Angelita Surage was fortunate to grow up in the woods, the fields, and near the Atlantic Ocean in southern rural New Jersey. Living in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico as a guest in Mayan villages inspired her to pursue teaching. After graduating from Rutgers University with Distinction in History/Political Science, she moved to Colorado where she taught middle school social studies and home economics and started a French and Spanish enrichment program in Manitou Springs. For ten years, she homeschooled her two daughters in the Waldorf tradition and tutored homebound students for Cheyenne Mountain Schools. She returned to Manitou to teach middle school Spanish and literacy. The last seven years she has taught grades 9-12 Spanish and English, where she has tried to infuse the program with cultural creative arts and movement. She sponsored an ecology club, (WORRRMS) to support single stream recycling, solar garden participation, raised bed growing frames, xeriscape gardens, and re-seeding with native grasses and wildflowers. She was also involved in shaping and writing a Sustainability Plan which was presented at the National Green Schools Conference. Her Masters in Arts and Teaching from Colorado College in the arts and humanities involved landscape and garden design, arts, and anthropology. Her honors thesis focused on the presence of Arab/Berber culture in the acequias, agriculture, adobe architecture, and foodways of the American Southwest. She currently teaches agricultural arts and world languages at Mountain Song Community School, a Waldorf- methods charter in Colorado Springs.
