Grade School Faculty

Betsy Weill: Grade One Teacher

Betsy Weill was born in New York City. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania where she studied architecture. When she was 21, Rudolf Steiner's work kept jumping onto her path. Later, in 1980, a desire to teach children led her to Pacific Oaks College to get a teaching credential and then on to the brand new Seattle Waldorf School, where she was a student teacher and after school care provider.  After a year in the wild hinterlands of Idaho, she went to the Waldorf Institute in Detroit and returned to take a class from 1984 through 1992. Since then she has worked as a mentor in various Waldorf schools and as a preschool teacher of the “Ragamuffins.” She was also a founding member and co-director of the Sound Circle Center Teacher Training. She continued her education by taking the Spacial Dynamics training from 2004–2009. Presently she lives with her husband and their two teenagers, who attend the Seattle Waldorf High School.

Mary Ellingson: Grade Two Teacher

Mary was born in Bloomington, Indiana. She spent her early elementary years living on Washington’s Long Beach peninsula and still feels a strong tie to that area. Later in elementary school her family moved to Tacoma where she spent the rest of her childhood. Diverse interests in college led her to Fairhaven College within Western Washington University, where she designed a concentration in “The Development of Personality.” After graduation, she joined the Waldorf Foundation Year program in Eugene, OR. She then completed the Teacher Training program at Antioch New England Graduate School, where she received a M.Ed., Elementary Teaching Credential and Waldorf Certificate. Mary served as Lower Grades Assistant, then as Class Teacher for the class of 2013 in grades one through eight. She begins with her new fist grade class in fall 2010.

Carolyn Harris: Grade One Assistant

Carolyn was born in Haight Ashbury, San Francisco, the year before the "Summer of Love".  She spent her grade school years living in an adobe home and running through the sagebrush of the deserts of New Mexico. During her high school years she skied in the mountains of Utah and was an exchange student for a year in Austria. She attended Smith and Dartmouth college where she studied literature, poetry, and psychology. During her college years Carolyn ran four marathons.  After college, her studies and interest in Joseph Cambell and Carl Jung led to a master's degree in psychology from Antioch University in Seattle. Carolyn's love of nature, cultural celebrations, and the creative, healing curriculum of Waldorf education led her to receive her Waldrof teaching certificate from Sound Circle in 2009. Carolyn is married and has two children attending the Seattle Waldorf School.

Gretchen Matis: Lower Grade Assistant

Gretchen was raised in Phoenix, Arizona. Ever since high school, she wanted to be a teacher. In college, other interests like photography led her down a different path, and she graduated with a B.A. in Communication from Arizona State University. She worked in advertising and married in New York, became an editor/designer in Houston, and directed children’s programs at the High Museum in Atlanta. It was there that she and her husband became therapeutic foster parents and she renewed her interest in education. A dear friend told her, “If you are a teacher, you are a Waldorf teacher,” and handed her a stack of books on the subject. She was sold on page one. She graduated from the Waldorf Teacher Training Program in Eugene, Oregon, and became the teacher for Seattle Waldorf School’s Class of 2005 from first through fourth grade. She later taught first and second grade at Bright Water School in Seattle. Now, in the in-between times, she pursues a writer’s life. Her two daughters attend Seattle Waldorf School.

Wim Gottenbos: Grade Three Teacher

Born and raised in the Netherlands, Wim earned a masters degree in education and worked as a public school teacher before becoming trained in Waldorf education. He was a class teacher at the Brabant Waldorf School in Eindhoven, where he took two classes from grades 1-8 and 1-6. He also worked as a remedial teacher for several years, and was process manager for all remedial work in the school. In 1996, he earned degrees in Remedial Teaching and Intern Pedagogical Management. He moved to Seattle to join our school in 2000, where he has taken two classes from grades 4-8 and 5-8, and for several years was the chair of the college of teachers. He has taught adult education and mentored teachers in the Seattle area, as well as in Czechoslovakia, Toronto and Vancouver BC. He is married to Nettie Fabrie and enjoys keeping bees.

Sara Canady: Grade Four Teacher

Sara Canady was born in San Francisco and later moved to Denver, Colorado where she spent most of her school years. She attended Pacific University in Oregon and Indiana University in Bloomington, earning a B.A. in Modern Languages and her M.A. in Applied Linguistics. After teaching English as a second language in China and at colleges in the U.S., Sara left teaching to begin raising her own family. Sara completed the Sound Circle Teacher Training in 2007. Her four children attend Seattle Waldorf School.

Kate Golden: Grade Five Teacher

Kate is a graduate of Kenyon College with a B.A. in Sociology. She received her teacher training at Antioch New England Graduate School and has been a Waldorf class teacher for 16 years. In addition to Waldorf teaching, Kate is interested in handcrafts, singing and world travels. She is married to Claude Golden and has two children, both fine examples of the benefits of a Waldorf education.

Kristen Rice: Grade Six Teacher

Kristen Rice grew up in the Midwest, mostly in Michigan and Wisconsin. She graduated from the University of Michigan with a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and a Secondary Teaching Certificate. Kristen received her Waldorf teacher training at the Waldorf Institute in Detroit, Michigan. She has taught as a class teacher at several different Waldorf Schools including the Santa Fe Waldorf School, the Rudolf Steiner School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Pleasant Ridge Waldorf School in Viroqua, Wisconsin, and most recently, the Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs in New York. Kristen has been class teaching for the past twenty years. She is a wife and mother of four children, and she enjoys her family, backpacking, guitar, yoga and solitude.

Susan Brudi: Grade Seven Teacher

Susan was born and raised in a small town near Berkeley, CA. She spent her childhood playing in the creeks and waters of the bay, and riding horses and milking goats with lifelong friends on a large ranch near Sacramento, CA. She attended colleges in California, Colorado and Oregon where she earned her B.A. and M. Ed. degrees in bilingual and elementary education. Susan has taught grades 1-5 in Seattle public schools, worked as a Kindergarten assistant at the Bright Water School, and earned her Waldorf Teaching Certificate from Sound Circle Teacher Training. Susan is married to a ”second generation" Waldorf school graduate from Stuttgart, Germany, and their three sons now attend Seattle Waldorf School.

Mark Perry: Grade Eight Teacher

Mark was born and raised in Seattle. He received his B.A. in English for Secondary Education, with a history minor, from the University of Washington. He lived and worked in Europe for five years, and spent one year in Eurythmy School at Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland. Mark spent his time as a professional actor in Seattle throughout the eighties. After working in the Seattle and Edmonds public schools, he joined our faculty in 1995, graduating the 2003 eighth grade.