Knowing WALDORF EDUCATION

The aim of this new post is to reflect together on how Waldorf education is and what differences and similarities you perceive in your own centre as a director, teacher, student or parent.

Let's stop thinking for a while and feel.

Here you have the soft skills required for future jobs and are taught from kindergarten to high-school in Waldorf Schools:

Flexibility
Moving between role and projects
Collaboration
Negotiation
Sharing
Empathy
Resilience
Getting along
Connectivity
Integration

I leave here other capacities that will be needed in the XXI century workforce - Daniel Pink :

creativity
problem solving
teamwork
design
symphony
play
ability to make meaning

Let's reflect on how much your school not only promotes those human values but also actually lives them and are rooted in the everyday.

My experience in Spain (Madrid), Ireland (in Dublin) and UK (London) teaching Spanish & English in state-funded schools, private academies and other educational centres for adults is that there are still too many students per teacher in schools, and that far exceed our human abilities to really see them. The loving attention that should guide us in our teaching is consequently diminished in those conditions. That's why I decided to teach online and in private coaching sessions, to reconnect with my own rhythm and help others to find theirs.

I found teacher's job at "normal"-"known"- "public" or "private" schools, in general, unbearable, disheartening because of the amount of stress I could feel in every member of the crew; from the director, head of studies, secretary and school administrators, coordinators, teachers of all levels including extracurricular ones to, even, workers and monitors at the canteen school... all were- me included- most of the time stressed and out of balance. Why? because their educative project has far exceeded human dimension, still functions in a hierarchic structure * and has, in short, become an unmanageable business.

* Example: English teachers of extracurricular hours in a school (Training for Cambridge Official Exams, for instance) are treated differently, hired with a temporary contract by an extracurricular-activities-service company from October to May. Recommendation from someone who has experienced it: Stay out of that business! better build yours, connect directly with the families and students in online or on-site meetings, as you both wish and agree. In these times, fortunately, you can offer your own teaching or coaching services directly to your clients and learn through the process. If possible, be selective and only connect with projects and school centres where you can be creative and where you are appreciated, valued, which also means well paid.

We all know, but especially teachers, that as Rudolf Steiner said:

"Fundamentally all education is self-education"

“The heart of the Waldorf method is that education is an art- it must speak to the child's experience. To educate the whole child, his heart and his will must be reached, as well as the mind.”

Here a link to one book with his lectures from 1919-1924.

In one of my previous post called "Words are swords" I talked about "the ruling planet" every 7 years, because Astrology divides our lives in periods of seven years and, to my great surprise, I discovered that Waldorf education is following this paradigm too!

In my previous post I explained that: Personal process is described with the influence of personal planets: (☾ ☿ ♀☉♂️ ♃ ♄) 🗝 = Chiron is key.

And that Transpersonal process is described with the influence of transpersonal planets, it is not as lineal as in the first part of our living journey: Chiron is key=🗝(♅♆)

*0-7 years

Early childhood

(Moon ☾- Mercury ☿- see in my chart below)

That's why in Waldorf they talk, for example, about the first seven years as the period of time during which the child “takes hold” of his or her physical body, or WILL and its about doing with their hands.

*7-14 years

Middle Childhood

(Mercury ☿ - Venus♀)

Then, the period of time where by storytelling, drama, rhythmic movement, visual arts, and music they develop their own imagination, they learn through FEELING, experience.

*14 -21 years

Adolescence

(Venus♀- Sun☉)

And during this last period of schooling they basically learn how to think, they become critical thinkers. Abstract, real and more mature THINKING: they analyze and synthesize.

See this chart I did for another post:

----still in personal process----

*21- 28 years (Sun☉- Mars ♂️)

*28- 35 years (Mars ♂️- Jupiter ♃)

*35- 42 years (Jupiter ♃ - Saturn ♄ )

*42- 49 years (Saturn ♄ - Chiron🗝)

----transpersonal process----

*from 49 to X years

(Chiron🗝- Uranus ♅)

(Uranus ♅- Neptune ♆)

(Neptune ♆- Pluto )

And now that I have listened to my feelings and expressed them... I would like to rethink together about the official syllabus, timetable and space, contract hours, recognition of teaching staff and bureaucracy.

My vision is that those "normal" schools I visited and I worked for in curricular and extracurricular hours have fantastic professionals doing their best every day, but the institutions are too big to embrace and endorse our human scale and are largely blind by the inertia towards their own excellence and convenience to our real human needs. That's why I see Waldorf schools as an alternative to find more cozy places with a consciousness of our human scale and potential, where anyone of us can find inspiring people and inspiring teach- and -learn processes. Nonetheless, my heart is open to the unknown. And to be honest, I appreciate too much the freedom I have in my Language Coaching to be "captured" in any other- even Waldorf- institution. I am a creative, playful, airy-fairy, free soul. 🧚🏻‍♀️

To me, without doubt, growing in this direction but even with more freedom (mixing ages for instance in theatre projects) and reducing the number of students per class is our hope for a better present and future.

Shalom!

💟 ☮️ ✝️ ☪️ 🕉 ☸️ ✡️ 🔯 🕎 ☯️ ☦️

DYSLEXIA IN TEENS

EPISTEMOLOGY & THE APPLE

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Ana Domínguez Ruiz