By COLLEEN BIDWILL | Marin Independent Journal January 5, 2019

Dorit Winter has spent her lifetime teaching children and adults.

Not long after adopting Scamp, a then-rambunctious 6-month-old vizsla mix, Winter saw a connection between training her dog and child-rearing. Using her background as a teacher and experience leading Waldorf teacher training programs, the 71-year-old San Rafael resident self-published her fifth book, “Train a Dog, but Raise the Child.”

Retired since 2014, she continues to teach, mentor and advise teachers and parents alike.

Repetition, Routine, Consistency

“It dawned on me that I was doing with this dog what you had to do with a very young child,” says Dorit Winter about how her dog, Scamp, inspired her latest book.

Q What made you want to become a teacher?

A I always was a teacher, from the minute that my brother, who is three years younger, was born. At the age of 4, I was the only person who ever knew exactly what he meant by anything he did or said. Ever since then, I’ve just had it in me to be pedagogically inclined. I started teaching when I was 26. I grew up bilingually. I was raised in Switzerland and in South Africa. I spoke German and English and that led me a master of arts in comparative literature. From there, I found that I was able to take advantage of my interest in the arts, which included writing, music and painting, by becoming a teacher in the Waldorf schools.

Q How did your cosmopolitan background influence your work?

A It provided me at a very early age with an understanding of what it means to me a human being, first, and everything else second. I have a clear experience of being in an airplane flying across the continent of Africa from South Africa towards Europe and not seeing any lines where the countries were, and being amazed that there was so much talk about countries, the different languages and the different kinds of people. Yet when I looked down, it was all seamless.

Q Which teachers made a difference in your life?

A When I came to this country in the middle of the seventh grade from South Africa, I was a completely out of my realm. I had come from being a tomboy on a coastal town in South Africa to the middle of New York City. I didn’t fit in and I experienced the cruelty that seventh-graders can have for somebody who is not part of something they already know. At that school, I encountered a teacher who recognized that I could write and that made a big difference for me. Later, I had a wonderful English teacher who taught me a great deal about how to write.

Q How did Scamp influence your recent book?

A When I got Scamp, he was very uncivilized. He didn’t know how to behave at all and it took an enormous amount of endurance for me to keep the upper hand with him. I was teaching him the basics and it dawned on me that I was doing with this dog what you had to do with a very young child. Not that you taught the child to sit or come or heel, but that you taught the child the basics of civilization, like eating with a fork, saying “thank you” and not interrupting. I was saying to the young new teachers who I was mentoring in the classroom the same thing I was saying to myself — repetition, routine, consistency.

Q Where did your interest in writing begin?

A I was not one of those kids who was keeping a journal, or writing short stories from a very young age. I only did what I had to do for school, but I realized in doing those things, that I enjoyed doing them, and I was good at it. I wrote my first fictional thing when I was in eighth grade. I wrote this biography of a penny, and I could say from a distance from all those years later, this was a story about destiny. I have taught writing to children and I’ve discovered that they reveal so much about themselves when they are asked not to write about themselves.