Become a Trained Waldorf Teacher! Open House - March 3, 2026

Sound Circle Speech Training

The speech program is currently in hiatus. Please contact Craig Giddens to learn more.

Cultivating Living Speech

A four-year intensive speech training to develop the next generation of speech teachers

Working with one’s own speaking can be a powerful path of self development. To a trained ear, the spoken word reveals the inner, wisdom-filled soul life of the speaker. Speech carries a spiritual potency that moves both the speaker and the listener. When our speech becomes a blessing, we too are blessed.

For those whose vocation it is to guide children, speech training enables the speaker to consciously use ego forces to direct the flow of the etheric body and engage the astral body. As a word gives shape to thoughts and experiences, the ego structures and guides the process. It is through this activity that we become worthy of imitation. Furthermore, speech is the main instrument of the teacher whose speech patterns are absorbed by the children - every day, every hour, for years. A teacher’s speech may bless, bludgeon or rattle on like dry leaves. When mastered, speech can be a most powerful means for guiding children through daily activities, making classroom management invisible, and can provide generous spoonsful of soul-spiritual nourishment, not only through enlivened images of story and poetry but through the very movement within living speech that washing through the children, supports their life forces and nurtures imagination.

A New Speech Training

In 2022, Craig Giddens & Daniel Stokes launched our four year online and in-person speech program - the first training of its kind in North America. Craig and Daniel have dedicated their lives to cultivating a living speech and to guiding others to enlivened speech. In this new training they will lead us on this path of speech for self and human development, especially suited for teachers. Join us in a "sounding circle" for the good of speech!

Four Year Speech Program

A typical Speech Training is four years long. Each year includes 18 intensive in-person days of Speech, movement, and Eurythmy (12 in summer and 3 each in winter and spring) plus 100 total hours of online individual and group speech work throughout the school year. This year’s summer session will take place in Whidbey Island, WA from July 17-29.

A Foundation Year in Speech

For those not wishing to pursue the full four year training, the initial year of the training serves as a sound basis for teacher speech development.

Program Fees

The cost of the Speech Program is $7,380.00 per year.

An application fee ($175) and a deposit ($615) are due before the program year, with 11 further payments ($615) beginning in July. For more information on payment options, please contact Jaya, jaya@soundcirclecenter.org

How to Apply:

Submit our application form

After submitting your application you will be interviewed by the Program Director Craig Giddens and subsequently notified of your acceptance. The final step in the enrollment process is to complete and sign an enrollment agreement.

If you are interested in a pedagogically oriented speech workshop for class teachers, we have a 3 day offering this summer, please visit our professional development page for more information.

Faculty

Program Director

Craig Giddens - A Goetheanum recognized speech artist since 1978, Craig has been a Waldorf class teacher, speech teacher and a mentor in Waldorf schools in both the U.S. and in Europe for more than fifty years. He was a founding member of the Center for Anthroposophy in New Hampshire, a founding member of the Speech School of North America, and has been a part of the faculty at the Antioch New England Waldorf Teacher Training since it began in 1982. He is currently teaching speech at Sound Circle Waldorf Teacher Training in Seattle and at the Waldorf High School Teacher Training in New Hampshire. He lives in Freeport Maine where he is mentoring Waldorf teachers and teaching speech at the Maine Coast Waldorf School.

Core Faculty: Speech

Daniel Stokes - has worked within the Waldorf Education movement since 1975. He received his teacher training at Emerson College, England and a diploma for Speech and Drama in Sydney, Australia. He co-founded Mythos Storytellers and Looking Glass Theater which performed and led workshops in schools across Australia. Over the past 24 years Daniel has been a class teacher and has brought a love for the spoken word, specifically its use in the classroom, through courses in poetry, storytelling and drama in Waldorf training centers throughout the U.S. He currently lives with his wife in Portland and spends some of the year abroad training teachers and mentoring in Waldorf Schools.

Adjunct Faculty: Eurythmy

Bonnie Freundlich holds a Diploma from the Eurythmeum in Stuttgart, Germany, an M.A. in Creative Arts in Therapy and a B.A. in Literature. She has worked as a movement therapist in therapeutic and educational settings and has taught eurythmy in Waldorf schools since 2000. She has also served as an Administrator in Waldorf schools and previously in an academic hospital. Bonnie understands it is an honor to support the growth of each child on a unique journey and enjoys connecting with students from her early years of teaching, now young adults. In her free time, Bonnie gardens at her biodynamic farm on Whidbey Island.

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