Celebrating Our Community

Stay connected with the people who make our community special. This space highlights community updates, milestones, achievements, and moments worth celebrating. From personal accomplishments and exciting news to shared events and everyday contributions, we're proud to recognize the people and stories that bring our community together. 

We are excited to launch this page with a celebratory tribute to Monique Grund, the founding teacher for San Francisco Waldorf's first kindergarten class. 

A Loving Tribute to Monique Grund:
Founding Teacher of San Francisco Waldorf School, and
The Magic Lantern Traveling Marionette Troupe
by Allison Carroll and Dagmar Eisele

To meet Monique is to meet joy, wonder, kindness, courage, love, hope, truth, creativity, imagination and beauty; qualities which she helped instill in countless children, families, and colleagues during her 60+ years as a founding class and language teacher of Ecole Perceval in Chatou, France, and as the founding teacher of San Francisco Waldorf School.

Monique was born in Breslau in 1938 and lived in Dornach as a child with her aunts, a eurythmist and a stage actress. She was deeply influenced by this time living so connected to the Goetheanum and recalled the excitement of being on stage as a child for a production of Faust, and how much she learned from her aunts in the realms of speech, movement, color, and gesture. Monique loved to play in the forest as a young child, and developed a deep connection with nature, though certain times were very difficult due to the war.

Monique attended the Waldorf School in Basel, and lived for a time in England, where she met her dear friend and mentor, Rene Querido, who invited her to help found Ecole Perceval, where she taught for twenty years as a class and language teacher. Monique recalled these years with immense joy, especially summers spent with a beloved school family in the charming seaside town of Arcachon.

Destiny brought Monique to San Francisco in 1978 for a sabbatical where she again met her mentor Rene, then Director of Rudolf Steiner College. His encouragement led to her extraordinary life as the founding teacher of San Francisco Waldorf School. Dagmar Eisele had the pleasure of being Monique's first kindergarten assistant, and recalls that Monique initially lived in the home of Virgilia Dakin in San Francisco, forming deep and lasting connections with families, many of whom went on to become teachers while also remaining friends with Monique to this day.

In those early days, Monique traveled back to the Goetheanum each summer to receive guidance and training from Elizabeth von Grunellius, the first Steiner kindergarten teacher, which was a unique and treasured experience. Over the years, Monique's classroom benefited from her exceptional eye for beauty and was the subject of a very special book by renowned photographer Michael Kenna called Monique's Kindergarten.

Puppetry as outreach and an antidote to television began early on when Monique realized that Waldorf education was hardly known in San Francisco. This was the perfect way to reach the community and kindle a sense of wonder. Monique formed The Magic Lantern Traveling Marionette Troupe together with early childhood teachers, board members, music and class teachers, parents, and a few lucky faculty children. This endeavor was aided immensely over the years by Cory Powers and Michael Garrett, who elevated the productions with professional lighting and staging.

For over forty years, the troupe presented fairy and folk tales to large audiences at festivals and fairs as well as smaller venues, such as libraries and farmer's markets. The troupe hand-sewed many beautiful marionettes and table puppets under Monique's guidance, each one created specifically for a certain story and dressed in colors chosen with deeply symbolic meaning. Full concentration on the story, characters, and work was required at all times, as was coming to fully inhabit one's puppet, be they a frog or a miller's daughter. 

Exquisite marionettes for stories from around the world, including Nya-Nya Bulembu/The Moss-Green Princess from South Africa, an Aztec-inspired tale, The Flame of Peace, The Enchanted Tapestry from Guangxi, and a Mi'kmaq Nation story, The Invisible Hunter, were created and lovingly brought to life over the years with live music and Monique always as the storyteller -- her clear, strong, vibrant voice resounding the truth of the fairy tale.

Monique also wrote her own stories, especially for the children in front of her and for particular seasons. Dagmar recalls that Monique often said, "The inspiration comes from the children," and that she liked to set up in-class puppet shows while the children were playing, being very deliberate in her gestures while choosing of the cloth colors and placement, tucking under the corners -- all of which was later imitated with great reverence by the children in her class when they created their puppet shows, and even when they cleaned up on the play yard.

After she retired to Big Sur for a short time, Monique returned to support the SFWS preschool for a number of years, gifting the children with beautiful puppet shows and delicious soup. She is now visited each week by the preschool and kindergarten children in her garden flat across the street from the school.

Andacht zum Kleinen in German means 'reverence for the small things', including gestures, speech, and the care that flows into everything. This defines Monique's work in the kindergarten and in her marionette and puppetry work. As a founding teacher of two schools, Monique has, to this day, an extraordinary ability to make things happen through her deep interest in others and constant advocacy for the children and the school. 

We invite you to hear from Monique herself in a wonderful mini-documentary produced by Michael Garrett and available freely online, called The Art of Puppetry and Performance with Monique Grund. It is truly a gift to hear Monique's voice and perspective on puppetry and experience her genius and warmth as she shares with Michael the inspiration for a new story she wrote in 2013 for the children of San Francisco as well as a new form of marionette presentation by The Magic Lantern Marionette Troupe. The premiere of The Princess Mermaid is also now available freely online thanks to The Movement Academy Project by Valerie Baadh, filmed also by Michael Garrett. 

Monique is now retired after 57 years of Waldorf teaching, and she just celebrated her 88th birthday on July 20th, the same day that Marjorie Rehbach's puppetry summer camp in Los Osos began working with The Princess Mermaid. Each new puppetry endeavor is a treasure, and it will be such a joy to share with Monique how the children in Marjorie's camp receive and work with the story she wrote.