Katie Sobczak Chau

Los Angeles, CA

Katie Sobczak Chau grew up as the daughter of two public school teachers and, following in their footsteps, has made it her life’s work to serve students and families. She is proud to have been the founding Executive Director of El Rio Community School, a school informed by the core principles of public Waldorf education, in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood in the heart of Los Angeles, from 2020-2024. El Rio opened on Zoom during the height of the pandemic and during a time of shrinking school enrollment across the city, has steadily grown to a school that will serve approximately 340 students in TK-7th grades in the 2024-2025 school year. For the three years prior to the school’s opening, she took her passion for urban public Waldorf education with a DEIB focus to give birth to El Rio, taking it from a mere idea centered around making arts-integrated, whole-child education accessible to all, through the chartering process with the Los Angeles Unified School District as a Reframe Labs Fellow.

Originally from Michigan, Katie obtained her B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles. She later earned two master’s degrees, one from Loyola Marymount University with an emphasis in bilingual education, and the other combined with a Waldorf teaching certification from a joint program through Rudolf Steiner College and Touro University. She holds both Single Subject (English) and Multiple Subject teaching credentials as well as a bilingual teaching certificate. Her teaching experience spans 25 years, from traditional district public schools to both independent and public Waldorf schools, and she has taught at the elementary, middle, and high school levels, including as a founding teacher at Ocean Charter School, the only other public Waldorf school in Los Angeles. Her passion for teaching and education has taken her from training elementary school teachers in rural Paraguay as a Peace Corps Volunteer to supporting educators in Uruguay through a Fulbright program.

As a lifelong learner, Katie was thrilled that this past year she was selected to participate in the University of Southern California Racial Equity Leadership Lab’s cohort for school administrators, where she studied everything from disaggregation of data in identifying racial inequities, to meaningfully integrating race across the curriculum and affirming student identities. In addition, as a matter of personal interest, she recently took the foundational 30-hour Orton Gillingham course through IMSE, in order to critically examine the Waldorf literacy scope and sequence as it relates to serving children with dyslexia.

As she homeschools her fourth grader this coming school year, Katie is excited to continue her support for the Waldorf movement and its continued expansion and evolution through her service as a member of the Board of the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education.