Teachers & Staff
Kirsten Hascup – Kindergarten Teacher
Kirsten Hascup has been teaching in the field of Waldorf Early Childhood education for 16 years. She has taught at the Waldorf School of the Finger Lakes, The Steiner School in Great Barrington, and at the Waldorf School of Baltimore. She also has experience teaching in her own home/family run daycare.
Ms. Hascup has a Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts from Cornell University, and a Teaching Certificate and a Master’s Degree in Waldorf Education from Antioch New England Graduate School.
Her interests include painting, storytelling, and working with parents and their children during the very early years, from pregnancy through pre-school. Kirsten is currently on leave and is enjoying her new baby daughter, Isadora.
Karen Lonsky – Kindergarten Teacher & Early Childhood Faculty Chair
Karen Lonsky’s introduction to Waldorf education began in 1986 when her daughter joined the first grade in the Waldorf School of the Finger Lakes. This was the beginning of her interest in and commitment to bringing the wisdom and joy of Waldorf education to young children and their families.
Ms. Lonsky has her Waldorf certification from Sunbridge College. She has taught in Waldorf and Waldorf-inspired schools in the area for 21 years. In addition to teaching Kindergarten and Parent-Child Classes, she has interests in music, puppetry and handcrafts. Ms. Lonsky lives with her husband, Joe in Genoa, NY. She and her husband perform and sing together in several musical groups throughout the area.
Laura Catapano – Kindergarten Assistant
Laura Catapano attended Green Meadow Waldorf School and has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing with an Art minor from Ithaca College. While pursuing her education, she also worked in private child care for over ten years before coming to Ithaca Waldorf School as a kindergarten assistant and After-School care coordinator in 2009-2010. She has been with IWS for two years and will be pursuing her Waldorf teacher training in 2012. She has an interest in writing children’s stories and poetry as well as art, music, storytelling, and handwork.
Larisa Kuznetsova – Parent Child Class Teacher & Kindergarten Assistant
Larisa is a native of Russia. Larisa holds a Bachelor’s degree in Music Education and a Masters in Russian and Russian Literature. She formerly taught middle and high school in Russia. For the last six years, she has taught private Russian lessons in Ithaca. She has been a Waldorf parent since 2004. Soon afterwards she joined the IWS Kindergarten, working as an assistant for the next four years. In 2010 Larisa became the Nursery class lead teacher. This year Larisa is teaching the Parent/Child classes and assisting in the Kindergarten, and in her spare time she loves to do handwork and the tango.
Yvonne LaMontagne – Parent Child Class Teacher
Yvonne LaMontagne received Early Childhood training through Sophia’s Hearth and is an experienced Waldorf teacher. She is also a certified Simplicity Parenting instructor and regularly holds Simplicity Parenting classes and workshops. Yvonne is the mother of 2 adult boys, both of whom benefited from Waldorf education. She brings her training, classroom experience as well as her parenting knowledge to her classes.
Mary Ann Vaca – 1st / 2nd Grade Teacher & Grades Faculty Chair
Mary Ann is a graduate of Warren Wilson College in Swannanou, NC. She received her BA in Inter-cultural Studies and Sociology. She became involved in Waldorf education when her youngest daughter enrolled in Great Oaks School’s kindergarten program in Evanston, Illinois. Soon after, she became a kindergarten teacher assistant and enrolled in the Arcturus Teacher Training Program. Eventually, she left her work as an assistant and became a Director of a Waldorf inspired day care center. Upon graduating from the teacher training program, she was offered a class (grades) teacher position at the Chicago Waldorf School. Her time at Chicago Waldorf School was filled with 11 years of grades teaching, serving on the Festivals and Diversity committees and participating each year as a cast member in two of three Oberuffer plays. Moving to Ithaca to teach at the Ithaca Waldorf School in 2010 has been for Mary Ann a joyous return to the place she came from – Honeoye Falls, N.Y.
Yelena Sedochenkova – 3rd Grade Teacher
Yelena is a native of Latvia. She came to the U.S. with her family when she was 10 years old, and settled in southern California. In her third year attending the University of California San Diego, Yelena discovered her love of travel and other cultures while in London on a studies abroad program. She graduated from UCSD with a degree in Communication and Russian Literature. In 2005 she began her Waldorf teacher training at the Waldorf Institute of Southern California and received her degree in 2008. Soon afterward, Yelena traveled to San Marcos La Laguna, Guatemala where she taught a combined 1st/2nd grade at the Escuela Caracol Waldorf School. Her class spoke three languages: Spanish, English, and Kaqchikel, the local Mayan dialect. In 2009 she traveled to Colombia where she lived in an eco-community called Atlantida, and helped develop a Waldorf school-initiative, and taught the first kindergarten class. She joined the faculty of the Ithaca Waldorf School in February, 2010.
Yelena is a musician and has been dancer all of her life. She plays guitar and sings and has performed and danced in various dance troupes as well as dance styles including: African, Middle Eastern, and Ballroom. She is fluent in Russian and Spanish.
Beth Yankee – 4th / 5th Grade Teacher
Beth holds a BS in Education from Western Michigan University, a Masters Degree in Educational Leadership from Grand Valley State University, and has had minors in Elementary Education with Early Childhood Emphasis, Math, Science and Integrated Creative Arts. She embarked on her Waldorf teacher training this past summer at Sunbridge. Beth joined the IWS faculty this September, 2011.
Before coming to IWS, Beth worked for 15 years at the Woodward School for Technology and Research, an innovative magnet school in Kalamazoo Michigan that focused on environmental sustainability. As both a teacher of grades 4 through 6th and later as a principal Beth helped establish a school garden, wrote and received various foundation grants that provided creative programming in partnership with other environmental groups and private schools.
Beth plays the recorder, guitar, is a blacksmith and jewelry maker. She is very excited to be working in a school that puts the “whole child” at the center of its educational philosophy, as this has been her own personal approach to teaching as well.
Carolina Osorio Gil – Spanish Teacher
Carolina is a native of Colombia. She emigrated to the United States as a child and grew up in New York City where her mother enrolled her in public school kindergarten without knowing a word of English — thus, no stranger to the immersion method! In 2002, Carolina graduated from Cornell University majoring in Cognitive Psychology. She received a Master’s degree in early childhood education at Teachers’ College at Columbia University and did her practicum teaching at the Bank Street School. In addition to her work as a teacher, Carolina is an actress and currently, artist-in-residence at Risley Residential College at Cornell. She infuses her language classes with stories and theater and views teaching as a method of outreach, an opportunity to share a new culture and language, to build friendships and community. From 2006 – 2008, she created Teatro Pequeno, a Spanish/English bilingual theater curricula for children of various ages, which she taught in both Trumansburg and the Ithaca City Schools.
Last year she collaborated with members of the Cornell, Ithaca College, and downtown communities to create CULTURA!. As its director and curriculum developer, Carolina has created workshops, classes, and performances to promote and share Latino Cultural experiences with the greater Ithaca community. As an actress you may have seen her as announcer for the Ithaca Sufferjets or as a cast member of the History Center, creating and performing various historical characters seen in Ithaca Festivals and historic tours. Carolina also enjoys sewing (she is the costume director of the Grassroots Happiness parade), knitting, guitar, writing poetry, and dancing- salsa, merengue, and cumbia. Carolina joined the IWS faculty this September, 2011.
Lisa Marshall – Handwork Teacher
Lisa holds an M.S. in Earth Science from Dartmouth College and a B.A. in Geology from Claremont McKenna College. Lisa has over a decade of experience in Waldorf education as an active parent volunteer in two different Waldorf schools and as a teacher of parent-child classes. Lisa also has years of experience as a Waldorf inspired home-schooler, teaching grades 1-5 and later 6th and 7th. Lisa became an active member of the online Waldorf home-schooling community under the mentorship of Donna Simmons of Christopherus Homeschool Consulting, taking on work as a moderator for the Christopherus online forum, a paid home-schooling consultant, and contributing handwork sections to Christopherus published curricula (4th and 5th grade). Lisa is a founding member of “Homespun Waldorf,” a cooperatively sustained and operated parent-to-parent support forum. In the summer of 2009, Lisa enrolled Applied Arts training through the Threefold Institute in Chestnut Ridge NY. That same year, Lisa’s three children enrolled in IWS and Lisa volunteered as assistant to the handwork teacher. Lisa will complete her teacher training in the summer of 2013. She joined the IWS faculty in August, 2010.
Erin Fitzgerald – Games Teacher and Movement Educator
Erin Fitzgerald has been expressing herself through dance and movement since her first ballet class at age seven. In 1986 she graduated from Bennington College with a B.A. in Dance and spent the next 20 years as a professional modern dancer and choreographer in New York City. She has taught movement and dance to children in public and private schools and is a certified Iyengar Yoga instructor. She discovered Spatial dynamics with Will Crane during her first semester of the Sundbridge Administration Program. Currently, she is in her third year of the IS-10 Spatial Dynamics training program and will graduate in 2014. She joined the IWS faculty in August, 2010.
Augusto Diemecke & Christine Lowe-Diemecke – Ensemble & Strings Teachers:
Augusto and Christine are professional musicians and a married couple who have lived and worked in Ithaca for 15 years. Both Augusto and Christine have enjoyed successful music careers with experience playing both domestically and internationally. Augusto is currently the Concertmaster of the Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes and also the conductor of the Youth Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes. Christine is currently assistant principal cellist in the Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes.
Before moving to Ithaca where they raised their two children, they lived and worked in Houston and in Mexico City.
They bring a long-standing dedication to teaching their craft to children as Suzuki trained teachers who have brought their own intuition and experience to bear in their interpretation of the Suzuki method. They both teach at our local Suzuki school, Ithaca Talent Education and they also teach down in Corning at 171 Cedar Arts Center. Augusto in particular has worked with many different groups of children, even bringing children’s musical groups on tour to Mexico. Augusto and Christine joined the IWS faculty in October, 2011
Rebecca Lesser – Chorus Teacher
Rebecca is native of central Pennsylvania. She has a love of music that began with her early piano studies. She earned a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from Ithaca College and is an accomplished pianist and piano teacher. In 2007 she received a Master of Science in Education degree from Elmira College and continues to pursue Waldorf teacher training at Sunbridge College. She joined IWS in 2009 and taught the first and then second grade until she went on maternity leave in March, 2011. In addition to teaching chorus at IWS, she is enjoying her new son, Julian Henri.
Kate Wheeler – After School Teacher & 1st Grade Assistant
Before coming to the Waldorf School in August, 2011 Kate worked in the Rochester public schools as an art teacher for grades 9 – 12 for the past 2 years, and in after-care and summer programs (grades K- 12) since 2002. Kate has worked with teenage runaways, painting murals with them, as well as assisting K-6 students with special needs in remedial writing, and math. Kate holds a B.S. in Art Education from the Nazareth College of Rochester. Kate began her Waldorf teacher training this summer at Sunbridge College. Kate has a myriad of artistic talents, including oil painting, ceramics, print-making, collage work, cooking, and gardening, and photography. She has worked abroad in Zambia teaching art and English.
Erin Fitzgerald – Director of School Administration
Erin is a founding parent of the Brooklyn Waldorf School where she served on the Board of Directors and member and established the Parent Association. In 2008 she attended the first year of the Administration and Community Development Program developed by Chris Schaefer at Sunbridge College. After moving to Ithaca in Fall, 2008 with her husband and 2 children, she was asked to start the Parent Council at IWS. She also joined the Board of Trustees in the Spring of 2009 and then became the Director of School Administration in October, 2010. She also enjoys teaching yoga and is in her 3rd year of the Spatial dynamics training program.