Shenandoah Valley Community School
Staff
Staff members
Erin I. LaFever was born and raised in Cookeville, TN. She worked at the YMCA, First Baptist Church, and for the Putnam County Board of Education working with pre-school age children. In May 2010, she received her Bachelor's Degree in Secondary Education with a certification in English, grades 7-12. She has worked with teachers and learners of all ages and has dedicated her life to educating the next generation of people.
Sarah Diener Beachy is the
founder of Shenandoah Valley Community School. She graduated from the education program at Eastern Mennonite University in 2002 and
is a teacher licensed by the state of Virginia. Sarah taught elementary special
education for three years in Virginia public schools. She spent a year in college
visiting democratic schools and researching learner-centered education. Sarah is a
member of the Alternative
Education Resource Organization (AERO). Sarah was unschooled in grades 1-12 and
considers herself a product of learner-centered education.
Carol has been involved with the school since the beginning as a parent and a volunteer. Then she joined the board and ran the parent meetings. Now, she is a staff member and is excited to bring her thirst for creativity in teaching to SVCS. As a public school teacher, she loved the challenge of making lessons creative and fun. At SVCS, she is offering classes, which follow traditional curriculum but in a creative light, every afternoon. She leads classes such as "Six Education" (math) and "Disease of the week" (history and science), and she arranges visits from people who come from other countries or have visited other countries. A world traveler herself, she has deep ties to the immigrant community of Harrisonburg through her Spanish radio work and teaching ESL. Carol is fluent in Spanish and is now trying to learn Arabic. She is bringing Spanish immersion to SVCS by speaking only Spanish while she leads daily classes in Spanish cooking, Spanish teatime, and Spanish exercises (not grammar but real exercise--yoga, walking, all in Spanish). Carol has also lived on and off Native American reservations for 15 years and enjoys sharing animal stories with the students as a way to teach natural sciences. She also has a Masters in film and video production and uses her talents in these areas by working with individual students and offering teen classes through the school. Carol, like Sarah, is a licensed teacher and has had over five years of classroom experience. Working at SVCS offers her a great challenge to make her classes interesting, to follow the students lead, and to know that some days the students are too busy on their own projects to come to class or that a meeting takes precedent. As a parent, she has enjoyed watching her children learn to communicate in the meetings, become excited to teach a class (the best way to learn something is to teach it), and to learn from Sarah's peacemaking strengths on how to empower children. Carol went to a Quaker college where she learned positive communication and peacemaking techniques. She used these techniques in her public school classrooms and is glad that SVCS puts an emphasis on such techniques.
Contact us to learn how to become a volunteer.
