Alumni News

Devin Kleiner, Grade 7, 1987,

writes, "With our kids visiting their grandparents, my wife Christa and I were able to sneak away this summer for our first weekend getaway since the pandemic started. Our goal was to spend as much time out in the Pacific Northwest nature as possible so we hiked Hurricane Ridge and the Hoh Rain Forest on the Olympic Peninsula where we first met 20 years ago.

"The pandemic has been an eye-opening period for both personal and professional growth. Our architecture firm received a 2021 COTE® Top Ten Award for sustainable design excellence which lifted our hopes during these uncertain times for a resilient future balancing ecology with our built environment."

Maxwell Bennett, HS Class of 2008, profiled in the Winter, 2016,

issue of the SFWS magazine, has been the resident blacksmith at Intracoastal Ironwork and Metalwork in Wilmington, NC, since February, 2021. His sculpture can be seen at the Ellsworth Gallery in Santa Fe and @maxwellbennettworks on Instagram.

Sarib Jot Kaur Khalsa, Grade 7, 2013, is currently on a gap year

after graduating from Miri Piri Academy in Amritsar, India in 2018 and getting her EMT license from Santa Fe Community College. She has worked as an EMT for Taos County and has been a member of the Ski Santa Fe ski patrol since she was 18. She plans to go to college next fall at the University of Montana. This winter, she says, "I want to enjoy Santa Fe and find a place with more snow!"

Kaela Childs, Grade 7, 2014, is finishing her final semester at Santa Fe Community College and is planning on attending NMSU in the spring to major in fine arts and minor in psychology and or social work.

Siri Atma Kaur Khalsa, Grade 6,

2015, died suddenly on May 12, 2021. Khalsa loved SFWS and kept in regular touch with her classmates over the years. She will be deeply missed. A tree was planted in her memory on November 23 outside of Hooper Hall, which is surrounded by a ring of painted rocks in her honor. Anyone is welcome to add a rock if they wish. Alexandria Chastenet de Gery, HS Class of 2015, is living and

working in Brussels, Belgium. She received her MA in Global Peace, Security and Strategy from Vesalius University, Brussels, in January 2021, and is currently a Program Assistant at The German Marshall Fund of the United States in Strategic Convening, where she focuses on public diplomacy in the Transatlantic.

Sophia Gundrey, Grade 8, Class of 2015, finished a year and a

half at Barnard College in New York before deciding to take a gap year and work locally. "I’m just reevaluating where I want to go and what I want to be," she reports, adding that she is applying to universities in Scotland and Ireland, planning to major in religious studies with a possible focus on druids.

MA in Journalism, Media, and Globalization through the Erasmus Mundus Journalism consortium. She is currently at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, and will spend spring semester 2022 at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, in Santiago, focusing on investigative documentary and audio journalism. Chastenet de Gery will complete her degree with a focus on totalitarianism in transition at Charles University, in Prague, Czech Republic.

Shaefer Bennett, HS Class of 2016, graduated from UNM in

2020, and is now in his first year of veterinary school at Colorado State University.

Martine Perez, HS Class of 2018,

writes, "After graduating from SFWS in 2018, I started my college education at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. I am studying marketing in the Business School as well as minoring in psychology. I am currently taking a gap year from school and plan to return in the fall of 2022 to finish my final year at the U.

"During this time off from school, I have started my own clothing company called BigSistr. The idea is that I find thrifted clothes and enhance them. I rework them to add embellishments using paint, sewing, or embroidery. It’s all sustainable, one-of-a-kind, upcycled clothes. Starting this business has been really amazing! I have applied what I learned from school and translated it to my business.

"I have also called upon the creative Waldorf skills I learned, such as how to use a sewing machine, embroidering, and sketching design concepts. I am grateful for my creative arts background from Waldorf because it gave me such a helpful and relevant platform to start BigSistr. I am excited about the future and can’t wait to see what comes next! Please check out my Instagram account (@big. sistr) and my shops on Etsy (BigSistrShop) and Depop (@bigsistr)."

Chloe Casdagli, HS Class of 2019, is in her junior year at Oberlin College studying studio art and creative writing. Her work has been published in several student magazines, and she is co-chair of the Creative Writing Club, works with student involvement, and is in a steel drum band. Casdagli is also part of the Oberlin printmaking collective and is illustrating a children’s book, while also selling art on the side.

Nicoya Dant, HS Class of 2020, is

living, learning, and working in Bellingham, Washington, where she attends Western Washington University. This fall, she was able to start in person classes, taking math, art, and graphic design and is considering sustainable business, graphic design, or industrial design for a major. She has been taking a range of art classes in college, and writes, "I feel that Waldorf put me on a great creative path with many diverse practices. Through these practices, I’ve broadened many aspects of my artistic self and been encouraged to pursue art. Some of the specific arts skills I have put a lot of effort into are ink drawing, charcoal and acrylic, all practiced with Mr. Otero in high school. The artwork shown here uses similar practices he taught us."

Dant adds, "This summer I started working with a company called American Alpine Institute, a mountaineering school founded and run out of Bellingham. At the end of this summer I was offered a position in Alaska, as the lead coordination for the Denali summits! I will be heading up to Anchorage for five months in the spring of 2022. Similar to the early morning gear checks I helped Mr. Burritt with in the great room at the start of each Waldorf trip, I will be helping people embark on their Denali expedition! I’ll be in charge of all group, guide, and personal gear, all of the meals for the trips, arranging the bush plane drop offs, and anything else that falls into my lap! I’m excited to see where this academic year takes me along with building my resume in the outdoors!"

Koray Gates, HS Class of

2020, is currently a freshman at Colorado College after taking a gap year in 2020. Gates, pictured (in blue) with college friends, reports that college "has been amazing so far, with engaging classes and fun experiences with new friends. Last month, my class spent three days on a small remote campus in the mountains where we studied the subject of Renaissance thinkers. It reminded me of the yearly trips to the Vallecitos Mountain Retreat in high school and the many other outdoor trips that I journeyed on with my class at Waldorf. Of the many memories I have of my years at SFWS, what stands out most in my mind are the many school-sponsored adventures with my class, such as rafting the Chama and backpacking at Dark Canyon in Utah."

Deedee Jansen, HS Class of 2021,

is in her first year at Austin College in Sherman, Texas. Pictured here with the school mascot, Jansen is majoring in engineering physics with a (possible) minor in math. She adds, "I was part of a theater production and am in the improv troupe. I also volunteer at the observatory."

Indie Russell, HS Class of 2021 writes

"I have kept very busy since graduation, exploring a variety of different places and having a variety of experiences. Immediately following graduation I traveled to New Hampshire where I worked as a camp counselor at the Waldorf-inspired sleep away camp Glenbrook. It was a wonderful experience and a great way to explore New England. I had the opportunity to work with children in a Waldorf inspired setting, imparting the values and ideas that have been so important in my upbringing to the next generation of young people from across the country. I enjoyed working alongside colleagues who are fellow Waldorf alums who each brought their similar but divergent Waldorf experiences to the Glenbrook community!

"Now I am in Scotland studying medieval history and spanish at the University of Saint Andrews. This course of study was actually inspired by my multidisciplinary Waldorf education which has inspired me to pursue a variety of subjects and look for the connections in the ways different spheres of learning interweave with one another. My passion for these two particular subjects was nurtured by the incredible teachers at Waldorf who instilled in me a love for learning. I am so incredibly excited for the opportunities unfolding ahead of me and am oh so grateful to the Waldorf community who inspired me and set me on the path to exploring new experiences all across the world!"

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Above: Ninth grade student's charcoal drawings of historical figures from their Modern History class.

Cover illustration by junior Nina Otero. In the eleventh grade English class, each student was given a symbol prior to reading The Divine Comedy. They then researched the symbol and analyzed its function within the book and created artwork to accompany the analytic essay. Otero's symbol was plants and her ilustration depicts various characters and locations from the book.