Small and mighty…
Our staff have a combined 20+ years experience working with young children.
Ms. Tamar
Ms. Tamar (she/her)
Program Director & Lead Teacher
Ms. Tamar has 17 years of experience working with young children, and is a parent herself. She was a founding teacher at The Brooklyn Waldorf School where she led a nursery and mixed-aged afternoon program for 10 years. In 2017 she became the Lead Teacher at another Waldorf-inspired preschool in Brooklyn.
Now, Ms. Tamar is thrilled to have initiated her life-long dream of creating an Urban Forest School for young children—as Program Director and Lead Teacher of the Honeytree Forest School, which she founded in the summer of 2020. The school has already had a successful first year, moving into its second year. She has gathered a core team of teachers (representing a diverse spectrum of gender identity, ethnicity, cultural background and age) who she collaborates with and continues to mentor and guide. This is an important part of the wholistic vision of the school as one of the essential motivations for becoming Waldorf-accredited in the near future (which will define us as a Waldorf Teaching practicum school).
Ms. Tamar has a deep appreciation of the natural world and loves to share this sense of wonder with young children—through storytelling, puppetry, gardening and outdoor explorations. She also enjoys traveling and uses her adventures as fodder and inspiration for her stories.
As a child, her curiousity was fueled by her father’s study of various creatures in their natural habitat, the need for their continued protection, and our symbiotic relationship with the natural world. Her father later founded a Biodiversity Museum in Bishop Mills, Ontario to continue the study and preservation of diverse plant and animal life indigenous to North America, highlighting the imperative to become active stewards of mother earth. These experiences inspired Ms. Tamar’s desire to share this wonder and knowledge with young children though the pedagogy of Honetytree Forest school, via hands-on learning in nature.
She acknowledges that the forest is a wonderful place to learn self-responsibility and resourcefulness while creating and maintaining a campsite with friends. To experience the changing seasons and deep observations of animals in nature, coupled with imaginative play, is an ideal setting for the rich and further holistic development of a young child.
Her experience teaching young children in an urban environment led her to embrace the rhythmic warmth, artistry and holistic approach of Rudolf Steiner’s Waldorf pedagogy, as it provides a palliative to urban living. Additionally, she benefited from the knowledge and experience which she gleaned through her child’s attendance at 2 Waldorf schools (New York City and Wisconsin).
Ms. Tamar received her Masters of Education and Certificate of Waldorf Education for Early Childhood Ed. at Sunbridge College in Chestnut Ridge, NY in 2008. She’s a self-taught fresco painter with a background in Fine Art and Art Restoration (specializing in fresco painting). She holds a BFA degree in Fine Art from The Cooper Union art school in New York City. She later studied extensively with a restoration architect in Umbria, Italy.
She continues to apply her creative sensibilities through cultivating and supporting a continued sense of wonder in the young child.
Mx. Amanda
Mx. Amanda (they/them)
Administrative Support
Mx. Amanda is an artist and wearer of many caps, as the life of a performing artist goes. Mx. Amanda has been working with Ms. Tamar for 3 years as an assistant teacher and after school arts teacher, offering a Movement and Storytelling class which blended elements of Developmental Movement patterning, song/sounding with live drumming, and improvisional story building with the children. Mx. Amanda loves working with children as they are embodied teachers of honesty, vulnerability, spontaneity, and wonder.
Mx. Amanda is excited for her new role as Administrative Support at Honeytree Forest school, and is especially excited to support this incredible team. Other than relishing in the company of children, Mx. Amanda is a practicing performing artist and Co-Directs and Co-Curates with partner IV Castellanos at Para\\el Performance Space, a DIY live/work art loft in Brooklyn.
Mx. Amanda is also currently working to become a certified massage therapist and has a favorite recent performance project as The Attention Peddler. Sitting on a stool on the sidewalk, Mx. Amanda barters with pedestrians an object or experience from them, in exchange for Mx. Amanda’s attention. This project conceptually aims to deal with ideas of value and transaction as it relates to the attention economy.
And Mx. Amanda’s current program is for a Master's in Live Art and Performance Studies in UniArts Helsinki, Helsinki Finland.
Mx. GG
Mx. “GG” (they/them)
Assistant & Aftercare Teacher
Mx. GG is a multimedia artist and self-taught herbalist and urban forager. They love exploring the parks and forests of Brooklyn and beyond, as well as tending their tiny but growing garden.
A recent graduate of the New School’s College of Performing Arts, Mx. GG looks forward to bringing their love of nature and their theatre skills to Honeytree Forest school. They believe strongly in the power of curiosity and creativity to nurture a healthy and happy being.
Ms. Faye
Ms. Faye (she/her)
Assistant & Aftercare Teacher
Ms. Faye is an outdoor educator from Brooklyn who loves to adventure and play in the woods and connect community members with their landscapes. For the past 3 years, Ms. Faye has been teaching children of all ages primitive survival skills rooted in the four pillars of survival: shelter, fire, water and food with the organization Earth Living Skills. She crafts with natural materials harvested off of local landscapes and utilizing skills to create and connect with the land, ourselves, each other with careful intention and awareness.
Ms. Faye is thrilled for the opportunity to work at Honeytree Forest and is looking forward to having time to sink in and let nature spark curiosity and joy in all of us.
Mr. Adonis
Assistant & Aftercare Teacher
Mr. Adonis is a transmasculine multimedia artist, noise musician, and poet born and rasied in New York City. A lifelong New Yorker, Adonis’ love of nature was first kindled after studying at Bennington College, with his studies focusing in poetry and video art. Since completing his studies, he has worked with the LGBT Community Center as an advocate for education equity in NYC public schools, and has been a full-time assistant children’s art teacher in Park Slope for nearly two years. He is deeply grateful to join the HoneyTree community, and hopes to learn from his student’s deep capacity for wonder, curiosity, and awe.
Ms. LaCrisha
Assistant & Aftercare Teacher
LaChrisha C. Brown is multidisciplinary teacher, actor, and vocalist in NYC. With over 20 years of experience in education, she has facilitated classes for the Girls Scouts IP college, The School at Columbia, Partnership with Children, FLY Yoga, YoReMi and Honey Tree Forest School. LaChrisha recently contributed background vocals in this year’s Carlyle residency with Hamilton Leithauser and 651’s Song Salon with Nicholas Ryan Gant. As a result of her work with Donkysaddle Productions (There is A Field) and Colab Arts (Life Death and Life Beyond), she has been a current pioneer in the development of new works and a facilitator of political conversation inspired by Social Justice Theater. Film Credits: Pillow Talk (Lyric), Teacher Problems (Amy Lovett), MADD (Detective), Sub-Par (Creator). Theater Credits: Richard III (Lady Anne), Joe Turner's Come and Gone (Mattie Campbell), For Colored Girls (Lady in Red), Peter and Wendy (Tinker Bell)
“You must be for the children the representative of the good, the true, and the beautiful. The children must be drawn to truth, goodness, and beauty simply because the children are drawn to you yourself.”
— Rudolph Steiner