I began working with the Immune Sequence in October 2019 when I offered a course through Eurythmy Spring Valley to the public to prepare for the cold and flu season.

The idea popped up in a staff meeting one Tuesday afternoon while we sat, looking at each other with blank faces and wondering how we were going to go on as a school in the time of Covid 19.

At the beginning of our mandated sheltering-in-place as COVID19 spread through New York, I was stumped at how I could continue to bring the content of eurythmy to my students through an online platform.

To what do we feel connected?  Of all the specifics that make up our daily rhythms and life realities, which do we connect to in a direct way. 

Just months ago, we were preparing our young people for a world we thought we recognized. Since then, the global pandemic brought pieces of society as we knew it to a screeching halt, interrupting social and economic activity, and turning education remote.

We look around our campus and see beauty everywhere, our gardens bursting with life and color, with lessons our students left behind as seeds and soil months ago.

When Demeter, the Greek Goddess of harvest, grain, and fertility, lost her daughter, Persephone, the Goddess of springtime and vegetation, she cast the world into a great famine. 

On a cold, November day, a group of very excited students from Otto Specht School and Endeavor 21+ entered Tiger Schulmann’s Martial Arts Headquarters in Elmwood, NJ, admiring the equipment, the framed magazine covers and photos of champion fighters trained by TSMA.

After a lovely mild and bountiful summer the medicinal garden continues to grow medicinal herbs and flowers, which will be transformed into various products in the weeks to come. 

This year marks 100 years of Waldorf Education. Worldwide, Waldorf Schools and related institutions are being asked to come together in celebration of the first 100 years and to look towards the next 100 years of Waldorf Education and beyond.

Sunflowers don’t grow in the deep shaded forest; they grow where conditions meet their needs, where they can become, with all the potential that once was locked inside the hard shell of a seed.

Some of the students in the Garden House High School program are approaching graduation from High School and  are ready to transition into programs that will prepare them for adult life, with more focus on independent living and job skills.

In the nearly 10 years that I have worked at Otto Specht School, I have grown quite accustomed to speaking and writing about the unique approach of the Otto Specht School,  the benefits of Waldorf Education, and the incredible unfolding we see in our students year after year.

Geometry, natural light, and a seamless interplay with the landscape, provide viewers of Charles Rose’s architecture with the aesthetic satisfaction and feeling of awe one might experience, walking through the redwoods or a desert canyon.

Lord, thank you for this loving place…

Doris Sacks moved to the Fellowship Community in the Spring of 2001, at the age of 86, when her husband was in need of care.

Otto Specht School has joined #GivingTuesday, a pioneering effort to harness the collective power of partners charities, families, businesses, and individuals.

This year, the winner for Best Short Film at the Nyack Film Festival was “Writing on the Wall” by filmmaker Rob Barrett and singer/songwriter Sam Leopold.

Since Giancarlo was diagnosed with autism at age 2, my life went off in a completely unexpected trajectory. Giancarlo is now 16 going on 17 soon. He is a wonderful young man!

As the school year drew to a close, harvests and seed saving filled our last days of Farming and Gardening. The spaces cared for by our students produced hundreds of pounds of food for the Fellowship Community kitchen.

Zachary waited at the farm, hours after school had ended, excited to be the first student to meet our newest companion. As late afternoon cast long shadows across the pastures and the cows were in their yard after evening milking, a blue Jeep, pulling a trailer, turned into the red farm-gate. Otis!