About My Links

I have just added some great links on the sidebar. Check them out to learn more about Waldorf education and other organizations that promote the principles of Waldorf to a wider audience. I am hoping over the next couple of posts to share some of what I have learned from each of these people featured in the links, most of whom I have had the privilege to hear speak at various conferences.

What is so valuable about these organizations, such as Alliance for Childhood and the NOVA Institute, is that they are striving to protect childhood and help to develop the healthiest individuals possible. Ultimately, this is a great service to humanity. One important aspect of Waldorf education and Anthroposophy in general, is its emphasis on developing social awareness and true relationship with others. Bringing greater consciousness to oneself in the service of developing social harmony is something unique to Waldorf.

Recently, a lovely woman who joined the Waldorf coop I helped develop, shared an amazing story. She is a professional violin player and the first chair violin player in her orchestra was Waldorf educated. She notes, with awe, at his incredible talent in music, an area strongly integrated into the Waldorf curriculum. However, not only is he proficient in music, but his awareness of social relationships and the ability to communicate with others both while playing and while interacting is remarkable. Often, serious musicians who excel in their instrument, are very focused and sensitive to their relationship to the music. This young (by the way) man is able to both reach inward and extend outward in a beautifully balanced way. This story was very inspiring to me. It brought home what I had learned from Gene Campbell of CHIRON; that the central task of Waldorf is to bring the children into true human relationship on behalf of humanity.

Enjoy checking out the links and feel free to share your thoughts and insights!

Story Time

Just a note to share the wonder of stories with children. Storytelling by "your mouth" (as I called it when I was little) or reading is just the most magical thing for children and for all ages really. It is magical and transformative and powerful, and you travel the depths of your being when you hear or read a good story. Fairy tales are the start for the Waldorf curriculum, with simple themes for the youngest child, moving to more complexity and richer archetypes. The most important thing to understand when reading fairytales, is that they are ARCHETYPAL, NOT LITERAL. Dragons represent the destructive element for example, and so on. Which, incidentally, is why you should seek the originals, and not the watered down or pc'd versions. What these stories provide is a glimpse into our own inner world without intellectualizing it all and explaining. Also, we are selling a false picture of our own inner world to children if all aspects of all stories are always positive, cheery, fair, etc... A very central teaching of Steiner's is to learn to balance the shadow and the light qualities in oneself. This is a much healthier position than denying, subduing, or cutting off that which is of the shadow side. (More on that another time.)

Explaining and talking at children is too awakening, which brings children into their head prematurely. They need to be in their limbs and active, not still and thinking, that comes later. This is not just an airy, new agey issue, but very much one that relates to our physiology and developing the brain in the healthiest way. (Everything in its right time and right amount). I always encourage you to think of when you were little and someone just talked and talked to you about something. Do you remember how that felt? Think about it now too, when someone just talks to you in a dry, monotonous way...It is rather numbing!

Well, a good story, will be invigorating, inspiring, touching, and more. You know you've touched your child deeply when they work with the story in their play, or drawings, and you should even encourage it. This way, what has touched them, will live in them deeply, and help them grow.

Check out the following link from KYTKA JEZEK'S wonderful website, waldorfhomeschoolers, to read more about Fairy Tales and storytelling:

http://www.waldorfhomeschoolers.com/disneytales.htm