Week One: Monday – Friday, August 11-15, 2025
Week Two: Monday – Friday, August 18-22, 2025
Single Course Fee: $500
Two-Week Course Fee: $900
Pre-registration required!
Eurythmy Spring Valley is delighted to offer two weeks of pedagogy for professional eurythmists on our campus in August 2025, embedded in our pedagogical training courses. Each week will provide a different pedagogical focus and content for participants.
Week One: Monday – Friday, August 11-15, 2025
Study with Lisa Profumo: Teaching the Adolescent
With Lisa Profumo, a class teacher at the Berkshire Waldorf School, we'll explore the general middle school curriculum and the work with adolescents. If we as teachers can no longer rely on imitative forces in our work with the students, how best can we reach the adolescent in the 21st century? Drawing from the lectures of Rudolf Steiner, we shall explore this question and others, as we concentrate on working with the ever evolving and maturing middle-school-through-high-school student.
Required Reading: Education for Adolescents (Lectures 1-4) by Rudolf Steiner
Recommended: Between Form and Freedom by Betty Staley
Eurythmy in the Middle School with Susan Eggers
With Susan Eggers, a long-time eurythmist and a class teacher, we'll be working on the curriculum for Grades 6-8. “As I embarked on teaching eurythmy, the middle school grades filled me with dread! The middle school students and their relationship to eurythmy seemed like a roll of the dice! In fact, teaching middle school eurythmy was challenging in many ways--but the lessons were also filled with hard work, collaboration, and fun, and demonstrated the unique gifts that this art offers to students as they move from childhood to adolescence.”
Susan Eggers is a retired class teacher and a eurythmy teacher now living in Hudson, New York. Following her artistic training at Eurythmy Spring Valley and pedagogical preparation at Emerson College in England, Susan taught eurythmy to children and adults with special needs at the Esperanza School in Chicago. During that time, she completed her training in therapeutic eurythmy and earned a MS in Learning Disabilities. Following this, she carried a class at the Waldorf School of DuPage for six years. The years in Chicago also included teaching eurythmy in the Arcturus Waldorf Teacher Training Program, and completing the training for Eurythmy in Working Life with Annemarie Ehrilich, which culminated in a month-long teaching practice at the Sekem Community in Egypt. For 13 years, Susan was on the faculty of the Waldorf School of Princeton, NJ, first teaching eurythmy to students in EC through 8th grade, followed by carrying another class, from Grade 1 to Grade 6. It is now Susan's special joy to support the next generation of teachers in whatever way possible.
Week Two: Monday – Friday, August 18-22, 2025
Study with Lynn Arches: Conversations in Challenging Times
“We live in [a time when] human beings must become independent. But on what does this depend? It depends on people’s ability…to become self-assertive, to not allow themselves to be put to sleep [in their thinking]. — Rudolf Steiner (December 12, 1918)
We live in challenging times. This is why human relationships and human encounters may deeply benefit from Goethean conversations, which engender and maintain spiritualized relationships and interpersonal communication.
What is Goethean Conversation? Through study, reflection, and discussions in small and large groups, we will work to discover Steiner’s insights and indications that develop the capacities to listen, speak, and understand one another as beings of soul and spirit.
Required Text: On the Wings of Words: Conversations and Human Relations by Gary Lamb
High School Eurythmy with Alex Spadea
During the second week, the focus will shift to high school students with Alexandra Spadea, a eurythmist at the Rudolf Steiner School, New York City.
We will look at each high school grade (from 9 through 12), looking at where the students are at in their development and what the appropriate pieces and forms are to support the students at this time.
Several questions will be explored:
How eurythmy can meet and support the adolescents as an integral part of their high school experience and curriculum?
How can we bring eurythmy in a fun and meaningful way that allows both for creativity and self-expression whilst offering an objective experience of music and speech through one’s own movement, gesture, and choreography?
How can eurythmy lessons cultivate and strengthen the social fabric of the class?
Each course will provide a review of pedagogical forms and their relevance for the period of childhood being studied, as well as themes from the curriculum, especially adaptable for use in eurythmy. We will also have time to share materials with one another and discuss topics of current concern and interest.
We are holding these pedagogical courses for the ESV students in their training, but have found that it's enriching for everyone to have practicing teachers join the ongoing training as Refresher courses. So all are welcome!
For more information on the courses, or to register, please contact the Student Services Coordinator at (845) 352-5020, ext. 113, or info@eurythmy.org.