As this school year comes to a close, Dorothea Davis—or Ms. Thea as our early childhood children affectionately call her—will transition from her role in our Early Childhood program to join her husband Gregg in building community at Camphill Heartbeet Lifesharing in Vermont. Dorothea has been a part of our Early Childhood faculty for 11 years.
Her first encounter with Hawthorne Valley came in the late 1990s when she visited the area for trainings while she was living and working at a Camphill community in Pennsylvania.
“I would stay with a friend at Hawthorne Valley, and I would walk around the valley and the creek and just loved it,” she says. “I even thought to myself back then, if I have a family, I would love to live here and have the children go to school here. The nature here is just so nourishing and healing.”
After a few more years in Pennsylvania and an interlude living in England, Dorothea and her family settled in Columbia County, and their daughters Julia ’20 and Johanna ’23 joined Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School (HVS) as a second grader and a Morning Star. Soon after that, Dorothea became involved in helping run the Kinder Camp as the Meadowlark leader and then joined the Early Childhood faculty as the Morning Star assistant.
Dorothea has a long history as a Waldorf early childhood educator rooted in her upbringing near the Baltic Sea in Eastern Germany. Though Waldorf schools were not permitted by the Communist government there, her parents—Anthroposophists and active members of the Christian Community Church—ensured her childhood was filled with adventures out in nature. As a young adult, Dorothea was passionate about creating such opportunities for all children in Germany. She was an activist for social change, and as things in Eastern Germany did change, she founded a Waldorf kindergarten that is still operating today.
In her time at HVS, Dorothea has served as the assistant teacher in both the Morning Star and Rose Kindergartens, the Trillium Forest Kindergarten lead teacher during the Covid years, a swing support teacher in Early Childhood, and the Marigold Aftercare Program teacher. In every role, she has had the opportunity to share her love of nature and adventures with the children under her care. She recounts times when the children quietly observed the animals they find on walks, the way they explore and tend to their special play areas in the forest, or rest in hammocks set out amongst the trees while listening to stories.
“There are so many important experiences that we can have in nature that inform how we care for and see the land, how we build and create,” she says.
Dorothea also has had great joy in seeing the children she helped care for in kindergarten as they’ve grown and developed in the grades. They will frequently wave to her as she leads the kindergarteners around campus, and she is a frequent audience member to see their class plays. “I think that is a gift for us at Hawthorne Valley that we can have that continuity and see the children who began their journey with us as they go through the grades,” she says.
While Dorothea will miss the community and the children here, she looks forward to returning to a Camphill setting. At Heartbeet, she and Gregg will set up a household, and she is excited to once again take up the work of community building and cultivating the festival life.
“I’m so excited to have that wholeness in my life again and co-create that wholeness in a community where your social, cultural, and spiritual life can happen together. It’s a beautiful community,” she says and then adds with a smile. “And not the least of it, some of the best contra dancing in the country is close by.”
We wish to extend our thanks to Dorothea for her years of service to our Early Childhood Program, and hope to see her and her family in the valley on frequent visits.
