Our Mission

We receive students with reverence, educate them with love, and send them into the world in freedom.

Marin Waldorf School exists to offer a deliberately human education. For more than fifty years, we have met students where they are developmentally — introducing academic rigor when they can meet it with confidence and curiosity — and taught them to think across disciplines within the context of a living community. Our graduates leave with the strong academic foundations needed to thrive at competitive Bay Area high schools, as well as the soft skills needed to respond to the changing world: relational intelligence, internal motivation, and a durable love of learning. Students can “receive” an education from nearly any school, but there is a unique way in which MWS students “own” their education and carry it with their whole selves through the rest of their lives.

Our Values

  • We believe in the whole child. Intellect, feeling, and action are inseparable ways of knowing. Academic rigor, artistic practice, movement, and social responsibility are not separate endeavors here — they are one integrated education.

  • We trust the developmental process. Challenge is essential, and it must be rightly timed. We introduce skills when students are ready to meet them with confidence, cultivating resilience, attention, and joy in learning — capacities that cannot be rushed or retrofitted.

  • We cultivate capacity without a ceiling. Before Middle School, we do not provide a grading system to gamify or a top score to reach. Instead, learning has no upper limit. Our question is never "did you achieve?" but "how much further can you go?"

  • We cultivate relational intelligence. In multi-age classrooms, buddy partnerships, and daily collaboration, students learn to listen, earn trust, lead with empathy, and see themselves as part of something larger.

  • We nurture reverence and wonder. Moments of gratitude, seasonal festivals, and time in nature cultivate a sense of the sacred — a wider perspective, not doctrine.

  • We are a community of families. Education here is a partnership between home and school. Parents are not spectators; they are participants in a shared endeavor, supported and known.

  • We protect childhood. Ten acres of living curriculum, analog tools before digital ones, depth before speed. We give students the developmental foundations that make a healthy relationship with technology — and with the world — possible.

Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion at MWS

We know that children thrive when surrounded by a healthy, welcoming, and warm school community. We want children at Marin Waldorf School to be who they are, and we are striving to build a more beautiful world in which every child feels safe and valued. Marin Waldorf School is committed to educating children within an equitable, inspiring, and inclusive school community. 

About our DEIJB Committee

Since 2018, the school’s active Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Justice, and Belonging (DEIJB) Committee has led our community in self-examination and study through parent and faculty education events, in addition to helping promote equity and anti-bias work within our curriculum and in our physical spaces. In cooperation with school leadership, the committee contributed to the establishment of two scholarship programs designed to promote inclusion at Marin Waldorf School (please read more about our scholarship programs below). 

Through the work of our DEIJB Committee, our faculty and staff have taken up the individual and collective work of examining our school, ourselves, and our curriculum with an equity lens. Through education, collaboration, and self-reflection, we are finding new ways to incorporate anti-racist and anti-bias teaching into the Waldorf curriculum and our school community.

Scholarship Programs

Marin Waldorf School is committed to building an inclusive learning environment in which differences are understood and celebrated. In line with this mission, we are proud to offer two scholarship programs. 

Lesley Rosenberg Inclusion Scholarship

Established in 2022, the Lesley Rosenberg Inclusion Scholarship provides full and partial tuition scholarships to families with demonstrated financial need from underrepresented communities. Families interested in applying for the Lesley Rosenberg Inclusion Scholarship should contact our admissions director to discuss the process at admissions@marinwaldorf.org.

More information about the Inclusion Scholarship

Native Reconciliation Tuition Program

In recognition of the historical and continuing trauma inflicted by colonialism on the Native people of North America, Marin Waldorf School (MWS) is offering a tuition-free Waldorf education for a select number of students whose families are members of an indigenous tribe in the United States.

Established in 2023, in response to a call to action from the Lakota Waldorf School in North Dakota, Marin Waldorf School is proud to be tuition-free for Native American students through the Native Reconciliation Tuition Program. Families interested in applying should contact our admissions director to discuss the process at admissions@marinwaldorf.org.
Click here for more information: Marin Waldorf School Native Reconciliation Tuition Program

Diversity Statement

AWSNA and Marin Waldorf School are committed to a policy of nondiscrimination and equal opportunity without regard to race, color, religious creed, ancestry, age, gender, marital status, national origin, disability or handicap, protected genetic information, veteran status, sexual orientation or any other factor protected by law.

Our Governance Structure

Marin Waldorf School is a 501(c)3 non-profit preschool through 8th grade independent school, run collaboratively by three interrelated bodies: the School Director, the Board of Trustees, and the College of Teachers. These three governing entities work collaboratively to support our unique and comprehensive Waldorf education.

  • The School Director

    • The School Director is responsible for directing and managing all pedagogical, curriculum, and teaching operations at Marin Waldorf School. The School Director is the chief business officer for the school, responsible for directing and managing all legal, administrative, financial and facilities operations and school-wide communications.

  • The Board of Trustees

    • The Board of Trustees is the legal governing body of the school. It focuses on developing policies and providing oversight to assure the school’s effective performance in three primary areas: legal, financial stewardship, and personnel and human resources. The Board has up to 14 members, which include current parents, teachers, and former parents or outside community members who have demonstrated an understanding of and commitment to the aims of Waldorf education.

    • Board meetings are held monthly during the school year. Anyone in our school community is welcome to attend meetings to observe the proceedings.

  • The College of Teachers

    • The College of Teachers is a group of current faculty who hold the vision of Marin Waldorf School. The College of Teachers is responsible for strengthening the spiritual, pedagogical, and cultural life of the school, and for supporting the faculty’s decision-making process through thoughtful discussion of issues important to Marin Waldorf’s health and growth.