Meet Ms. Bevard: Teaching Children to Long for the Sea

A Musician's Foundation

Ms. Bevard holds a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance from Millikin University and a Master of Arts in Education with a Waldorf Certificate from the Great Lakes Waldorf Institute at Mount Mary University. That musical training shapes her teaching. Ask her about her favorite music and she won't give you a single answer; she'll give you a list that ranges from System of a Down to Ani DiFranco, from cellist Jacqueline du Pré to the Silk Road Ensemble and Tin Hat Trio. A teacher who hears the world this widely brings that same range and attentiveness into the classroom: to language, to rhythm, to the voice of every child in the room.

Long before she stood in front of a Waldorf classroom, she was teaching swimming lessons at sixteen, coaching recreational gymnastics at eighteen, giving voice lessons, tutoring young readers through Big Brothers Big Sisters, and spending six straight summers as a camp counselor with SEASPAR. She even once taught adults how to use software at a web design company. If there is a throughline in Ms. Bevard's life, it is this: she has always been the person who helps someone else learn something new, and she has always loved it.

This path eventually led her to Waldorf education. She spent a year teaching choir at our school before enrolling in her first Waldorf teacher training course in 2015 and she has been teaching here, in this way, ever since (hooray!).

A Philosophy Worth Repeating

When asked what quote best captures her as a teacher, Ms. Bevard didn't reach for an education slogan. She reached for Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

It's a striking choice, and the right one. It says something true about how Ms. Bevard sees her role; not as someone who hands out tasks and checks boxes, but as someone who kindles a genuine longing in a child: for a story, for a skill, for the wide world waiting past the classroom walls. It's a quote that could just as easily describe the whole aim of a Waldorf education, which is exactly why it fits her so well.

What She Loves About the Work

Ask Ms. Bevard about the best part of working with children, and she doesn't hesitate: their joy, their wonder, their adaptability, their curiosity, their trust. And, she'll add with a laugh, the funny things they say. It's a simple answer, but not a small one. It's the answer of someone who has spent a career paying close attention to children and never gotten tired of what she finds there.

Even her answer about the seasons says something about her: she loves all of them (for about the first two months) and then gets restless for the next one. It's the same curiosity that shows up everywhere else in her life, a delight in variety and a readiness to keep discovering something new.

The Gift of Having Ms. Bevard as a Teacher

If your child has Ms. Bevard as a teacher, they have someone who has spent her whole life teaching — swimming, singing, reading, and now, the full breadth of a Waldorf education — and whose guiding philosophy is less about assigning wood-collecting and rope-cutting than it is about teaching a child to long for the sea. That is a rare gift, and one worth knowing about the person standing at the front of your child's classroom.