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A newspaper article written by AWS parent Panjee Tapales in 2007 paved the way for Michi and her young daughter’s path to Acacia Waldorf School. It was so timely for Michi, who had been searching for a holistically meaningful education for her daughter! Being invited to teach at AWS was indeed an answered prayer for Michi as well, for it was here that she had found her most significant life mission. It was in AWS, this genuinely warm and loving “second home”, that her daughter grew and blossomed into a centered, confident and deeply profound young lady that she is today.
Michi was a pioneer Grade School Main Teacher of Hasmin students from Class 1-8. She was an active volunteer member of the College of Teachers all throughout her years at AWS, and holds the distinction of being the first AWS Main Teacher to complete a full teaching cycle from Classes 1 to 8. She became AWS Community Development Coordinator and Lower School Coordinator, after Hasmin Class completed Grade School. Her last designation before her retirement in 2020, was Grade School Coordinator.
Michi shared that she would have loved to have been a student in Acacia after knowing about the Waldorf curriculum. Her work in guiding AWS Parents and uniting the AWS Community and Faculty through Steiner Education and Basic Anthroposophy was truly an inspiring mission where she shared the gifts that the school gave her and her daughter! She believed that working with positivity, unity, and sincere loving compassion among parents and faculty create a wonderful ripple effect for all the children and families in the community, just like the ripples that form when a pebble is thrown into a pond. As a student of Anthroposophy herself, Michi would like to continue to help more people achieve the spiritual wholeness that Anthroposophy gives… as a gift to those who have the opportunity to receive and nurture it.
Born and raised in Metro Manila, Michi was educated at the Institucíon Teresiana (presently known as St. Pedro Poveda College). She has a degree in A.B. Psychology from the Ateneo de Manila University. After college, she worked as a Recruitment Assistant at the Human Resources Dept., and as an Executive Assistant to the EVP of a leading international bank in Makati. Michi enjoyed her coordinating work, and the superb artistic culture that the bank patronized. She then worked in Madrid, Spain as a Berlitz English Teacher until she landed a job as a 1st Grade Main Teacher at a Spanish Montessori School, where she acquired a Montessori teaching certificate.
When marriage beckoned, Michi left Madrid and joined her husband John in Bangkok, Thailand where she worked as an Inlingua English Teacher. Upon their return to Manila, Michi and John raised their young family of two and she taught at the International School for Beginning Beginners (ICBB) Pre-School before her family moved to Laguna. Through the years, Michi has attended numerous Waldorf Steiner Education seminars, workshops and grade school trainings here and abroad. Her daughter Mirea finished her education at AWS and belongs to the Kalachuchi pioneer class of AWS Upper School. When Mirea was a Class 12 student, she was the first AWS Upper School student who was granted full academic merit college scholarship by an international university in Madrid, Spain.
After 13 years with AWS and a total of 35 years in the academe, Michi would like to express her deepest and most heartfelt gratitude to everyone who was with her in her truly memorable and meaningful journey in Acacia!