was a teacher at the Lima Waldorf School for almost twenty years. As a class teacher she accompanied two groups of students for eight years from first through eighth grade. Although she very much likes Waldorf education it always troubled her that the Lima school only catered to the Peruvian elite. Her university degree was in sociology and she always felt personally drawn to offer a better level of education to Peruvian children further down the social ladder. During her sabbatical year in 2005 she accepted an invitation to temporarily help out at a state school in the small village of Taray near Cusco to replace an absent first grade teacher. She thought she was just volunteering for a month or two, but now it is six years later and she is still here teaching the same group of children.
Following difficulties with the state school authorities a group of parents decided to form an association and start their own school. A beautiful plot of land was donated and the Kusi Kawasy school came into being. Lourdes is really the axis around which the whole school functions. In addition to being the class teacher for the sixth grade she is also teaching our 'unofficial' secondary school study group comprising sixteen students whose classroom is at present a makeshift structure until a real secondary school classroom can be built. As a very experienced Waldorf teacher she is training a new body of younger teachers in this alternative educational approach.
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| Lourdes with secondary students |
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