Our Team
Who We Are
Cate Clother, M.S. Ed
Founder & Teacher, Cedar Grove
Cate Clother is is an artist and educator living on unceded land of the Winnemum Wintu and Okwanuchu (Dunsmuir, CA) with her husband and three children. She received her Bachelors in Fine Art from Westmont College and her Masters in Sustainability Education from Portland State University as a Ford Family Foundation Scholar. In her early career she worked as an assistant teacher at a Waldorf early childhood center, an art teacher at Portland Children’s Museum, a forest guide at Tryon Creek State Park, and a garden educator at Portland State’s Learning Gardens where she worked alongside low-income and refugee families. She also worked as a camp counselor at Lake Retreat Camp in Seattle, and at Kokrine Hills Camp in central Alaska with Athabascan and Yupik youth. For ten years, Cate lived and worked at Camphill Soltane, an intentional community on Lenape land (southeastern Pennsylvania) where she supported young adults with developmental disabilities, first as an AmeriCorps volunteer and then as a long-term, full-time volunteer coworker. Her three children attended Kimberton Waldorf School for many years and Cate fell in love with Waldorf education, and began to envision its therapeutic potential for children and families experiencing intergenerational trauma and poverty.
In 2018, Cate returned to her hometown of Dunsmuir, where Cate founded Cedar Grove in 2020. Along with her work for Cedar Grove, she is Founder & Editor-in-Chief of Cordella Press and one half of Clother Creative, a studio offering photography, design, illustration, and more. Cate was born in Mt. Shasta and raised in Dunsmuir by her grandparents. Cate is proud to be a 3rd generation Dunsmuirian and to have finally returned to the people and place she holds most dear.
Lenka Borankova
Teacher, Cedar Grove
Lenka Borankova grew up in Pilsen, Czech Republic. After completing her studies in Pre-School Education at the Western Bohemian University, she moved to England where she continued deepening her interest and capacity to work with the kindergarten-age children. She came across the book 'Free to Learn' which deeply moved and inspired her. It is written by an experienced Waldorf kindergarten teacher Lynne Oldfield and it offers a wonderful window into what Waldorf education can offer for a growing child in our current, often chaotic world. She was sruck by its healing properties and by its artistic approach. After finishing the book, she contacted the author who invited her to enroll in the Waldorf Kindergarten Teacher Training at the Rudolf Steiner House in London which she was directing at the time. Lenka graduated from the training three years later and became an apprentice to Jan Coles, a well-seasoned kindergarten teacher who started Willow Tree Kindergarten for lower income families in Bristol. Lenka worked there for three years, first as an apprentice and an assistant and later as a lead co-teacher with Jan.
After her time in Bristol, Lenka moved to the island of Malta, where she started her own Waldorf kindergarten on an organic farm. SH mostly worked with ex-patriots' families, having the opportunity to learn from and to understand children from many parts of the world. Two years later Lenka passed on the project to a colleague and moved back to England to work at the South Devon Steiner School. The following year the school was down-sizing and she found her way to the United States to pursue the training in Eurythmy at the American Eurythmy School in Weed, California. Since graduating in May 2020, Lenka has taught Eurythmy in Idaho, Oregon, and Los Angeles. Lenka feels extremely fortunate to be a part of Cedar Grove School to support and to help realize the wonderful and generous dream of the founder, Cate Clother, and to offer a true Waldorf experience to our local community.
Kirsten Joy Hubbard
Assistant Teacher, Cedar Grove
Kirsten has lived in Siskiyou County for three years and currently lives in the Shasta forest, learning how to live more sustainably and off-grid. She is originally from the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, and studied Sociology at UC Santa Cruz. While in Santa Cruz, Kirsten learned how to facilitate Gung-Fu pu-erh tea style in a well-loved and refined local teahouse. This was a beautiful space to drop in without digital devices and be present with people in the community sharing reflections on medicine, mindfulness, tea history/culture through the art of tea. Kirsten then traveled to Spain and Morocco for three months each, getting to know local friends and share thoughts on culture, art and spirituality. She found traveling with no plans to be a truly enriching experience! She worked and lived on a seven-acre organic produce farm in Humboldt area and has enjoyed supporting many different gardens. She currently lives on and supports a local permaculture homestead, helping to grow food and medicine. She likes to dabble in various art forms, including sketching, poetry, song and dance. She has enjoyed participating in dance performance, and is most resonate with the movement style Contact Improv, an improvised form of partner dancing based in weight-sharing, spontaneity and subtle somatic dialogue.
Kirsten has worked with several nature-based children programs, all with different focuses and age ranges; a free-play forest program with ages 4-8, a nature-science program for ages 9-11, and a backpacking camp in the Trinity wilderness with ages 11-17. She loves that the Waldorf philosophy is steeped heavily in art, nature awareness/ritual, and a deeper state of presence with one another/reverence of spirit. She looks forward to delving in more deeply into this style of facilitating space with little ones!
