Tallowood has been run by parents involved with the school for the past 27 years and this year their parent committee has engaged Sue Moran as the teaching principal to pioneer the change and develop the Steiner curriculum.

Sue’s experience and qualifications in Steiner education spans 26 years and includes training as a Steiner pre-schoolteacher and co-founder of Dawn-Song Children’s Centre in Bellingen.

Sue holds a Bachelor of Education qualification from the University of New England and has taught at Department of Education schools in South Australia, New South Whales and at Steiner schools in Mount Barker and Noosa.

Sue’s professional development as a teacher over the past 10 years has had a focus on key areas of numeracy and literacy training, speech and story telling and issues of boys in education.

For parents not familiar with Steiner education, Ms Moran says the Steiner curriculum is responsive to meeting the needs of children’s developmental phases as they grow.

“Children’s needs are met by balancing the phases of childhood growth - physical, emotional, social and moral - with academic needs without ‘hot housing’ or accelerating intellectual development,” Ms Moran said.

“I believe it is an educationally sound and balanced view which holds that everything that is developing within thechild at any given time is of equal educational importance.”

Tallowood School’s Steiner education would be about the ‘human centred’ approach to teaching and learning, where automated delivery of educational programs is avoided in the primary school years.

Ms Moran believed this provided a balance to the abundance of computer and television media time that so many children are absorbed in today. “Creativity is paramount and art is implemented and integrated as practice in all subject areas.

“Learning activities are offered to the children in ways that ensure healthy development of their imagination and their own creative activity is always exercised,” Ms Moran said.