Alumni Stories

“I remember this place like it was yesterday!” Anya Mullen says when picking up her daughter, LydiaMarie, from her day in Miss Linda’s kindergarten. Anya, who graduated from SWS in 2004, also had Miss Linda, one of the founding teachers at SWS. In addition, Anya’s teacher, Cynthia, who taught her from first through eighth grade, has a daughter in the kindergarten class alongside LydiaMaria. “The connection is real. It feels like a family,” Anya says. “Cynthia and I shook hands on the first day I brought LydiaMaria at the start of this school year, just like we shook hands every day when I came here as a student.” She is thrilled that her daughter will also receive this experience, this education that strives to inspire its students to think, feel, and act with depth, imagination, and purpose.

Anya began her journey at SWS when she was also LydiaMarie’s age, and couldn’t imagine an education any other way, for herself or her daughter. Along with a deep connection to community that her years at the school instilled, she feels that the school was with her–intellectually, emotionally, and physically—for each step along the way. She vividly recalls class trips, a touchstone of Waldorf education that serves to expand the students’ world through hands-on experiences and direct observation.  “My mom said I just didn’t want to leave the site, I was so in awe,” Anya says of an eighth grade trip to an archaeological dig in Jamestown. Years later, she would go on to major in Anthropology at Ursinus College, still kindling that spark from her class’s outing. “By the time you get to eighth grade,” Anya says, “you realize you haven’t had a typical education. I wrote my college admissions essay on my experience here, because I felt it was so profound and truly made me stand out.”