling and definitely shied away from the math. It was challenging for me.

Matthew: Yeah. So I know one big thing for you is, you know, the, your athletic life. So when did that start? And can you tell this story of, of your athleticism?

Taylor: Totally. So I, I know probably many people don't think of Waldorf schools and athletics, but Austin had, for some reason from the very beginning had, as soon as there was a middle school and high school had athletics and I was there at a time where the high school was being built and I remember, you know, my dad helping put the roof on one of the mobile buildings that have been donated for the high school. And so I remember seeing the high school born and I remember watching the games and even we didn't have a home gym.

We were playing at a church and, and my family [00:11:00] really invested in the community and bought into it. And as, as a child, I remember going to games and really looking at the older girls playing basketball, especially and wanting to be them. They really were like celebrities for me. And When I was in fourth grade, there was a co ed YMCA team that was kind of some distant families at a local Montessori school.

There was a dad who coached and, and I ended up doing that just because that's what my friends were doing. I also was a dancer. I think I had a lot of extracurricular activities after school. I think I, I hungered for that and my parents met that hunger. And then when I was in fifth grade, the Austin Waldorf school built the gym. They built a gym and a performing arts center. And so both for theater in my later years and performances, we were in this beautiful stage and then we had a gym and I was a, I was a fifth grader going to the, the open gyms that were mainly frequented [00:12:00] by high school, you know, students. And a lot of times I was the only girl and it was scary.

And I just passed probably for the first year and never shot the ball. And then when I first shot it, everyone was really stoked for me. And, And I, I think that I it just became a big part of who I was and I devoted a lot of time to basketball especially and then played volleyball too and did track sort of sometimes.

And but yeah, that was definitely in middle school is when it really took off. And being in a larger city like Austin that has a local very athletically accomplished university with UT Austin. We, you know, we had access to camps and things like that, that I was able to play at a really high level or, or get access to people playing at a high level.

And that kind of supported my own growth.

Matthew: Yeah. And that obviously carried you on into high school.

Taylor: Oh yeah, definitely. And I, I remember being an eighth grader and I, I really, at that point had this dream solidify of wanting to [00:13:00] play in college. And so that. My coach, Eric Olson, who was still in Austin. Go coach O! He reflected back to me, okay, if that is the, the goal down the line, here's what you need to do now. And so I started playing on a club team that, you know, practiced for four hours, five hours on the weekends. And it was a real shock, but, it was amazing. And it fed the passion that I had.

Matthew: So did that level of engagement extracurricularly help you to? stay in the Waldorf school? Was there a moment when you thought, Oh, I've been in here since kindergarten and I don't, you know, what's going on in other schools? Was there a moment of questioning your place in high school?

Taylor: There honestly never was.

I think that I even then could identify that, that I, that Waldorf really fit me, that I was I was drawn in a lot of different directions. I know I, I really [00:14:00] specialized in basketball in my free time, but I loved music. I, I played viola, I played violin, I loved the artwork, I loved the theater, I, I loved it.

Right. And I couldn't imagine. And, and. What was great is because of playing on these kind of select teams that had players from a lot of different schools, I could see that for those girls, for those athletes in middle school, they had had to specialize, right? In middle school, they had had to sacrifice theater, music, anything else that they were doing.

Whereas I was still able to do all of those things and, and at a relatively high level within the school while still pursuing. Basketball in this way. And so I wasn't yet willing to give the rest of that up. Right? That, that that kind of well roundedness served me, I think. And even at that age, I, I got it.

And I had really tight relationships with my class and couldn't [00:15:00] imagine, as soon as it became clear that the kind of the core group of us were staying, then I couldn't imagine going elsewhere.

Matthew: Okay, Taylor, so could you tell me a little bit about, you know, what was life like in high school academically for you?

Taylor: So I, I loved high school. It was very It felt very challenging. It felt very stimulating. I Was especially drawn toward my humanities classes. I loved the history and especially the English classes.

I had always been drawn to writing, especially writing creatively. And I think that I had one teacher in particular, Morgan Veerheller, who really, really nurtured that creativity, but not [00:16:00] just it was like structured creativity. You know, she, she just gave such thoughtful assignments and she had these classes that really just pushed us.

you know, intellectually we had transcendentalism with her, which was so formative. We read Ishmael with her, which ended up being one of my favorite classes to teach. Now I brought that to my own teaching. So I just, I, I have very fond memories of my classes in high school. I also remember really struggling with perfectionism and I would my main lesson books were just ridiculous and I, I put a lot of effort in.

I would frequently lose a lot of sleep over making sure things looked exactly the way that I wanted them to look. And so that was definitely a balance that I worked on striking throughout, throughout high school. You know, beyond kind of the, the core academic classes, I think [00:17:00] that I always really enjoyed doing art.

And I, I loved in high school that I felt like we start to get started to delve more into more technique when it came to art classes, especially senior year, we had we did self portraits and that was like, felt like this big culminating moment as far as all of the kind of the attempts that we'd had over the years in main lesson books of, of realistically capturing historical figures or other works of art, then there was this moment of trying to realistically capture yourself.

And that, in many ways, felt like a capstone project as far as the artistic work and as is predictable for someone who liked sports, I loved movement class. It was a blast And I, and, that was a big part of the spirit of my class and my high school experience was moving and playing sports during recess, even when we didn't [00:18:00] have movement class.

We had I remember Katie Moran. She was just so young and she was so full of fire and she did not take shit from anybody. And to have this, like, young, fiery female teacher who just, like, met teenage fire with fire right back. I mean, it was amazing the respect that she commanded and we really appreciated that about her. One other thing that was, I think, very specific to my time in high school was that Arthur Pittis and our Peter Stopshinsky, who was the kind of played piano with the choir. They wrote a musical together of a tale of two cities. And this was. a four hour musical.

Matthew: Wow.

Taylor: And, and my senior year, the whole high school basically took time to [00:19:00] produce this musical.

Matthew: Nice.

Taylor: And I mean, looking back, it was a little bit silly that we spent so much of our time working on it, but it was a pretty incredible feat. And I think I was maybe weirder in high school than I thought I was.

I think I was pretty weird when I was in high school, but I was this character called the Sawyer who is like the, who, who sits outside the prison with the saw and pretends like he's chopping people's heads off.

Matthew: Oh boy.

Taylor: And so I like had this deranged teased hair and like fake blood on my face and, and I had a saw and I got to dance around with a French mob and scream and it was a really nice release from just the heavy headiness of working extremely hard at the academic stuff and then just getting to excarnate and be in a musical.

So I think I, I said earlier that in many ways Waldorf really met me because I [00:20:00] had all of these different, I had all of these different interests. And that was just another example of, it's not something I think I would have sought out if I were in another environment. Right. You know, I didn't go to college and then seek out musical theater, but because it was there, I dove in and really ended up enjoying it.

Matthew: Great. Yeah. I, I, Similar, similar thoughts are going through my head with the class plays and musicals and stuff that I did as well. Can you talk to me a little bit about, you know, what was the process of choosing your senior project? You mentioned art.

Taylor: Yeah, so I I think when I looked at my senior project, I saw it as a chance to, a chance to do something that I may not get another opportunity to do.

And for me, a big part of that was painting and I had just come out of this painting class with this amazing, uh, amazing teacher who was, you know, an adjunct faculty member who was an [00:21:00] artist in his own right and came in and he taught college classes, Mr. Thornberry. And he, I just kind of, I initially had this grandiose idea of doing a triptych, so kind of a three piece painting of a subway car and there would be three different cars in each section of the painting and there would be people coming on and off the subway from my past, my present, and my future and it was, it was really intense and, and I asked Mr. Thornberry if he would be my mentor and he said, yeah, I will. And this is an insane idea and you need to think smaller. So he asked me, he said, well, what do you want to get better at? Right. As an artist, what are the areas that you think you need to improve on the most? And I told him, well, I, I want to get better at capturing skin tone and, and I want to try and learn how to paint water.

So he looked at me and said, Oh, well, you have to paint a nude in the [00:22:00] water. And I was like, Oh, oh, okay. I, okay, sure. So so that kind of became my plan. And I had, you know, it's it you know, as an 18 year old, it was. I was just kind of going along with what I was told to do and, and he...

Matthew: Was it intimidating or I mean, was it embarressing?

Taylor: It was less embarrassing than I thought it was going to be because I think that in my preparation for this project, I actually, he, this teacher invited me to go to some of his classes.

And so I. I had never painted a nude model before or drawn a nude model and, and yet I walked into this class and there were, you know, 30 people all looking at this naked body just as, as an object of light and dark that you were trying to capture realistically, right? And so all of my teenage squeamishness in, in [00:23:00] light of that environment and seeing how artists actually approach the subject matter.

It was like, Oh, this isn't like a he, he somebody's naked moment. This is just a composition. And so I think that that may be pulled my mind out of the gutter a little bit, right. To, to see how, how professionals actually approached it. Yeah. And so, you know, Mr. Thornberry told me, he said, Okay, so you need to find a model who you like.

And he sent me some options and, and sent me to Craigslist because apparently that's where you can find art models. And I, I I found this guy named Nathan and I kind of liked his dramatic effects. Yeah. features and got in contact with him and Nathan, the model did not have a car. So I drove to the local grocery store to pick up Nathan and I drove to my friend's house who had a swimming pool with, with my new friend, Nathan.

And I got Nathan set up in the pool [00:24:00] freezing cold and he was such a trooper and I had in mind, I had, I had it all visually planned out. I thought it was going to be like, he was going to be kind of Rising out of the water and there would be sheets of water falling off of him and all these droplets and and he would be really kind of like on an exhale, like very relaxed.

But of course it was freezing. And so in every picture, he just looked so tense. And so then at some point he was like lifting himself out of the water and I captured this photo that ended up really loving. And so I used that photograph and proceeded then to. You know, over, I think it took about 72 hours total, I painted this four by four foot oil painting of, of Nathan. Yeah. Fondly referred to as Nate the nude. So.

Matthew: Okay. Gotcha. So you took pictures.

Taylor: Yeah. So I took, yeah, I took photographs and then I took those photographs, blew one up pretty large. And then I. went through the painting process. And it [00:25:00] was very cool, you know, going through the underpainting, lots of, you know, I did really kind of vivid undertones and then went over with skin tone and ended up feeling pretty proud of the final product. And and again, it was kind of like this sort of like farewell to my. You know, Waldorf fine Art journey.

Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. Nice. So how, how was it at, it strikes me that you and your family I've heard stories of you hosted a lot of Waldorf ians a lot of Waldorf teachers and guests and Yeah. Speakers. I think you've probably have lived closer, let's say, to the, to the, to the, to the teacher side of things. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about [00:26:00] that?

Taylor: Definitely. It was, I, I believe we first hosted speech artists for the Eurythmy Troupe in Austin when I was in kindergarten, Richard and Elizabeth, and they came from England. And after that, we moved, when I was in first grade, we moved to a home that was within walking distance of the campus. And we were, there were three of us in a home, and it really, that...

We had room and it was, it just was, you know, you can look back on it with, wow, that was such an amazing experience. But for me, it was just life that these, a lot of times, you know, German people, you know, a lot of times

Matthew: Or other august figures.

Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it was, there was a huge variety. We had Brazilian Eurythmists come through. We had, you know, Douglas Gerwin. We had Jamin, Jamin McMillan with Spatial Dynamics. He came for months at a time once there was a Spatial Dynamics training in Austin. We [00:27:00] had families stay with us of, you know, teaching families. We had visiting teachers. We had a guy, Hans Schepger, who came in and he did these incredible stained glass light fixtures that were two geometric shapes, like bursting out of the other, and it was all stained glass.

And we just had these really incredible people come through our home. And I think the gift to me as a child was sitting at a dinner table, listening, and I don't know how much I absorbed but it was It, it it maybe kind of forced me into a maturity that you know, maybe wasn't totally age appropriate of sitting around and listening to people talk, but I was just there and present for it and there wasn't, you know, a room where I could go shut myself and watch TV for hours. So I was just there and observing and and it was a real, it was a real gift. And, and even at a young age, it broadened my eyes to the, you. The depth of the Waldorf movement and the peripheral [00:28:00] streams right of biodynamic farmers and people working in extra lessons and, you know, I remember drinking crazy straws with a woman who was bringing all these different things to help with ADHD and, and, and just it was it was cultural, right?

It wasn't just a school. It was, it was getting exposed to all of these all of these really brilliant people.

Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So a little bit less serious question. Is it true that Eurythmy helped your athletic prowess?

Taylor: I, I, I think I would have to say yes.

Matthew: So that might be a whole nother episode, right?

Taylor: I, you know, I gosh, Eurythmy, it's such a tough one because it's in so many ways. It's, it the way it, It's presented, it's almost like you have to reject it, right, that it's a part of growing up to reject it. And yet, you know, by the time we got to high school, the urithymy we were doing was [00:29:00] hard. It was challenging.

It was, it was visually challenging. We would have these complex forms, or we would have to draw forms. right? Based on intervals. I mean, I remember being given these sheets of piano music and having to map out the chord. I mean, it was tough. And and the moving backwards, the moving through people actually my favorite, my favorite story actually doesn't have to do with sports, but I was with my now husband at Austin City Limits, which is a huge music festival in Zilker Park. And it is packed, jam packed with people of like, you feel like you're in a subway station, but vast. Right. And you know, we were 22 at the time and, you know, we'd been, you know, we'd been drinking beer all day and we were having a great time and we were looking across this vast field and we had to get to the other side.

And I just had this wave of clarity come over me and I said, John, hold my hand. And he describes the way I moved [00:30:00] through this crowd that I perfectly knew when to slow down and speed up and that we didn't touch anyone. And it was like this divine, he was like, I don't know what you did. And I just looked at him, I said, you know, it's the eurythmy, the training prepared me for this.

But there is something to be said for moving in unison with a group of people in different directions and moving in harmony.

Matthew: And being aware.

Taylor: And being aware. And not only did it serve me in athletics, but eventually it served me in traversing music festivals.

Matthew: All right. So is it, was it the big moment? How did you transition away from this? from your experience in Waldorf School. How, what, what, how it happened and was there a sadness? How, how did that look?

Taylor: Yeah, I think that I, like many people, got caught up in, it was almost like there was this pressure that we had to go do something remarkable. [00:31:00] Right. And it's kind of the downside of this education that really is trying to distinguish itself as being different and profound and, and meet people in a real way is then there's this pressure of, Oh goodness, I have to go out and do something profound. And I didn't feel very profound at 18.

So that's kind of just the truth of it. And you know, I think that. I had, I had been really proactive in looking at colleges I'd started even in 11th grade going when we were traveling or just on vacation. I would go look at schools. I was really drawn toward California for some reason. I think I liked the idea of a beach.

Matthew: Yeah.

Taylor: And but then when it came to my senior year, I got really inspired by a couple of my Yeah. History courses toward international relations. Weird how that happens with Waldorf students. I'm like, how many of us wanted to go be [00:32:00] ambassadors? But I fell in love with Davidson and. The person who was giving us college guidance seemed to indicate that I was a shoo in.

And I applied early decision and really threw all my eggs in that basket. And and then I didn't get in. And it was it was embarrassing, honestly, it was, it was, I felt really I felt really embarrassed. And at that time, when I had applied to Davidson, I knew that it wasn't a good fit athletically.

So I'd kind of accepted that I was going to be. I wasn't going to be playing in college. And then when that fell through, then I think that I really came full circle and said, okay, then I want to play basketball, right? Then I'm going to do this thing that I feel really confident in. And then I kind of went back to visiting some of the teams and schools that were.

Recruiting me, and those were mostly Division 3 schools, small liberal arts colleges I was looking at a few, and then I really went off [00:33:00] of a visit, right? I, I visited a few schools, and and met teams, and met coaches, and it was really a vibe thing, and I ended up going. choosing Trinity University in San Antonio.

So it was about 45 minutes from Austin. I always thought I would leave the state. It was weird then to be going so close, but I really, I really truly left, right? I didn't go home very much. I had some close friends who of course I stayed in touch with and saw, but for the most part, I really put. It's almost like I I like preemptively broke up with Waldorf so that it couldn't dump me.

You know, it was almost that kind of gesture. It's like, okay, I'm just going to push it away and, and be here in this next place and dive in. Right.

Matthew: Wow. So and then any, any connections to Waldorf through high school? Was there a? Waldorf student or a moment where you connected to anybody or was it really as a [00:34:00] strong separation?

Taylor: It was a pretty complete separation. I remember as a junior there were Three kids from the Austin Waldorf School who came in, but that was more social of, you know, Hey, I, I know you, you're, you know, my friend's little brother. Why are you here? Kind of thing. Yeah, right. And less I, I really kind of yeah, it was a pretty complete and utter separation for me as far as my thinking, my kind of internal connection.

I yeah, I really, really kind of drew a line. And I think that because it was so small and so tight knit, that these were people who knew me, you know, my classmates knew me in a way. They had seen me every day. And I needed to go and try to be someone else. Right. And try on something else. And... Then the ultimate irony is [00:35:00] then I looked up senior year and said, wow, that, that person who I was when I was at the Waldorf school really feels a little, like it fits a little better than who I am now.

And in many ways I circled back, right? That it was, but I never would have known. I always would have wondered, right? What could it, what would it have been like if I'd really left those roots behind? And Yeah, but while I was there, I definitely was not, although I will say when I when I was playing on the college, on the basketball team there were some really physically challenging workouts and I used to say the morning verse when I was trying to survive and And then there was a bit of a situation, not a situation, but we had a coach who really wore her faith on her sleeve in a big way and and so she would pray before games and I was at a point where I didn't quite feel comfortable praying, but in my head I would say the morning first because it was what I was [00:36:00] used to saying, as a way to prepare myself for the work that needed to be done. So it was, in that way, I found that glimmer of my Waldorf experience that I still rang really true. And I think that was the first time that I actually started paying attention to the words that we were saying, right? Whereas before you, do you remember the first time in high school when they asked you to write the verse down and you just had no idea?

Matthew: Right, exactly.

Taylor: Like you'd been saying it for, you know, six years and you had no idea what those words were. Right?

Matthew: Right. And you could only say it if everyone else around you was saying it?

Taylor: Totally. Totally. Or saying it with your eyes closed. All that.

Matthew: So then what did you do? What did you do after college?

Taylor: So while I was in college, I, I started out thinking I was going into international relations. Quickly learned that maybe that wasn't the path for me. But I had continued taking Spanish, which was one of the foreign languages that we'd [00:37:00] had in Austin, and I knew that I wanted the experience of going abroad, but because I was playing basketball, it's the season spanned both semesters.

So there wasn't really a chance for me to study abroad. And so I found a place. where I could go and do something like a WOOFing program. It wasn't through the WOOFing organization, but it was basically WOOFing at a farm in Costa Rica.

Matthew: Can you just say what WOOFing is for the listeners.

Taylor: Yes. Worldwide Organizational Organic Farms, I think, is what it stands for, right? So it was a work exchange where I would commit to working for six hours a day and I would receive free room and board. And so because I I was at this point where I had taken Spanish in the classroom for years, and yet I couldn't quite get over the hump of speaking fluently. And so in the summers after, in the summer, after my sophomore year of college, I traveled to Costa Rica and went and worked and lived on this farm.

And it was, it was incredible. It was exactly what I needed. It was a [00:38:00] different pace. I was in my physical body farming all day. It was complete cultural immersion somewhere new. The people who I met there. were just, I had something in common with them that I hadn't felt in a long time where, I'm sure you maybe had this in the Peace Corps, where the kind of person who goes out of their way to choose to be in this very specific situation, I just find that there's some kind of shared shared maybe values that you have with those people.

So you know, I lived in a bunkhouse with people my age, people older, you know, European executives taking their six months sabbaticals. Cause that's the thing that they get in Europe that we don't get here. Right. But it was a real, really incredible hodgepodge of people. And and so that. reignited my love of speaking Spanish.

And I came back to college and realized that while I didn't have necessarily a long term plan, that becoming [00:39:00] bilingual was a really smart option. And so I reoriented my major to being in Spanish. And it was cool. Once I finished all the, the grammar based classes, then my classes were in Spanish. And it was, it was amazing and, and interesting.

And throughout that, then I carried on creative writing classes as well, because I wanted. I just always loved writing. And so I ended up minoring in creative writing. So I was coming toward the end and, and didn't know what I was going to do. I was kind of looking on you know, online job platforms for translating jobs and things like that.

But there was a lot of additional training involved. I knew that I didn't want to keep going to school. I was pretty done with that. And... And midway through my senior year, I went to a job fair because that's kind of what you're supposed to do. And this really aggressive, attractive woman in a suit walked up to me and was like, you seem perfect [00:40:00] for my intern program.

I was like, who are you? And I had no idea who she was. And she was like, I'm with Enterprise Rent A Car and we do an. a management training intern program, and I think you'd be great. And so I just went to this interview, and I went to another interview, and next thing I know, I'm, I'm doing this internship with Enterprise.

And and I loved it. It was totally unexpected, but it was learning on the go. It was interacting with human beings, which I loved. I've, I've always been pretty outgoing in that way. And I liked that it was practical learning. I was really, really done with sitting in a desk and learning that way.

It just didn't, it it wasn't meeting me anymore. And so I did that internship and the internship paid incredibly well. And then when I came to the end of senior year, I realized that I could continue going with them and that I would get a 401k benefits great salary and that [00:41:00] the thing that I craved was financial independence and like really feeling like I was standing on my own two feet in the world.

And so I continued on with them. And, and so that really fed into my decision. And I was, figuring out living in the same place with my now husband, this was like nine years ago, and we landed on Santa Fe kind of randomly as a place that was sunny for me being the Texan and had mountains and cold for him being from the Midwest.

And so we moved here, and we knew no one, and we had no connection to the place, and we moved here, and started our life, and I was a management trainee in the local enterprise office in Santa Fe, and John was working at the Whole Foods meat counter. And grinding up rib eyes for people to get for their, get for their dogs, which was preposterous. It was a great intro to Santa Fe culture.

Matthew: Wow. So then, so then what was the way back to Waldorf then?

Taylor: So it [00:42:00] was, it kind of started in little bits and the first connection was that a gentleman who had been in Austin and coached the high school boys basketball team, a guy named Rob Clifford, who was just this amazing kind of gruff cowboy of a man who just loved adolescence, right?

He loved working with teenagers. He and his wife retired. coach basketball at the Santa Fe Waldorf school. So when I moved out here, even without having a connection with the school, I reconnected with him and and I went and I kind of played a little bit with the team and just was peripherally aware of, of the school through him and.

I continued my career with Enterprise, and I had a job with them where I was doing car rentals for the film industry in New Mexico, where when a film, because of the tax rebates in New Mexico for film productions, there was a real attraction for large [00:43:00] films to come here, and I it was a an incredible job, but a grueling job.

And it was this working 24 7, on call, the company phone, cell phone would ring at 3 a. m. and I would answer. And I really I poured myself into it. And, and, and I had incredible experiences through having that job. And was. you know, was managing a lot of business and, and really my, my self worth got really wrapped up in my success in that job.

And at some point I, I kind of looked up and looked around and said, okay, is this, is this the thing? Yeah. Is this the life that I want for myself? And and. I remember sitting down with my mother and we were just kind of talking through what I leave, what would I do if I left, what is, what else is out there, and she kind of off the cuff said, you know, well, you could, you [00:44:00] always said that when you had kids, you were going to become a Waldorf teacher.

I was like, Oh, I guess I did say that at some point along the line, because my experience as a Waldorf student was such that I knew that I wanted my future children. to have that experience. And while I wasn't, it wasn't, you know, having a child at the time, it, it, the timing weirdly just felt right. And so I actually dove into, committed to my first summer of teacher training, of high school teacher training before I ever taught or before I had a job secured or anything.

Matthew: And that was at the Center for Anthroposophy.

Taylor: Yeah. Same program. And and it was interesting because that first year, it all felt very cerebral. Like it, it, it it was really eye opening. I, I, loved what I was doing, but then it was the next summer when I went after I had a year of teaching some, not teaching a lot, but teaching some under my belt.

But then it was, Oh, I see it. Right. Then it started to [00:45:00] actually click in of where all these concepts applied. And that was through my own teaching experience. But I entered the Santa Fe Waldorf school kind of like many people do where. Oh, we need someone to help with aftercare. So I did aftercare and then someone had seen on my resume that I had a degree in Spanish.

So then I was an elementary Spanish teacher. And while that job was an amazing entry into the school, I realized pretty quickly that I didn't necessarily, I didn't have pedagogical curiosity about elementary students. Right. I was like, I was kind of content just to do it, but I didn't have that same curiosity that was leading me to get better, right? That I had with high school students. And then I was teaching marimba, an instrument I'd never played before, but thank you, YouTube and some, some talented high school students. Next thing I knew I was leading the marimba ensemble and I, I really just kept trying to show up with, you know, with a willingness to contribute.

[00:46:00] And then there was an English teaching spot open and I dove in and that was that.

Matthew: That was that.

Taylor: That was that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew: And so what do you, what did you take? What, you know, what's a seed that you took from your training that you brought to your students?

Taylor: I would say that some of the most, I mean, really just the, the developmental picture that Steiner has of the human being really made sense to me. And also the idea that Students are living their karma, and that sometimes we need to give them space to do that. And I think I had in my head that, you know, It's the teacher's job to maybe [00:47:00] cut, not save people, but really kind of step in and leave, you know, to make things easier. And I, I was, it was really reassuring to have the tools or to be given the information that according to Steiner, sometimes you just need to walk beside them, but not lead them.

Matthew: Right.

Taylor: And so I think that helped, that helped me a lot. And, and I also think just meeting other people who were also teachers and, and communing with other people who were seeing the same thing that I was. And that was one of the most beautiful things about the training is it was, it was less someone telling a group of people how to teach and more of putting a group of people who, to who are teaching in a room together and, and drawing conversation out of us and maybe giving us some tools or some guideposts, but really [00:48:00] helping us facilitate our collective learning. And I drew so much inspiration from the group of people I was learning with in my training.

Matthew: I did too, for sure. Yeah. So what was something that surprised you about, you know, from being a student to being a teacher? Was there a moment that you had that surprised you in the classroom when you stepped in?

Taylor: Yeah. I think that learning that the idea of the seven year cycles with the fact that 18 isn't the end, right, that that's a mid cycle point, because I always thought of that twelfth grade year as being a very intentional end, that that was the ending of something, when in fact that, that you The high school teachers are planting all these seeds, and then they go.

And in many cases you don't get to see that come to fruition at 21. I think that was the thing that, I really [00:49:00] saw my time at Waldorf as being a definitive ending of something. And when I learned about the fact that it was actually kind of a, a little breath in the middle of some of a bigger cycle that that was really profound because then it had me going back to that 21 year.

Matthew: Right.

Taylor: And I think I was, you know, I was coming into my teacher training at 27. So I was, you know, around your age where I was younger and, um, I'm not that much older now, but, but still there was this, it was recent enough. Yeah. Right? Right. That I was just talking with a friend from my Waldorf class that, you know, isn't it so funny that we're still 19, right? That there's, sometimes I still, I still don't feel like I've, that, that time is so far away. Right. Yeah.

Matthew: So, you know, I wonder if you recollect about yourself as a student, and then [00:50:00] think, oh my gosh, as a teacher I have so much coming towards me. 'cause of so much that I gave, was there something like a karmic, you know, like,

Taylor: Ooh, yeah.

Matthew: Is there, is there something that's, you know, i, I should expect in my teaching or

Taylor: Totally, yes. I I, I may not similarly, but I, I think I also to some extent. Took myself quite seriously and, you know, was, you know, like a writer and all of these things and and I remember one particular teacher came in and taught. There was something about him that just set off this fire in me to where I just had this like combustion of loathing, right?

And it had, it had never really been that acute for me. And it was maybe 10th or 11th grade and, and it was just, it was like so juvenile looking back on it. But, you know, I look at some of the personalities that have [00:51:00] come toward me and especially, you know, as a class sponsor and, you know, kind of holding the, the social life of a class and having students who are really just, we are, you know, why is there all this structure holding us back from being our true selves and we, you know, we deserve things and, and I, I do see a little bit of my teenage self and some of those, some of that that comes toward me.

And I think also then I've, I was able to be the high school boys basketball coach here. And so then in that work, I definitely felt like there was there was a lot of full circle moments where where the, the challenges that were maybe unresolved for me then came, you know, it was like a new vessel bringing the same, the same challenge to my doorstep and and now through maybe hopefully more.

mature eyes, I was able to maybe meet them a little bit more head on [00:52:00] than I did the first time around.

Matthew: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I have similar experiences to that too. I'm wondering how you would summarize what Waldorf education is.

Taylor: I actually think that the way that I describe it to someone who knows nothing is that Waldorf education is based on a developmental philosophy that has a very distinct picture of the way that a human being incarnates on this earth and that certain things should be taught at certain ages in certain ways to help support the development of the human being, not only as a physical being, but also as a spiritual being.

So that's kind of my, you know, off the cuff, brief, brief summary of of what a Waldorf education is.

Matthew: Right on, right on. So [00:53:00] there we are. wow. I feel like we've talked for a long time and we barely scratched the surface. Join us next week as we speak with Nicole Gent, a trained Waldorf kindergarten teacher about Waldorf early childhood education and philosophy.

Taylor: Would you like to be a sponsor on Hard Beeswax? Email us at hardbeeswax at gmail. com.

Matthew: That concludes another episode of Hard Beeswax. Thanks for listening. For episodes and more, please visit our website hardbeeswax. transistor. fm[00:54:00]