Joan Treadaway of Arizona

This 2009 notice saluted Joan’s return to service on our national leadership. She concluded that term in 2016 but continues to be active in Arizona.

Joan Treadaway rejoined the General Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America in 2009 succeeding Linda Connell, who had given devoted service and reached her term limit. Joan is a long-time member of the Western Regional Council and served previously on the General Council from 1994-2000. For over 45 years she has been a consultant and mentor, and is in private practice (Childhood Consulting Services in Prescott, Arizona) as a Waldorf Remedial Therapist. She works with children and young adults, consults with parents, and provides support for teachers and schools. A consultant to several Waldorf schools, she lectures widely on the challenges of children in the 21st century.

Joan has also worked extensively in administration and community development, advising boards, parent groups, and school administrations. She is currently working on a booklet on effects of custodial arrangements on children of divorce.

In recent talks in several areas of the West Joan shared some fundamental insights about how children and adults— all of us—are constantly immersed in the media’s reality. During the period from birth to seven years, children are learning naturally by imitation and lack the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality. Even at later stages studies show that exposure to media violence is desensitizing, and television itself affects brain function for all viewers. Parents and teachers working together can reduce the negative effects of the media.

Along with providing a Western perspective to the General Council, Joan hopes to bring the strengths of “Goethean observation” to the work of council development. At her first meeting she shared some constructive aspects of the way the Western Regional Council works:

Each meeting is a building processes to bring the Western Region alive. The WRC works, in a very real way, to attempt a new social form in which council members are given the space to come together and speak freely out of themselves and their experiences, to share insights, not out of a plan, but creating out of what is possible and out of the real contacts with groups and branches in the region. This gets reforged and recreated by the end of their regular weekend meetings and becomes a direction in which to move forward.

Joan graduated from Whittier College with a degree in Psychology and Sociology, and has a MS in Waldorf Remedial Therapy from Sunbridge College. She lives in Prescott, Arizona with her husband Glen. Whenever possible, she enjoys birding, hiking, kayaking, going to great movies, reading, and being with her grandson. She credits her joy in life, in a large part, to her parents and three brothers, with whom she shared an archetypal childhood of strong family rhythms, laughter, and living close to nature in rural New Jersey.

She is a board member of the Association for a Healing Education which is involved in promoting healthful practices in education and in therapeutic intervention through a deeper understanding of childhood development and hindrances to development.