Mentors and Friends of Yellow Train
C R Swaminathan – Mentor and Managing Trustee
C R Swaminathan is one of the most renowned leaders in the state in the field of education, having led PSG Educational Institutions in the forefront for 41 years. He has held offices in several leading capacities with various Boards, Committees, companies and educational institutions. Some of the offices he has held over the last four decades include;
Former Member State Planning Commission Government of Tamilnadu
Joint Secretary – Indian Council for child welfare. Chairman CII Southern Region
Member of All India Board of Technician Education Member of Department of Social Welfare
Member of New York Academy of Sciences, USA.
Chairman of Indian Society for Training and Development.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. There is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.
While the vision and pedagogy of the school are future bearing forms, the school owes its foundational strength to him. What lends character to the school is the unique backdrop of the farm, at the heart of which is situated the school. The farm and the space are gifts of his benevolence. After four decades of active work in education and industry, he now works with philanthropic organizations. His dream is for Yellow Train to serve beyond the walls of our school and to reach children who do not have access to education. Project Rohini at Yellow Train is a tribute to his vision and is intended as our outreach program.
Miriam Haenen
Much of the Waldorf Movement in India owes its existence to one of it's oldest mentors from Belgium- Miriam Haenen.
Miriam is an educator and child development specialist with over 35 years of rich experience with children and teachers across India, Europe and the Middle East. Her International work in value based education as a path towards peace, has earned her a place in the Oxford Round Table for Education. Currently a Research Scholar on the physical, soul and atma effect of Gandhi's Charkha in Ahmedabad. She is an Artist in Sacred Puppetry and Founder of Hiranya Kriya meditation/yoga.
Her work is renewing, refreshing and transforming.
At Yellow Train the spiritual in education is held as the most sacred and it runs in the veins of the school and directs our work and our future. This quality has been infused into the school by Miriam’s work and sometimes her mere presence. She has been instrumental in the finding of the Grade School. And within the walls of the Kindergarten can be heard still the echoes of her singing and soul searching.
Sailaja Manacha
Being a psychologist, a psychotherapist and a leadership coach she engages individuals, groups and management teams who seek mastery in powerful living, a deeper personal awareness and leadership impact that produces sustainable results. With a Masters in Psychology and Organizational Behaviour, she has over 20 years of exposure to the corporate world. She is an accredited coach (PCC) from the International Coach Federation (ICF), an accredited Psychotherapist and an accredited trainer TSTA (Psychotherapy) of the International Transactional Analysis Association (ITAA). She is also a Master Practitioner of Neuro Linguistics Programming (NLP).
The school believes that the self-hood of the teacher is what teaches. We teach who we are. When we teach who we are our wounds from childhood, our fears, our aches and unresolved knots, our beliefs and all the stuff that is inside – all that is invisible becomes visible. The identity and the integrity of the self becomes the unwritten curriculum. As teachers we all undertake the journey of healing and of becoming whole. This journey of inner work and development becomes the bed on which our pedagogical work and everything else is built on. It is a defining characteristic of our community of teachers. Sai, as she is called with great love and adoration, has been a keeper of this task, over the last decade ever since our inception.
As a team comprising largely of women her work in women’s authenticity, empowerment and leadership has helped us find our voice and our presence, echoing the words of Marieann Williamson
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
Anandhi
Children and Waldorf Education are eternal love stories. Anandhi believes ‘ We must use anthroposophy to serve the child and the human being - Not use the child and the human being to serve Anthroposophy.’
Anandhi is connected with Waldorf Education in India since 1996, both as a teacher and a parent. She is recognised as one of the founding members of the Waldorf movement in India. Having trained under Tine Bruinsama and Miriam Haenen at the early stages , she began her journey as a Kindergarten and grade teacher at Sloka in Hyderabad. She later moved on to set up Abhaya in 2002, where she had been a class teacher for over a decade, repeating cycles. On a sabbatical since 2015, Anandhi passionately continues her work in Waldorf Education, coaching and mentoring new and old initiatives and their teachers deepening and strengthening their work. She continues her learning in the pedagogy as a happy student of Eurythmy.
A dream she still dares to nurture with hope and trust is that someday a Waldorf School that cuts across privileges of all kinds will come about with serious educators in the fray.
Yellow Train has been a Waldorf Inspired school from the very beginning. And questions to embrace the pedagogy as a whole has kept us awake many nights. And we sat on the fence for years. Until one day Anandhi decided to push us in the deep end. She also stood there in her strength to guide us and trusted in our own ability to do it. She has been the force behind this decision that has offered us a home after all the years of seeking and searching.
Chris Bennett
Chris was a Waldorf student in England for Grades 5-8, and, after completing a degree in Aeronautics, went to Emerson College in UK, graduating from there in 1972. He has been a Waldorf teacher ever since, alternating between the Grades and High School (mainly Math), in Austria, the UK, Hawaii, Canada and California, where he graduated his final 8th Grade in June 2017 at the Waldorf School of Orange County.
He has been working in Waldorf Teacher Education for more than 30 years, in Europe, North America and Asia. Now retired from full-time teaching, he now lives in Vancouver, Canada. He currently gives Math blocks as a guest teacher in the Vancouver Waldorf school, continues to direct the Adult Education program at WSOC, and travels to India regularly to mentor Waldorf schools
Chris believes deeply in the value of Waldorf education and brings a rich and varied history and experience from his work. He is passionate about the potential of each child, and the ability of Waldorf education to allow for those qualities to be discovered and fostered. He has brought in new perspectives and insights and devotes concentrated, focused time for teachers with immediate and extended assistance. During his visits to Yellow Train, he has helped teachers to deepen their knowledge of Waldorf pedagogy, expand their artistic repertoire and find practical ways to improve their teaching.
Chris once shared about his experience with a class of first graders. He was telling them a story in which was a reference to God. And on child spontaneously shared “ But I don’t believe in God”. And this was a moment for the teacher to be present and to respond. And Chris remembers what he shared with the class ‘ But God believes in you. And he shared this experience from his decades as a teacher when he said – we are not alone in this task as teachers. We are guided by our angels. Everyday in every lesson. This sharing is so characteristic of the essence of what Chris brings – his presence, his faith, his wisdom, his humour and his convictions.
Deepak Dhananjeya
Deepak Dhananjeya is one of our trainers who has been engaged with the school in coaching the team to strengthen our organisational skills. He is known for experiential, reflective and activity based trainings. This involves setting up open spaces, role plays, games, discussions, role reversal, etc. Along with this he has offered multiple programs of personal work and therapy for our teachers in small groups.
Deepak has a Masters in psychotherapy. He has also undergone training in Transactional Analysis (TA) OD and is a Certified Transactional Analyst (CTA) in psychotherapy. He integrates Transactional analysis (a social psychology) and Psychodrama in coaching the teams.
Deepak collaborates with Sai in continuing the scope of personal work that teachers undertake as part of their developmental journeys. Deepak’s love for Yellow Train and the work we do is apparent in how he navigates through practical challenges to offer year long courses for teachers supporting them in their devloepment. Deepak’s care and warmth and his ability to hold the space for each one makes it possible for teachers to take on this being vulnerable and yet strength giving journey.
Noela Maletz
Noela embodies the wisdom of the elders, trust in the life process, and the responsibility to give back to the world as a gesture of thanksgiving; all of this with ample dose of humour. Themes that are of great interest to her both in her life and her work are the mysteries of biography, care for the soul and care for nature. In Noela’s words, “I am grateful my life has offered me the opportunities to be active in understanding all three of these themes. I bring to every encounter my wholehearted attention, my abundant interest, my searching curiosity and my willingness to be, alongside others, an existential explorer of an issue, a theme, a block or a way forward ... or just a soulful companion.”
Noela grew up and was educated in Queensland. She taught in State High Schools in Queensland and England and encountered Anthroposophy and Waldorf Education which led her to train at Emerson College for two years. In 1975, she returned to live in South Australia and to become a founding parent (and later teacher) in the Mt Barker Waldorf School, and to co-found Ngeringa, a social therapy centre for young adults with intellectual disabilities.
The time at Emerson built on and illuminated her experiences in teaching Art, English and History to adolescents and for many years she has taught these subjects at Mt Barker. In 2000-2001, she completed a Master of Social Science, and from 2003 divided her time between lecturing at Universities in South Australia and working in an established private counselling practice in Adelaide. She currently works full time in private practice as a counsellor and a supervisor and leads workshops and retreats. The core of her work is reflected in this question shared below, ‘Can we come to appreciate the learning that our “I” has received through heredity, ethnicity, schooling, and gender without losing a sense of our true individuality?’
As a School we are ten years old. And as a body of teachers we are mostly between 35 and 45 years old. We have always longed for an ‘elder’. Someone who knows, who has seen the world, who has white hair who can be the elder of the tribe. That’s what we found when we found Noela.
We met Noela in Bangkok in a Waldorf 100 conference and we all had the same instinct - To bring her home. To our school. And that wish came true when she came to spend a little over a month with us in 2019. She has left a big part of her, living with all of us with her biography work, her art, her wisdom, her love, her humour just who she is.
Daniel Freeman
Mr Daniel Freeman , fondly addressed as “Dan”, is a bothmer gymnast, teacher and inspirational speaker. Dan has been working as a teacher and trainer in Bothmer Gymnastics for almost 40 years. He completed his training in Stuttgart in Germany in 1977 at the school founded by a pupil of the ‘father’ of Bothmer gym – Count Von Bothmer, Frau Krauser. Since then Dan has worked with adults and children throughout New Zealand and in countries such as Thailand, Philippines, Hawaii, Germany, Taiwan, Australia and India. He inspires a love for Bothmer gymnastics as a directed physical practice that strengthens the body and the sense of self as a whole human being. As well as Bothmer Gymnastics, Dan has studied Eurythmy, rhythmic massage and speech. He frequently teaches Bothmer gymnastics at Taikura school where he previously taught for 24 years and regularly travels overseas to train and teach.
Dan has been a supporter and well-wisher of Yellow Train School and our movement and physical education teachers have gone through intense training under him for the past three years. Dan’s keen observation, eye for detail, work ethic and patience in explaining and modelling many of the exercises has been greatly inspiring. His insights into Waldorf pedagogy and Anthroposophy, in and out of the classroom, has truly enabled our teachers to work on themselves and also take the work to the children. Dan has played a major role in inspiring our teachers to look at movement and physical education as pedagogical tools.
To move is to be alive. At Yellow Train children move and move a lot. Through the day and the week. Sometimes is it mere free play. And other times it is co-operative games and Gymnastics. From hosting the Waldorf Olympics to having 5 Gymnasts at the school holding the promise of health giving movement education, the school is thriving in its deed of educating the whole child through movement. And this has made possible by this extra ordinary teacher whom we all dearly love called Dan.
Helle Heckmann
Helle found the pedagogy and spiritual insight she looking for in Rudolf Steiner’s work, she started at the Early Childhood teacher college in Copenhagen. After finishing her education, Helle opened Nøkken Kindergarten 30 years ago. At that time, the only Waldorf Early Childhood setting to receive children under three years old.
Since forming Nøkken, Helle has worked intensively with children. Her work centers around how essential it is for children to have enough of the simple, core needs of rhythm, sleep, freedom to move, good nutrition, imitation, the proper clothing and time to do things on their own terms.
In Helle we first met the idea of a kindergarten in the garden. In Helle’s Kindergarten there were little babies. And they were all out in the Garden. In rain and snow. In gumboots and umbrellas. They ate and played and walked and spent all day out. Helle left a fragment of that idea behind. It remains an inspiration and echoes of those words and ideals still live with us in the Kindergarten.
Madhavan Palanisamy
Art, poetry and beauty – These are an essential part of everything we do at Yellow Train. Be it the building, be it the books we print, be it how the walls look, be it the frames that hang in the school, be it the website that gives us a virtual home – everything has a shade of the magic. Or at the least there is a striving for it. And Madhavan has been a part of it all from the very beginning. From the time where the school was just an idea.
Working in the back ground with his own creative forces, convictions and as a believer in the cosmos he has been the creator of the brand that is Yellow Train.
Madhavan is a photographer - both profound and playful. A thinker with the questions: who are we, where do we come from, why are we here, how are we connected? His art brings together various things that he loves: writing, drawing, photographs and moving images.