Aeon Magazine

aeonone

Issue One June 2011

Published for the Glenaeon school community

Bob Ellis on Glenaeon

Our Story: Glenaeon, Castlecrag, Australia

West Side Story

AEON Issue One June 2011

Glenaeon’s origins lie in the initiative of the Anthroposophical Society to start a school in Sydney based on Dr Steiner’s educational impulse. From the pioneering work of

Lute Drummond, Marion Mahony Griffin, Eric Nicholls and Bob Williams, the Society sent Sylvia Brose to Edinburgh in the early 1950’s to train in Steiner pedagogy: she returned to Sydney after 4 years and the Glenaeon story began in 1957 with three students at Dalcross Kindergarten in Pymble.

The school is a testament to Sylvia’s vision and dedication over decades of striving to realize the ideals of Steiner education in Sydney. The Sylvia Brose Hall at Middle Cove, a centerpiece of the campus, stands as a living memorial in her honour.

Glenaeon in 2011 is spread across three campuses, with just under 400 students from Kindergarten to Year 12:

– a 34 place Preschool in Sydney Street, Willoughby;– our Castlecrag campus housing Playgroups, Kindergarten

and Classes 1 and 2;– our Middle Cove campus with Years 3 to 12.

Welcome to the first issue of AeOn, a magazine which gives a glimpse into the rich learning community that is Glenaeon, established as Australia’s first school for Rudolf Steiner education. The magazine will be a record of school life, featuring people and events that are important in our community.

Glenaeon pioneered the vision of a creative and collaborative education in Sydney: we look forward to a reinvigorated future where we can celebrate the unique community that has grown around the school. Aeon will be a voice and forum for the rich learning that remains the school’s core impulse. Whether currently involved with the school, or one of our many alumni families and friends, I invite you to enjoy in the following pages the unique vision of a Glenaeon education.

Hannah MacGregor in Year 11's production of West Side Story which played to two packed houses in the Sylvia Brose Hall at the end of Term 1.

Above. Sylvia Brose with her first class (circa 1957). Left. Sylvia Brose AoM with Class 8s in 2001.

AEONEditor: Andrew Hill Design: Campbell Van Venrooy (cvvdesign.com.au)

Glenaeon Rudolf Steiner School Ltd ABN 94 000 385 7685a Glenroy Avenue, Middle Cove NSW 2068 Phone: 9417 3193, Fax: 9417 5346, Email [email protected] www.glenaeon.nsw.edu.au

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Welcome to Aeon

Welcome to the first edition of Aeon Magazine on behalf of the Glenaeon School Council. We feel we are at the beginning of a new

era at Glenaeon, one with renewed energy and excitement about the future whilst holding a strong respect for and impulse from our journey so far. To all members of our community, current parents, students and teachers, we look forward to Aeon as a regular publication that will celebrate with you the rich and diverse life of the school.

In addition, we have been keen for some time to reconnect on a more formal and regular basis with Glenaeon Alumni and Friends – former students and parents, staff and others with a connection to the school – though it is only recently we have been able to dedicate real resources on an ongoing basis to this important aspect of our school community. I say quite deliberately that you are very important to us and we want you to feel connected to the school – in ways that suit you – and our plan is to facilitate and nourish that connection.

It is with this objective in mind that we have recently established the Glenaeon Alumni and Friends Association and have hired staff to focus on reconnecting with you (you may have heard from us recently in this regard) on an ongoing basis. We are hoping this magazine, which we plan to make a periodical, will assist you to understand what is going on at the school and in the Alumni and Friends community so you can feel connected and choose how you wish to be involved (even if it is simply reading, remembering and reminiscing). We want you to feel welcome to attend many school events and festivals, and we are also beginning to plan for specific Alumni and Friends events – at a class, era and general level and from casual get-togethers to more formal ‘happenings’.

We are very excited about the future for Glenaeon and equally keen to celebrate our past – including all of you whose lives have been touched by the school and who have helped shape Glenaeon into what it is today.

We very much look forward to reconnecting with you...

Ian DavisChair, Glenaeon School Council

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04 Re-imagining the wordBob ellis on Glenaeon »

06 Our story Glenaeon Castlecrag Australia »

10 Our placeAll these different ways »of understanding...

12 The power of one (teacher)

14 West Side Story

16 Glenaeon 2011

18 Where are they now?

AlumniLuke Fischer »Paul Beasly »Tamlyn Henderson »Jonathon notley »Mia Westcott »Monique De Jong »

TeachersRuth Purves »Scott Henderson »

contents

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When I first went to east Lismore Primary School in 1947 there were still bomb

shelters in backyards and a fear that a new big war with the Russians would soon break out. There were morning assemblies with oaths of loyalty to the King, rote-learning, rote-spelling, a national anthem, God Save the King, routine schoolyard bullying and a few sharp thwacks of the cane each month – on the hand, not the bottom – which we saw as a ritual of manhood in those days.

As was being in the cadets, playing war games away from home at age eleven, which I, from a pacifist religion, could not do. War was everywhere in our thoughts, and the atomic bomb, whose worst effects we were trained to evade by getting under the desk.

I felt, as a Seventh Day Adventist, an outsider. I could not play cricket on Saturday, nor go to the Saturday matinees at the cinema with my friends. I could not theoretically go to the movies either – there the Devil with heathen images tempted you to sin – though I did sneak out once a week with my mother’s connivance on my bicycle to see at the Star Court, Vogue and Vanity Theatre Alec Guinness movies, and The Ten Commandments and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Dam Busters and Reach for the Sky. We were God’s peculiar people, Pastor Breadon said and, boy, I felt that way pretty often,

sneaking out of the cinema and wondering who had seen me go on.

I was saved, if that is the word I want, and civilised and made whole as a human being by the technological accident of radio which filled my mind with images and stories I cast myself in as they came by night into my crystal set, and a microgroove record of the Marlon Brando-James Mason Julius Caesar, which I can recite by heart – As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him – and a teacher, Bill Maiden, whom I still see once a month at the Woy Woy fish restaurant to discuss the world’s news, and our long, long memories.

He taught me three times, for two weeks in 1951, for all of 1952, and in Modern History classes at Lismore High in 1957 and ’58. He made us sing, and write stories. He got the class of ’52 to write a novel, A Journey to the South Seas, in ten chapters, and read it out week after week to our peers. Mine concerned surviving dinosaurs on certain Pacific Islands, which Spielberg clearly stole from me forty years later, and the esteem which this gained for an otherwise tiny, bullied, frightened nerd, set me on the course which has made me a writer lifelong.

Bill believed in reading, and soon I was through David Copperfield, Kidnapped, White Fang, The Dam Busters, Boldness Be My Friend

and The Sword and the Stone and, as it were, on my way down the road that goes ever on and on, the life of the mind that, through dreaming to order, nourishes our sympathy and takes us through lives not our own to the forks in the road of those lives and their beautiful and terrible destinations.

There were such teachers as Bill in those years, often men who had been in the war and in flapping tents in monsoon rains had read Thucydides in the original Greek and orwell in orange Penguin paperbacks, but the culture did not favour them. The heroes of my day prevailed at rugby, and the swimming races, and the hundred yards sprints. It was the sissies like me who joined the drama groups, and the debating societies, and drew in charcoals and wrote satirical poems, and were more or less reviled for it.

I did not know that at that time the first Steiner Schools were beginning in this country and the kind of education I could barely imagine, powered by hundreds of teachers like Bill Maiden, was creeping into the leafier suburbs and stirring to magical thinking children my age.

But every now and then I glimpsed it. I had an eight millimetre projector, and some Chaplin films. I had a record of orson Welles and Bing Crosby reading The Happy Prince by oscar Wilde, and a record of The Snow Goose, the

Address to the opening evening of the inaugural Glenaeon Art Show

The inaugural Glenaeon Art Show got off to a stirring start with a festive opening that featured a speech by former Glenaeon parent Bob ellis, one of Australia’s leading writers and public intellectuals. Bob has written over 20 books, most recently Suddenly, Last Winter. His two children Jenny and Tom graduated from Glenaeon in 1997 and in 2001. Bob’s speech was warmly received by the large opening night crowd.

bob ellis on Glenaeon

re-imaGininG the Word:

fable of Dunkirk, starring Herbert Marshall as the hunchbacked hero in his little boat. My mother drove me to Mullumbimby one night to see Laurence olivier in Hamlet and the Young elizabethans came to town with Twelfth Night.

It was a near-run thing. A scholarship, narrowly discarded, bounced back to me, and I arrived a week late at Sydney University where Robert Hughes, Les Murray, Germaine Greer, Clive James, Bruce Beresford, John Bell, John Gaden, Richard Wherrett, Richard Butler, Richard Bradshaw, Richard neville, Michael Kirby, Mary Gaudron, Graham Bond and Geoffrey Robertson, were all in attendance, and soon, in the drama societies and the newspapers and magazines, and the pub talk and the philosophic wrangle I entered the world I had nearly missed.

It always happens in clusters, I learned then, as Glenaeon proves every year.

To say a life of the mind is a good thing to embrace and a useful nourishment of your one life on earth is still not as universally accepted, now, I think, as it was for a while in the nineteen sixties and early seventies. our current Prime Minister has never read an adult novel. The last American President did not read a book after university. Margaret Thatcher on achieving office had not been to a play at the national Theatre. All

over our university system, cut courses in history studies, and music studies, and fine arts and art history, and Latin, and Greek and archaeology, and even Persian though it was Persian scholars who cracked the Ultra Code in World War 2 and won it, thinned the blood of our learning and drove good teachers, great teachers, into early drunken retirement in Queensland and unpleasant climaxes to once promising lives.

These are not small matters because, as all here well know, a young person whose life is deprived of art, and participative art, or music or word music, or dance or the explored past, may end badly, in drug-pushing, or stalking, or real estates, or worse. Adolf Hitler did not achieve the art scholarship he yearned for and would, I think, have been saved by, and found in World War I and its lessons a different course for his life, and sixty million others.

All teaching is the business of saving souls. But the business of Steiner is greater than that. It is the summoning to a soul of its better angels who uplift to a high plane of possibility that creative magic, that unstoppable glittering energy, that may change the world.

An extraordinary film now showing, The Social Network, the best film about American greed and American competitiveness and American hubris and American

vengefulness since Wall Street, shows a life ill-chosen by a brilliant young man with Michelangelo possibilities who opted instead for the remorseless pursuit of billions through an adult toy of no great worth called Facebook, a sort of postcard brimming with trouble, when he might, had he been here, had he studied here, have been a painter, or puppeteer, a song writer, a set designer, a beloved friend of good friends instead.

I have two angelic children formed and shaped by the Steiner system and its celebration, its drawing out, its enhancement and congratulation of human possibilities. And I know how close each came to destruction before they arrived within its rooms and corridors of love. I know how much I owe, and I stand on the dock observing the voyage out of a future generation in a time more testing in its choices and its temptations than any before it, and I toast it, and I wish it bon voyage.

This exhibition is a measure of the great artistic diaspora of the children of Glenaeon whose homeward yearning far-off angel hearts remember from far Babylons of exile and longing how good it was, for a time, and what a time it was, it really was, in these hallowed rooms with these magic weapons of brush and charcoal, canvas, easel and sketch-pad, re-imagining the word.


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Last year on Friday October 29th the school officially opened our new hall The Marion Mahony Griffin Hall and other facilities at Castlecrag.

We were delighted to host the Hon Peter Garrett, Minister for School education, early

Childhood and Youth, representing the Australian government, who performed the official opening. Interestingly enough we learned from Mr Garrett that his brother Matthew had attended Glenaeon from 1968, and he himself had almost enrolled his daughter here before the family moved to the southern highlands: a happy connection that was reflected in his entertaining speech. other invited guests include the Mayor of Willoughby, Cr Pat Reilly, and Mr James Fitzpatrick, the President of the Castlecrag Progress Association, who spoke of the new and growing relationship between the school and the Castlecrag community.

This BeR funded building represents a particularly important confluence of Glenaeon’s history with that of our nation. In 1914 Walter Burley Griffin and his wife Marion Mahony arrived in Australia from Chicago, having just won the world-wide competition to design Australia’s new capital city Canberra. Into that plan, Griffin poured his wide understanding of landscape architecture based on his study of the great ancient cities of the world such as Athens and Rome.

After laying out the basic plan of the city, he left Canberra and settled in Castlecrag, Sydney where he and Marion worked to create a new kind of community, one that embedded houses into Sydney bushland, where houses built of sustainable and local products were linked together with the environment rather than being on their separate quarter acre blocks. Ahead of their time, the Griffin’s established a new kind

1/4. The Marion Mahony Griffin Hall

2/3. new class rooms at Castlecrag

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“our story: Glenaeon,

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of social community in Castlecrag: through the 1920’s and early 30’s of the last century, they brought together a diverse range of people interested in new and creative ideas.

In Castlecrag they also discovered the work of Dr Rudolf Steiner who was then still alive and active in europe: in Anthroposophy they found a contemporary spiritual path that inspired their own explorations. Marion established study groups on Dr Steiner’s work, and she became particularly active in Dr Steiner’s ideas on education. There was a small kindergarten in Sunnyside Crescent with which she worked, and her vision was always that there would one day be a school for Dr Steiner’s education in Castlecrag.

it was not to be in her lifetime. After Walter’s death in 1937, she returned to the US, but left

behind a vibrant group of people who actively championed the cause of Steiner education. one of her friends and co-workers was Lute Drummond who as Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society introduced many people to Dr Steiner’s work. one of these people was Sylvia Brose, then a young woman involved with the Castlecrag group. She was so inspired that the Anthroposophical Society supported her to go to europe to train as a Steiner teacher, and on her return she established the first Steiner school in Australia at Pymble.

...When in 1994 the school was able to acquire the old Castlecrag Infants School for our own Kindergarten and early years, it was the realisation of Marion’s original vision....

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castlecraG, australia


Our story: Glenaeon, Castlecrag, Australia continued

When a bequest of land was left to the Anthroposphical Society, they sold the land

(believing it to be too far from the population centres of Sydney: how things change!) and bought our site at Middle Cove. The name of the property at Belrose was Glenaeon, so as was custom at the time, the name was transferred to the new property bought with the proceeds of the sale. The Kindergarten at Pymble was sold and Glenaeon Rudolf Steiner School was consolidated at 5a Glenroy Ave, Middle Cove.

Such is Glenaeon’s story. When in 1994 the school was able to acquire the old Castlecrag Infants School for our own Kindergarten and early years, it was the realisation of Marion’s original vision. A school based on Dr Rudolf Steiner’s educational

practice, providing an education for the whole child and founded on spiritual principles, was now in existence in her beloved Castlecrag.

Since 1994 we have used the original buildings of the old school. now for the first time, and courtesy the generous BeR grant from the Commonwealth government, we have been able to put our own stamp on the property in the form of a purpose designed and built hall, library and classroom, and admin facilities. And in honour of Marion’s founding vision and inspiration for both Glenaeon and Castlecrag, the new hall is named the Marion Mahony Griffin Hall.

1. Inside the new hall. 2. Christian Lillicrap directs the

Glenaeon chamber choir.3. Mr James Ftzpatrick, President of

Castlecrag Progress Association 4. Hugo Lee and Will Hoffman,

Year 11 students. 5. L-R Collegiate Chair Andrew Hill,

Hon Peter Garrett, Minister for School Education, Mayor of Willoughby, Councillor Pat Reilly, and Ian Davis, Chair, Gleaeon School Council.

6. Class 2 welcome the Minister while Mary Heard, Campus Secretary, looks on.

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Marion was a remarkable woman in her own right. She was just the second woman to graduate from M.I.T., and was the first woman to be registered as an architect in US history. She worked closely with Frank Lloyd Wright in his Chicago office, where in fact she met Walter. It is accepted by architectural authorities that she was responsible for significant elements of Walter’s designs, and that much of Walter’s provenance of work was in fact a joint effort between the two of them. Her outstanding drawings of the original plan of Canberra were important factors in their winning the competition. She was involved in the founding of our nation’s capital, in founding the community of Castlecrag, and in the founding of Glenaeon school.

Marion’s life combined the elements that still inspire Glenaeon: reverence for nature, an artistic impulse, a commitment to beauty in design, a realisation of the classical ideals of Goodness, Beauty and Truth, an emphasis on balance of the whole human being, a commitment to community. The story of Marion Mahony Griffin brings the stories of Glenaeon, Castlecrag and indeed Australia together: it is one of which all members of our community can be proud.

...Since 1994 we have used the original buildings of the old school. now for the first time, and courtesy the generous BeR grant, …we have been able to put our own stamp on the property in the form of a purpose designed and built hall, library and classroom, and admin facilities…

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A year or so ago the Good Weekend in the Sydney Morning Herald had as its guest in the regular Your Time Starts Now column someone called Adrian Keating. There is always one question which goes: Your earliest memory is… and Adrian’s answer was “Playing in the bush at Glenaeon”. What a pleasant surprise to find our school mentioned in the national press. I followed up and found that Adrian had been a student at Glenaeon in the 80’s and is now a professional violinist.

i was reminded of Adrian’s note last week when teacher Catherine Pilko showed me some of the

writings from her class about their current Main Lesson, Our Place: An introduction to the Geography of our local area. In this main lesson the children are introduced to the subject of Geography through a study of the school grounds, then extending out to look at the local area of Willoughby.

Here is what student Julian Kopkas wrote describing his appreciation of the Glenaeon grounds…

‘Our little school is an amazing place… birds humming in the trees, brush turkeys tapping at the classroom door, blue tongue lizards scuttling around the rocks and kookaburras laughing for no particular reason at all. But the really amazing thing about the school is the Bush… silent creeks, noisy waterfalls, damp grass, ticklish ferns and a clear blue sky. So it is the perfect place for a bushwalk…’

The children learn their first mapping skills and Lindsay Sherrot,

our esteemed groundsman who knows literally every tree on the site, takes them on guided walks to introduce them to the secrets of the Glenaeon grounds. They see the three waterfalls that adorn our property, walk down to Scotts Creek as it curves through mangroves out to Middle Harbour, and follow the foreshore around to both Castle Cove and Castlecrag. There are many magnificent trees on the grounds, and some outstanding sandstone formations, including a number with indigenous significance. There are birds and animals that use the grounds as a corridor between adjacent bush areas. The finale of this intensive study of our site is an overnight camp on the oval where some parents join the class for the first step in the outdoor component of the Active Wilderness Program which runs through the whole school.

As the students grow older we study the grounds in a more sophisticated way, and their appreciation deepens. Here is the comment from a Year 12 student

Lindsay Sherrott and Wincki Chevalier, our long term bush regenerators and friends of the Middle Cove grounds.

“our Place: all these different Waysof understandinG...

“Since I started at Glenaeon in Class 5, there have always been particular spots in the school grounds where I love to be. One of those spots is on the grass near the oval bridge… I thought of all the different ways I appreciated and understood this spot. When I was in primary school, the class took bushwalks through here to get to let us get to know the land a bit better, and to feel at home in the school’s massive grounds. In early high school we were taken here for a Botany main lesson and were taught the names of the native plants and animals by Lindsay the school bush regenerator. Now in my final year, I was studying the biophysical interactions and hydrological processes of this dry sclerophyll scrub forest ecosystem for Geography. I sat there thinking about how the school had provided me with all of these different ways of understanding and appreciating the natural environment I was so lucky to be in every day. Doing this gave me the feeling of peace I needed to get through the next few hours…”

So wrote Georgia Van Toorn in her Year 12 major project thesis in 2005, describing how she prepared to present a Forum to 150 people in the school hall on the topic of The environment in Modern Western Thought. Her words speak for many students, teachers and parents about the special environment that is the Middle Cove grounds. Generations of students have revelled in the school’s bushland setting, a place

for games, play and wondering at some of nature’s many messages. Adrian Keating’s comment in the Good Weekend speaks for many former students, in whose reminiscences’ “playing in the bush” almost always gets a mention as a highlight of their time at Glenaeon.

But our bush cannot be taken for granted, for it was not always so pristine. Vast tracts of lantana choked the creeks, and all sorts of exotics were in competition with the natives. over the past twenty years, Lindsay Sherrott with co-worker Winki Chevalier have cleared the intruders and brought the bush back to some semblance of its former state. Such bush is a unique place to spend childhood and adolescence, a piece of Australian nature that is a beautiful and healthy backdrop to school and learning.

It is also a unique place to learn about. over their years at Glenaeon, we provide a range of ways of learning about our grounds. Starting with play, then through exploring, and on to scientific awareness: as Georgia put it, “all of these different ways of understanding” this unique bushland setting for a school.

And it all starts in this Class 4 Geography Main Lesson. An important background is of course the indigenous heritage, and learn how the Cameraygal people, the original owners, lived and connected with their land. We learn about the almost religious feeling the first owners had for their land, expressed through their creation

stories, and try to build a sense of reverence in how we treat the bush.

The children produce a book of drawings, maps and written reports about their experiences. The main lesson lays a foundation for a deeper connection with our grounds, one that builds respect and a sense of stewardship for this particular part of our native heritage. We hope that for the children, it will help make “our playground” into our Place.

…‘our little school is an amazing place… birds humming in the trees, brush turkeys tapping at the classroom door, blue tongue lizards scuttling around the rocks and kookaburras laughing for no particular reason at all …


dr Steiner suggested that as we emerge from the sense of “oneness” of early childhood,

we need a guide to take us into the diverse world that lies before us. Around the age of 7 and 8, as we step out of Kindergarten, the child has a real longing to look up to an authority, a guide, a mentor. naturally this need can be with us as individuals at different times in life, but this moment at this particular age seems to be a general stage through which children pass. Many cultures take this step for granted in child development, and have arranged education accordingly. In many parts of europe, Scandinavia in particular, children traditionally stayed with the one teacher for a significant period of their primary schooling. The master-apprentice relationship of the middle ages was also recognition of the need for this authority.

The word “mentor” comes from Homer’s The odyssey of ancient Greece: the hero odysseus places his son Telemachus in the care of his friend Mentor who guides the growing boy while his father is away on his adventures. This ancient origin gives an indication of the “mentor” qualities that we look for

in the Class Teacher: a relationship of care, guidance and support, over time. Dr Steiner describes the class teacher’s relationship to the growing child as one of “loving authority” which suggests the two aspects of warmth and form:

warmth » : providing a warm, secure relationship of trust and support;form » : someone the child can look up to and who provides a sense of direction and guidance.

As the children grow and change, the relationship changes as well over the years. From the all-embracing, 3rd parent-like relationship of Class 1 and 2, the child moves to a secure sense of someone to respect, trust and look up to over a long period. And there are many other teachers: Craft, Languages and eurythmy, then Sport, Library and Music teachers as well. There is no sense of all the eggs being in one basket, that the Class Teacher is the sole authority through the primary years: in fact we became a little alarmed earlier this year when we discovered that one class has 9 different teachers for the variety of subjects that we offer. Within this diversity the Class Teacher provides

Sometime each year we say a goodbye to a Class Teacher who has come through a cycle with his or her class, and it’s always a moment to reflect on this most distinctive aspect of a Glenaeon education, and of Steiner education as a movement.

the PoWer of one (teacher)

a secure and continuing focus to the growing child, the “still centre of a turning world” to quote T.S. eliot.

This “still centre” gives great security. We would never claim to be the best teachers, let alone the best human beings: but we are there, for the child, as a continuing presence, to begin each morning’s work, and to conclude each afternoon with a handshake and a farewell word. Most importantly we are there at the end of a school year, and the child knows we will be there at the beginning of the next year. At Glenaeon there is not the insecurity about “next year’s” teacher. At a time in the child’s life when that security is of paramount importance, we provide just the right amount of continuity while change is always coming.

And change it does: around Class 6 the Class Teacher moves from being seen by the children as the all-knowing authority to be more a “tour guide”. Instead of instructions that start “now what we are going to do is…”, there is a move to “How about we look at …?” The once infallible authority becomes questioned: in the early years there is immense security for the child to have a sense that our teacher “knows stuff”, and

maybe even everything. now as we approach the teenage years in Class 6 there is more power in the child/young person questioning for himself or herself, and the teacher models a questioning, open attitude.

Finally there comes closure to the relationship: in years 7 and 8 the Class Teacher steps back and subject teachers take charge of their individual disciplines: each subject in the high school is taught by a fully qualified specialist with a degree in his or her discipline. But the young person of 13 and 14 still needs a home base and the Class Teacher is there to be that bridge into the burgeoning independence of the adolescent world.

Sometime in Year 8 there is a hand over: the Class Teacher passes over to Guardians who take on the pastoral care of the class from Year 9 up to Year 12. The Guardian may not teach the class at all, but they are there at the beginning and end of the day, and they are the main point of contact between parent and school. The “one” relationship of the Class Teacher and the child has metamorphosed into many relationships with teachers, each one now based on an authority as a subject specialist.

At the end of Term 2 last year Sophie Forman said good bye to Class 8, a class she had guided so admirably since Class 1 in 2003. Her class community of students and parents gave her a beautiful farewell, celebrating the journey they had undertaken together.

Sophie taught the class with a wonderful combination of depth, rigour and artistic richness: her work with the Main Lessons was particularly painstaking in developing imaginative perspectives that will provide inspirations for her students throughout their lives.

Sophie took some well earned long service leave for the second half of 2010, and then met her new Class 1 on the first day of term 2011. The children said goodbye to their Kindergarten teachers, then walked through a tunnel of Class 2 children singing a welcome song before greeting Sophie, their new teacher, at the door of their new classroom. A new journey begins!

...the Class Teacher provides a secure and continuing focus to the growing child...


West Side Story is one of the most enduring and popular of 20th century music theatre pieces. Challenging even for professionals, the show is a considerable challenge for a school to put on, and especially for a whole year group. But our Year 11 did it, with some help from Year 9, and did it magnificently.

West Side Story played to 2 packed houses in the Sylvia Brose Hall at the end

of Term 1. There was universal acclaim for the level of singing, dancing and acting from the cast, and the production team of teachers and parents who worked so hard behind the scenes. over the years Gleaneon has staged some memorable pieces of theatre, and the West Side Story of 2011 will live long in the memory.

The JetsRiff Jeremy EngelTony Steffan LazarevicAction Sam Shaw A-rab Angus BratterBaby John Tom SandbergSnowboy Tiaan MackenzieBig Deal Joshua Pagni

Jets GirlsGraziella Emily WestVelma Hannah MacgregorAnybodys Cency van den DoolEnsemble Kate Boag,

Lily Penfold, Shanti Graham, Taylor Steele, Johanna Evans

The SharksBernado Alex IpingChino Jordan TaylorPepe Joshua PorteousIndio Tarran Webster Luis Zoot Mallon

Sharks GirlsMaria Taelor HanleyAnita Tatum Kenna Rosalia Faith LewisConsuela Charlotte LehmanFrancisca Claire Brown Ensemble Chelsea Mayer,

Cleo Spears, Daphne van den Dool, Pia Hofstetter

AdultsDoc Scott HendersonSchrank Dylan BarclayKrupke Cody SheridanGlad Hand Jake Heins

ProductionDirectors Scott Henderson

and Liz ChanMusical Director Christian LillicrapChoreography Liz Chan with advice

from Jackie Rawlings and Betty Graham


Indian Main Lesson Class 5 brought their Ancient

India Main Lesson to a festive finale last term in sumptuous fashion with an Indian feast in the classroom. Class Teacher Catherine Pilko led the children through Indian stories, songs and culture culminating in a gathering that all these elements of the ancient Indian experience to life. A bevy of parents cooked all morning, producing a magnificent feast that was enjoyed by all outside the classroom in Indian style.

Track and Field and Poolover the past year Glenaeon has

built sporting connections with many other schools. In Term 1 we held our inaugural Swimming Carnival for Years 7 to 10 with Lorien-novalis, Linuwel and Central Coast Steiner Schools. The day event at Lane Cove pool was a huge success with swim heroes emerging from the water to the acclaim of the crowd. At the start of Term 2 we held an Athletics carnival with the same schools, this time travelling to the central coast for the event. We are also part of ISD, a sporting association of independent schools in Sydney that holds 6 events per year to which we send teams: winners of events then move to representative events and then to state levels.

Glenaeon 2011

Sculpture in the GardenYear 9 have been carving large

limestone blocks as part of their Artisan program: the results have made an impressive addition to our new biodynamic garden at Middle Cove. Visual Arts teacher Nigel Hoffman has worked over the past semester with the students to produce sculptures inspired by natural organic forms in Nature. The forms make a striking complement to the rich and verdant life of the garden plants.

The Sylvia Brose Hall

Building

AppeAlA centrepiece of the school is

the Sylvia Brose Hall, named in

honour of Glenaeon’s founding

teacher. Completed in 1985, the

hall is a significant reminder

of the powerful tradition

established by this remarkable

woman who pioneered Steiner

education in Australia. In 2011

we are looking to revamp and

refurbish this important place

in the school’s tradition, the

site of countless plays, concerts,

assemblies, festivals, gatherings

and important events in the life

of the school. The Sylvia Brose

Hall Building Appeal will enable

us to revitalise and uplift this

iconic building at Glenaeon.


where are they

noW?Luke Fischer

Luke Fischer is back in Sydney at the moment: Luke was in our class of ‘96, before going to Sydney University where he gained First Class Honours in Philosophy. He went on to gain a Ph.D in philosophy, and after time in Germany was based in Philadelphia, USA where his wife taught at one of the Universities there. Luke is preparing his Ph.D for publication as a book, and is also a published poet. He is working on Post Doctoral Scholarship application, and has been involved in marking our Year 12 student’s projects.

Paul BeaslyAfter completing an Advanced

Science degree at University of nSW, Paul (Class of 97) went on work for the CSIRo in fibre optics, then to a US telecommunications company Mimix Broadband. Paul was based for a time in the Houston, Texas head office where he completed an MBA at the University of Texas. He is now in Denver, Colorado, married to Wendy and his step daughter attends the Denver Waldorf School.

Tamlyn Henderson Tamlyn Henderson, also Class of

97, was in edinburgh in 2010 with his show The Jinglists appearing in the edinburgh Festival Fringe. After graduating from the West Australian Performing Arts Academy, Tam made a name for himself in a number of major shows. The Jinglists was his own creation, and in edinburgh it was something of a Glenaeon show: Stage Manager was Charlotte Grien (Class of 07), Tech Manager was James Collins (Class of 97) and Front of House was Angie Grien (Class of 09).

Jonathon Notley Jonathon notley (Class of 99)

is getting to be widely know as the “Bliss” in highly successful hip-hop trio Bliss N Eso which he formed with fellow former Glenaeon student Max MacKinnon. The trio is now the biggest thing in Australian hip-hop, and last year were the first Australian hip-hop group to tour the USA. Quoting directly from Wikipedia:

on August 8, 2010 Bliss n eso’s fourth studio album Running on Air debuted on the Australian ARIA charts at number one. It was the first album to knock eminem off the top spot in 6 weeks and

received significant acclaim for this feat. Bliss n eso also had 2 albums and 3 singles in the Urban charts during this week. The trio’s previous album Flying Colours remains in the ARIA charts after 114 weeks.

Mia WestcottMia was In our graduating Class

of 2005) and after travelling and working for a gap year, started at Sydney University before transferring to Medicine at the University of newcastle. She is now in her 4th year, having completed some exciting elective terms in remote area medicine in the far north West, and another in the Solomon Islands.

Monique De Jong (now Clark)

Monique was one of our first students to undertake the Major Project option and spent a year learning and performing Clown Doctoring at Westmead hospital. Monique went on to study architecture at the University of Sydney, and worked in Canberra on the new national Portrait Gallery. Returning to Sydney she is now working for a midsized architectural firm in the CBD.

1. Luke Fisher2. Paul Beasly3. Mia Westcott4. Monique de Jong (Clark)

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alumni

Ruth Purves

ruth Purves began as a Class Teacher at Glenaeon in 1990, and took two classes through

the 8 year cycle. Her three sons also attended Glenaeon. After a time away in Bowral Ruth returned to the school in 2008 to work with the current Class 6 when they were in Classes 3 to 5.

This year she has moved into a new role in the school, turning her passion for biodynamic gardening into a new educational path. Ruth was involved in the design and building of our new garden in early 2009, and over the past two years she has spent countless hours in nurturing this new and beautiful part of the Middle Cove campus. Adjacent to the Sylvia Brose Hall, the garden is based on Dr Rudolf Steiner’s advanced organic method of agriculture, known as Biodynamics. The results have been profuse: the garden now produces vegetables, flowers and fruit in abundance. Classes 3 to 6 spend time each week in the garden learning about all aspects of horticulture, and are the proud guardians of their own garden beds.

Ruth networks with other schools, has hosted meetings of interested teachers from around the local area and has even won some first prizes from Rotary for her garden work. She also has established a Friends of the Garden group for any parents or friends who are interested in working with the garden. All are welcome!

Scott Henderson

scott began as a Glenaeon parent (of Tamlyn and Troy from 1982 – 1997), and later Joined

the staff in 1992, teaching Science (Biology in particular) and later Drama. He is now on his 4th Guardian class currently in Year 11: others were 93-96, 98-01, 03-06. He has also been very involved in the broader life of the school as a past member of College, School Council, and the former Executive Committee.

Scott has a background as both a Science teachers, and as a professional actor. In this latter role he has contributed enormously to the life of theatre at Glenaeon. He greatly enjoyed co-directing Fiddler on the Roof, Peer Gynt, Tale of Two Cities and this year West Side Story as well as many smaller scale productions including The Physicists, The Sport of My Mad Mother and The Good Doctor.

A highlight of his time has been outdoor education – Scott pioneered the Year 10 cross-country snow camp in 1994, and he also used to run a Biology camp on the South Coast. However he says the recent Year 11 camp to Central Australia was one of the most memorable of all his camps.

Scott spent 4 months of sabbatical in 2001-02 doing a postgraduate certificate in Antarctic Studies at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch. The unforgettable centrepiece was 2 weeks in Antarctica, camping on the Ross Ice Shelf, and visiting Scott’s huts.

Scott attended the Steiner World Teachers’ Conference at Dornach, Switzerland in 2008, an extraordinary gathering that really brought home to him the international strength and integrity of Steiner education.

Looking back over his time at the school, Scott says he is very fortunate to have spent most of his working life at Glenaeon, surrounded by supportive and inspirational colleagues, as well as vibrant young people who constantly surprise, delight, challenge and don’t let you grow old!

Ruth Purves with students in the Middle Cove Biodynamic garden

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The Many Faces of Scott Henderson1. Year 12 Formal 19942. Rockclimbing 19953. Peer Gynt4. Antarctica 20015. ‘Doc’, West Side Story 2011

teachers

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Aeon magazine is printed on CyclusPrint Matt, which is 100% recycled. Made entirely from post-consumer waste (making it a ‘true' recycled grade), and is produced in a unique ‘closed loop’ production process ensuring that all bi-products are reused and recycled.

Mid Winter Festival 21-22 June Les Miserables 27-29 July

Spring Festival 9 September Open Day 18 September Family Fair 5 November Carol Service 5 December


We welcome all former students, parents and friends to join us for these key events later in the year.

cominG events

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