Please join us in enthusiastically welcoming Lori Duckstad to Ashwood’s faculty as grade one teacher in 2020-2021. Lori is a trained Waldorf teacher with more than 20 years of experience as a Waldorf class, handwork, and music teacher. In addition to teaching first grade, Lori will also teach handwork to grades one through seven next year.
Lori has taught at both the Waldorf School of San Diego and the Sanderling Waldorf School, where she taught the school’s first graduating class. She also founded two Waldorf-inspired grade school programs in California: Mountain View School and Spirit Mountain School.
Lori is the proud mother of Kelsey and Sarah, now young adults. She loves to read, travel and do handwork in her spare time. Lori grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, where she developed a love of learning and of working with her hands, and an appreciation of the natural world. As the twelfth of 13 children, her education in social skills began early!
Lori has a bachelor’s degree in occupational therapy and a master’s degree in counseling and human development. She worked in a variety of social-service, school, and hospital settings for 11 years, and then discovered Waldorf education when looking for a preschool for her elder daughter. It was a life changing experience for the whole family, and within three years she sought out training and became a Waldorf teacher.
Lori will visit Ashwood again in March in order to meet the families in next year’s grade one class. Lori spent a day in the kindergarten while interviewing at Ashwood, but she looks forward to meeting the children, and their parents, as their future teacher soon. We are thrilled to have Lori joining our faculty.
Jody Spanglet, School Director