Ben Tindall
Ben Tindall, Class of 2013
I joined Maine Coast Waldorf School (Merriconeag) when I was in kindergarten and continued through to graduate from the high school in 2013, with only a year break during my freshman year at Freeport High School. While I was a student at Maine Coast, I played the violin and was a member of the Nordic ski team. I am incredibly grateful for the many other experiences I gained through my time there.
For college I attended Middlebury in Vermont where I majored in Philosophy, minored in Computer Science and studied abroad at Oxford University. After graduating, I moved to New York City where I currently live. I work at a small executive search firm while still exploring the city
Ben was Maine Coast Waldorf School's 2018 Grandparents Day speaker. You can read a transcript of his address to the grandparents here.
Page Nichols
Page Nichols, 8th Grade Class of 2002
After working at The REAL School (a public school serving middle and high school students who have not been successful in traditional schools) for nine years, Page accepted a position at the Maine Department of Education where she serves as Chief of Innovation under the current Commissioner.
As a Restorative Learning Specialist at The REAL School, Page helped develop and implement restorative disciplinary practices and protocols using evidence-based, best practices and emerging adolescent brain development as a guide. In addition to her role as Restorative Learning Specialist, Page supports students in juvenile detention and collaborates with stakeholders and community partners to identify alternatives to detention for youth in Maine. She also serves on the Maine Juvenile Justice Advisory Board and chairs the Training and Education Committee for that organization.
In 2015, Page co-founded an educational consulting business that provides professional development to teachers and school leaders facing challenging classroom behavior and demanding federal and state mandates.
Page attended Maine Coast Waldorf School (then Merriconeag) from preschool through eighth grade. She admires the emphasis that Waldorf education places on supporting the natural process and rhythms of brain development through lessons and activities that cultivate each of the three major parts of the brain: sensing, feeling, and thinking. Page regularly includes aspects of this philosophy in her work with students.
In her spare time, Page enjoys surfing, skiing, and travelling.
Matthew Ritger
Matthew Ritger, 8th Grade Class of 2002
Matthew is a writer, teacher and researcher. He graduated from Dartmouth College and is currently a PhD candidate at Princeton University, studying literature of the English Renaissance. Previously, he taught courses on Shakespeare and creative writing workshops in the English department at Cornell University, where he also received his MFA. Matthew's literary criticism appears regularly in the Los Angeles Review of Books and he is now at work on a first novel.
As a teacher and as a graduate student, I have a renewed appreciation for the many ways we learn in Waldorf education. In fifth or sixth grade, studying geometry didn't just mean learning the Pythagorean theorem: We spent hours making careful constructions with our compasses and illustrating them as beautifully as we could. I understood much more about geometry through that slow process with my hands than I ever could have through rote memorization. These days, teaching Shakespeare or leading a writing workshop, I never let my students merely read or only write. We act out scenes with our bodies. We memorize and perform poems to understand how the breath works and where the stresses fall. We take notes by hand so we’re forced to synthesize and compress knowledge, and not just record facts. I try to engage as many senses as possible, because real knowledge works by being present in so many different ways. Waldorf taught me that.
Judd Grimes
Judd Grimes, 8th Grade class of 2000
Earth who gives to us this food
Sun who makes it ripe and good
Dear earth, dear sun by you we live
Our loving thanks to you we give
Those words, a daily blessing I said at Merriconeag (Maine Coast Waldorf School), are words that resonate with me today. In fact, as a farmer, they are words I now live by. When I’m asked to think back on my Waldorf education, I can say without a doubt those years influenced me in a very positive way. My teachers fostered in me a love for the natural world which led me to pursue an education focused on agriculture and ultimately to the establishment of East Branch Farm in 2013, a certified organic farm in Durham, Maine. It is a dream come true to work outside with my hands everyday. It is laborious work but it calms me. As a child it was no different and anyone who knew me could tell you I could not sit still for long. The importance of movement in the Waldorf curriculum was a gift to me. Without the time we spent skiing through the forest, planting an herb garden, juggling or even doing eurythmy, I could not have sat down to write in our main lesson book without some major fidgeting. This is a simple yet powerful tool that I took with me; a breathing rhythm.
I went on to high school (Tabor Academy) and found that sports were where I could get that energy out. I played varsity soccer, lacrosse and even started a ski and snowboard team (with my now wife Meag) during the winter. I even went on to compete regionally as a member of the University of Vermont freestyle snowboard team while I was there pursuing my degree in ecological agriculture. When a lot of my friends were not so happy to be dealing with a long cold winter, I was out snowshoeing through the woods for a forest ecology lab I elected to take or flying through the air on my snowboard atop Mount Mansfield.
As a student I'm not sure I ever really thought about why we were learning things in the way we did. It was just school and all I knew. As a parent now with two kids of my own, I have a whole new lens through which to see the world of education. Choosing Maine Coast Waldorf School for our kids was not an automatic decision, although an obvious one once we started to look at other options. As the snow falls over the early childhood building and when I see my son walking off into the woods after his morning verse to do his “mighty strong work”, or he tells me a story about the seasons or that at school he learned to plant bulbs with their feet down, head up with their coats still on, or I watch my daughter follow the rhythm of the Parent-Toddler class with ease and comfort, there is no doubt in my mind that a Waldorf education is still the right choice for my family.
