March - Author of the Month March 10 2026
Waldorf Publications has published two books by Michale Holdrege:
From Mechanism to Organism,
Enlivening the Study of Human Biology
&
Embryology, Genetics, and Ecology,
Windows into the Dynamic Nature of Living Organisms
With these two books, it is possible for a high school life science teacher to unravel the mysteries of life sciences for high schoolers. From Mechanism to Organism is for ninth and tenth grades, while Embryology, Genetics, and Ecology is for eleventh and twelfth grades.
Michael Holdrege describes an imaginative entry point for unriddling the questions of how to engage students of a particular age in keen interest in human physiology, immunology, and functioning processes, and in genetics and the sacred realm of embryology, and then relate all of this to the world around us.
With over two decades of experience teaching high school students at the Chicago Waldorf School, the Rudolf Steiner School in Vienna, Austria, and also teaching teachers here in North America and in Xi’an, China how to teach life sciences, Holdrege has written an entire life science curriculum. These books can be used as a springboard for teachers to discover their own imaginative teaching processes. The author passes along his expertise in the magnificent mystery of life sciences, and his experience with high schoolers who just coming into their own clear thinking and judgement. Holdrege, with humor and intelligence, highlights the fact that facing a classroom of teenagers about phenomenological science is not for the faint of heart!
Wonder is a precious commodity for us all to muster, but most of all in the minds and hearts of the young. You will find in these books both reliable science, yet also filled with Holdrege’s uniquely tender quality of wonder. These books will guide teachers on how to gather fresh ideas to engender wonder in adolescents! (If that’s not a miracle, then what is?!)
These books are filled with Holdrege’s own illustrations, hand drawn, as examples of blackboard drawings that enhance understanding and this sense of awe. These drawings help illuminate the complexity and elegance of human functions, and are a help to everyone in comprehending the systems that keep us healthy. Relating all teaching to the human being settles knowledge in young hearts as their own; recognizable, and worthy of pondering. Rather than cultivating egoism, (“It’s all about me after all!”) Holdrege’s methods engender a sense of humility on how much each of us cannot hope to realize without careful study.
At a time when young people, and all of us, struggle to find meaning and significance in much of contemporary schooling, Holdrege describes a pathway to engendering interest in the amazing wisdom of the human body.