Meet our Instructors
Cynthia Aldinger
Cynthia founded LifeWays North America in 2001. Author of the book Life is the Curriculum and co-author of the book Home Away From Home: LifeWays Care of Children and Families, Cynthia has lectured and presented internationally and is pedagogical director for trainings and seminars across the United States. She served fourteen years on the board of the Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America. A former Waldorf Kindergarten teacher, Cynthia received her Waldorf teaching certificate at Emerson College in Sussex, England. A mother and grandmother, Cynthia’s passion is the preservation of the playful spirit of childhood and helping to create home-like environments that provide the comfort, security and activities found in a healthy home.​​
Acacia Moore
Acacia is the Executive Director of LifeWays and serves as Director for In-Person and Online Programs. She has been devoted to the mission of LifeWays for many years as an educator and mother of three sons. Alongside her role with LifeWays, she is co-founder and teacher at the City of Fountains School, established 2011 as Kansas City’s first school inspired by Waldorf education. She completed her Curative Educators training with the Mulberry Center for Curative Education in 2024, her own LifeWays Certificate training in 2016, and her Bachelor’s degree in Art Education with a focus on Early Childhood in 2003.
Acacia is passionate about partnering with families and educators to build support systems for children that honor their natural, individual development as spiritual human beings. She is tremendously grateful to be serving the LifeWays community with this very mission.
Judith Frizlen
Judith Frizlen is an author, educator, grandmother and champion of human development. Her books are: Where Wisdom Meets Wonder, Forty Stories of Grandma Love; Unpacking Guilt, A Mother’s Journey to Freedom; Words for Teachers and Caregivers in Small Doses; Words for Parents in Small Doses. Book and blogposts are available at www.judithfizlen.com, and essays at: https://substack.com/@grandmalove
Sharifa Oppenheimer
Sharifa Oppenheimer was the founding teacher of the Charlottesville Waldorf School as well as The Rose Garden, a Waldorf early childhood home-program. She is the author of numerous well-received articles and books, including Heaven on Earth: A Handbook for Parents of Young Children and its companion workbook How To Create The Star of Your Family Culture, as well as With Stars in Their Eyes: Brain Science and Your Child’s Journey Toward the Self. Her research is devoted to exploring the ways in which the latest findings in brain science support Steiner principles. She now teaches collaboratively with LifeWays and continues to explore and write about other aspects of profound connection, particularly the family’s need for deep connection to Nature. She teaches online Kinship with Nature classes, and her most recent books A Litany of Wild Graces and Rewilding the Human Heart explore the family’s biological and spiritual inter-being with our other-than-human relations.
Lynn Turner
Lynn (she/her) is a native Washingtonian, wife, mother of two children. She is of mixed heritage and the proud descendant of enslaved African American people. She has been a culturally responsive early childhood educator, teacher trainer, and leader in the movement of Waldorf Education in Northern America for over fourteen years. Lynn holds a BA in Fine Arts, and an MAT in Early Childhood Education, and received her Waldorf Early Childhood Teaching Certificate in 2017. She is a Biography Worker, currently completing her third year of training in Biography and Social Art. Lynn has been published in Gateways and Kindling Magazines and has been a workshop presenter and keynote speaker at WECAN conferences. She was the Director and Core Faculty member of the Great Lakes Waldorf Institute, Early Childhood Training Cohort from 2020-2023. She currently serves on the Biography as Social Art Board of Directors.
Leslie Wetzonis Woolverton
For more than twenty years, Leslie has taught Waldorf Parent-Child and Nursery classes at Acorn Hill Waldorf Kindergarten & Nursery School located in Silver Spring, Maryland. Currently, Leslie is a member of the WECAN Early Childhood Research Group (Two recent WECAN Publications), and also works as a WECAN Site Visitor and Teacher Trainer for several Teaching Institutes in North America. As a third generation Anthroposophist, Leslie brings a broad scope of wisdom and knowledge to Waldorf Early Childhood Education from her own early childhood.
Now out of the classroom, Leslie loves her work with adults as a teacher trainer, mentor and evaluator, visiting many schools and new teachers across the country. Leslie is also a skilled textile artist and interior designer of close to forty years. Leslie enjoys writing and compiling early childhood stories that reflect the world in the interest of advancing inclusion, diversity, equity, and access by creating puppetry to bring classics, cultural tales and her own new stories to life. When not working, Leslie spends time with her family and friends at her beloved beach home in Chincoteague Island, Virginia.
Mindy Upton
Mindy has been teaching Kindergarten for the past 40 years. She feels very fortunate to have been able to share her love of handwork, puppetry and fiber arts in the classroom with the children and families. She worked previously at her school, Blue Sky Kindergarten; and has recently opened Blue Sky Craft Studio in Niwot Colorado where she offers parent/child classes and art classes for children and adults. She has recently formed the “Three Wishes Puppet Troupe” that creates and performs Puppet shows for the Colorado community. This past summer, she was host to the Waldorf Association of Storytelling and Puppetry Arts Summer Conference. She is delighted to meet participants in our course to enjoy the art of handwork together.
Learn more about Mindy and her craft studio at blueskycraftstudio.com.
Chris Lester
Chris Lester is a nationally endorsed Infant Family Specialist with over 30 years of experience supporting families through the earliest stages of life. She is the founder of the NTouch Community and co-founder of The Playgarden, a LifeWays Representative site and host entity for the Early Childhood Certificate Program.
Chris is widely recognized for her uplifting, evidence-based approach to parent-infant connection. Her work has received multiple awards for innovation, program design, and
leadership in the fields of early learning and child welfare.
In 2020, Chris brought NTouch to an international audience in partnership with LifeWays North America—a collaboration that will continue in 2025. She and her husband raised two children along the beautiful shores of Atlantic Beach, Florida, where she remains a passionate advocate for family-centered community building.
Mary O'Connell
Mary O’Connell works to strengthen child care and reconnect children and families to the natural world and local foods. She is the director of Paradise Farm in West Bend, WI, a LifeWays Representative program. She has worked as a Food Systems/Farm-to-ECE Coordinator for the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, Training Coordinator for LifeWays North America, and Director of LifeWays Early Childhood Center in Milwaukee. Mary graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a bachelor's degree in Business Administration and has worked as a business coach for child care directors in Wisconsin.
Jerilyn C. Burke
Jerilyn is an experienced educator and traveler, working with children and families from various backgrounds worldwide. She holds certifications from LifeWays, Hand in Hand Parenting, and Community Supported Postpartum, and completed her Waldorf WECAN teacher training in Toronto, Canada. Jerilyn earned a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Humanities — focusing on Art History, Communication Arts, and Music — and is pursuing an M.Ed. in Mental Health Counseling at Lehigh University. Committed to lifelong learning and community, Jerilyn has facilitated and co-presented for The Anthroposophical Society in America’s Applied Anthroposophy course and served as an Early Childhood Advisor for NaliniKids, a NYC-based nonprofit integrating literacy with mental and physical health. Her writing has appeared in Being Human, Whole Family Rhythms, Kindling, and the LifeWays newsletter. She enjoys exploring the golden threads connecting anthroposophy with other philosophical and spiritual traditions — past and present. Jerilyn lives with her husband and three children near the Delaware River in Eastern Pennsylvania.