Pedagogy & Planets: Supporting Optimal Human Development
For nearly three decades, I have immersed myself in the art of teaching. My journey as a K-12 and Waldorf educator, along with co-founding two private schools (Sudbury and Waldorf), taught me that every individual has a unique blueprint for learning and growth. We all have our daimon, as James Hillman would say. And yet, every human being also develops along a common human-cosmic timeline. At age two and a half, every toddler hits those “terrible two’s” with their first Mars return. At age six, every first grader experiences their first Jupiter opposition, encountering their first school teacher who expands the child’s perception beyond the home. At age eleven, every human being will experience their first Jupiter Return. At age fourteen to fifteen, every human being will experience their first Saturn Opposition, testing authority. These and many other cosmic goal posts give us a shared cosmic-biographical planetary timeline which we will all travel through during a lifetime.
As a classroom teacher, I have had many opportunities to observe my students. I have wrestled with the question of how best to promote human learning and motivation in my classroom if not beyond it. I have researched and personally tested different types of teaching and learning methods and different types of learning environments.
Now, I am exploring how the world of astrology and astrosophy intersect with human development and how those insights might be useful. I found Alex Trenoweth’s work, Growing Pains, to be an invaluable resource, along with Rudolf Steiner’s huge body of work.
Where Astrology Comes In
As a graduate of Alex Trenoweth’s Rohini Academy of Astrology, my astrological interests and work explores the intersection of nature vs. nurture. My goal is to translate complex astrological concepts into practical insights for non-astrologers, focusing on:
Helping individuals and families: Using a birth chart to understand your own or your child’s inherent nature better and how best to support it.
Improving Schools: How pedagogical approaches can better align with human developmental periods as seen through planetary cycles and timing.
De-Stigmatizing Astrological Study: Where an openness exists, promote the need for further astrological research and inform the general public about how these two realms of human development and astrological cycles truly say the same things. Astrology need not require or negate personal religious belief.
Contribute: I hope to add something useful to the body of research. When appropriate, I hope to bring together diverse topics that impact healthy development like diet, exercise, excessive media exposure, nature-deficit, the importance of unstructured play and movement, learning disorders, and mental health.
Join the Journey
I invite you to explore how these fields of study can inform a more optimal way of supporting, raising and teaching future generations.
A Different Flavor: The Food Bitch Chronicles
Optimal development isn’t only about what is written in our stars—it’s also about what thoughts and daily habits we fuel ourselves with, and the messy process of personal change.
Alongside my educational and astrological research, I sometimes write something I affectionately call The Food Bitch Chronicles. This is —a “raw” reflection on my transition to a vegan lifestyle, my own personal experiment in optimal health.
As a self-described introvert and people-pleaser, Food Bitch is a place where I drop my 29 degree Cancer ASC-people pleaser filter to fully realize my 9th house Aries Stellium and bitch about the frustrations and joys of conscious eating. These posts are less about being perfect and more about the authentic, sometimes uncomfortable journey of being the only vegan at the BBQ.
Join the Journey
I invite you to explore these topics with me, to interact, like, and share. Without readers, there isn’t much point to write, so I encourage your questions and comments.
