Educational Support
By cultivating relationships with peers and teachers over the course of their four-year journey through high school, students develop an understanding of and respect for their own capacities and gifts as well as compassion for their challenges and those of others.
Our Educational Support program encourages students with learning differences to understand their processing style and become their own advocate. We also help students to expand their executive function skills, with a focus on the development of metacognition. Our protocol is designed so that neurodivergent students receive appropriate accommodations in the classroom and on standardized tests. Sometimes the school enlists the help of specialized outside professionals.
The High School Counselor supports students’ emotional well-being and overall progress in school. She helps students make healthy choices and identify behaviors that may hinder success. There are individual and small group counseling and facilitation sessions among parents, faculty, and other individuals.
Neurodiversity Affinity Group
The Neurodiversity Affinity Group is dedicated to advocating on behalf of all neurodivergent learners. They support each other, educate teachers, and sometimes teach about neurodiversity at all-school assemblies. The group is led by the Educational Support Coordinator.
“Our rightful place as educators is to be removers of hindrances...Each child at every age brings something new to the world.”
Rudolf Steiner
Meet our specialists
Lesley Fisher, LMFT
lfisher@sfwaldorf.org
Lesley Fisher holds a California teaching credential and Waldorf teacher training certification. She has been working with children and teens for 30+ years, in the classroom teaching English Language Arts and additionally since 2015, working individually with neurodiverse teens as a writing and executive function coach. Multiple trainings in teaching neurodiverse teens have further informed her approach to teaching executive function strategies to strengthen students’ ability to independently manage their homework load, plan and finish essays and projects, and study for tests.
Meridith Anne Baldwin, LMFT
mbaldwin@sfwaldorf.org
Meridith Anne Baldwin is an expressive arts therapist and a licensed marriage and family therapist. She believes that the power to change comes from within and uses the arts through a trauma-informed, social justice lens to aid in that process. She started at SFWHS in 2021 after working as a therapist in community mental health and school settings.