“It takes a village”: Weekly Parents Circle and Waldorf Pedagogy for the Early Years with Erika Wieser

Online, Tuesdays 9pm – contact 99586369 for details

This is an ongoing series of consultations focusing on the Applied aspects of Waldorf-Steiner Early Years Education and unlearning-related wisdom, addressed to educators as well as interested parents. 

Current assignments

  • Collect individual articulations and put together a shared vision in keywords: Capture collective intention: what we wish for the child: which wishes do we have for the body: for the soul: for the spirit 
  • Parents Circle on Nonviolent Communication  and Ethos for parental cooperation

Themes covered

March 30, 9pm -The Twelve Senses: We have twelve senses and these senses are our doors to this world. How do we nourish these senses so that the child can have good roots in this reality?

  • Rhythm and transitions
  • Role models
  • Pedagogic material and activities
  • Family-specific questions and solutions
  • How to connect and meet age-specific challenges
  • Questions about each child’s developmental journey

Erika Wieser biography

I am a Kindergarten Teacher since 1978. Two years working in the Linz Tobacco Factory Kindergarten in Upper Austria showed me that I didn’t know anything about “difficult children” and that I had to continue my education. I went to Vienna for the next two years to complete the school for children with disabilities and then worked for the next 3 years in Christoph Lesigang’s outpatient department for children with multiple disabilities. Professor Lesigang was an excellent anthroposophic doctor for children and I was lucky to learn a lot from his behavior with children and parents. I worked with the children and gave advice to the parents. After the wonderful years in Vienna I came by accident to Greece where I fell in love with my husband Dimitris Papaioannou, a painter of Byzantine icons. When we came back to Austria, I worked for the next 10 years with children with severe disabilities in a dedicated kindergarten. In 1994 my daughter Myriam came to this world and changed my life. In 1996 I started studying Waldorf Education in Vienna which lasted 3 years, completing my final thesis on the subject of the tactile sense. For 5 years I was special assistant in the two Waldorf Kindergartens in Linz for children with additional needs, and finally, 13 years before my retirement, I started and led a natural Kindergarten on a farm focusing on Waldorf Education. Beside my work I taught for 10 years Basal Stimulation for Kindergarten teachers for children with additional needs. For three years I was working with adolescents with very difficult childhoods and trauma from the war in Bosnia. I am a trainer of health gymnastics since 1985. I am a beekeeper since 2005. Now I am in pension and I am lucky to do what I like most: to share my experiences.

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