Our Story
This is a school belonging to everyone, yet free in its own being — like our children, whom we nurture, yet who walk their own path.
About Us
Perched on a quiet hilltop in Kampung Penchala, our school rests just a stone’s throw from TTDI, in the heart of Damansara — a cluster of vibrant neighbourhoods closely connected to the city center. From this vantage point, sweeping views stretch over the green slopes of Bukit Lanjan to the unfolding cityscape of Kuala Lumpur. The campus, consisting of six charming bungalows, is a place where forest air meets city light, and the gentle chirping of birds mingles with the distant hum of the city.
We are an English-medium Steiner-Waldorf school, offering Malay and Chinese as second languages. We nurture children from 3.5 years old in kindergarten through Grade 8. As our student population grows to support the rich social life essential to adolescence, we envision opening our high school within the next five years, completing a full Waldorf pathway that carries students all the way to university.
Though we are a young school, our roots run deep. We begin with an experienced team of nearly 40 Waldorf teachers and staff, supported by a warm and established Waldorf community. We hope to welcome around 100 students in our first year, planting the first seed of a thriving and enduring school community.
“We find the spirit of this great tree mirrors how we found this school – and how we found one another. ”
— Samara Tualang School
The Story Behind Our Name
The school is inspired by the great Tualang tree, one of the tallest tropical trees in the world, indigenous to Malaysia’s rainforest. We find the spirit of this great tree mirrors how we found this school – and how we found one another.
The Tualang stands tall and upright amidst the quiet majesty of the rainforest, a living image of integrity and courage. Its great buttress roots hold steadfast to the earth, like the groundedness we bring into all that we do. And its crown reaches ever upward to the light, just as we keep striving for truth and freedom.
This Tualang begins from Samara – the winged seed. We hope our children will be like these seeds – nurtured here, yet one day ready to take flight, find their own path, and grow into rooted beings of their own.
Our school’s logo takes the shape of a Tualang tree seed, its veins etched with STS, a living emblem of life and the unfolding potential in every child. Three interweaving Chinese characters 人 (Ren – Human) form the buttress roots of the tree, honouring the threefold life as the foundation of a Waldorf school – held together by teachers, parents, and school stewards, with children at the heart – reminding us that education is first and foremost about living relationships.
The name carries our wish that our school, our community, and our children – steadfast in being and enduring in spirit – shall reach for both heights and depths, while offering warmth to all that lives and grows in between.
May the grounds of Samara Tualang School be a place where children’s laughter drifts through its far-reaching branches, where stories of love are told and retold at the cradle of its towering trunk, and where the roots of humanity grow deeper with each passing generation.
Our Founding Impulses
In September 2025, a circle of school administrators, teachers, and parents gathered with a shared impulse — to found a school that lives the spirit it teaches, one that remains true to the essence of Steiner-Waldorf education.
At the heart of this impulse lies a deep reverence for childhood and for the education of the whole human being. Waldorf education unfolds gently, in harmony with each child’s natural stages of development. Learning is never just about the knowledge, but a living connection — with the world, with one another, and with oneself.
Children learn through lived experiences, through purposeful work, and through the imaginative life that nourishes the body, soul and spirit – engaging head, heart, and hands. This is how the joy and wonder of learning are preserved as lifelong companions. Waldorf education is where soul meets soul, and light passes from one to another, lived in the warmth of relationships — in the bonds between teacher and children, and in the shared life of the school community. This allows children to grow from within — not shaped to fit the world as it stands, but to meet the world with their own inner truth, stepping toward the destiny uniquely theirs, even as they help the world to unfold.
From this understanding arose a conviction: to bring forth a Steiner-Waldorf school that embodies these principles not only in the classroom, but in the very life and gesture of the school itself. We envision a not-for-profit, trust-owned school, co-held by a threefold community, where collaborative leadership guides decisions and where the school stands independent in its own being — able to live beyond individuals, and to flourish across generations.
Founding such a school is not only an act of integrity; it is an act of faith. We have come to see that the striving itself is the path — that to take up the work, even imperfectly, is already to express trust in the unseen wisdom that moves behind all things. We believe that those destined to walk this path will find one another in time, and that true alignment arises not only among people, but first within oneself.
In a world that often rushes toward outcomes, convenience, and compromise, we choose to strive for the ideal - for it is the ideal that calls forth our truest humanity. We know our children will thrive when they grow up witnessing a living testament of courage and faith.
May generations to come never stand alone in believing. And may that belief take root here, where earth meets light at 4889 Jalan Sri Penchala 5, nestled among the green slopes of Bukit Lanjan in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, where Samara Tualang School first began its life.