In this first interview of two, Gertrude Reif Hughes discusses topics including: her childhood in New York City; Waldorf education and attended the Rudolph Steiner School; attending Quaker boarding school for high school; anthroposophy; studying English at Mount Holyoke; meeting her husband and subsequently marrying him and living together in New Britain; teaching at Cromwell High School; attending Wesleyan's Master for Arts in Teaching (MAT) program; working with colleague and friend Elizabeth Ormsby; completing a PhD program at Yale; raising four children.