Waldorf News

The Children Are Calling…

The Children Are Calling…

From Gradalis

The children want to know 3 things about you as you step into the classroom as their teacher:

• “Who are you, teacher?”
• “Can I trust you?”
• “What is my destiny?

The first question asks if the teacher knows their own identity, their own inner being and highest star. What is the character and constitution of this teacher?

The second question asks what kind of relationship will exist between student and teacher. What will flow between teacher and student? Will it be warm, consistent, trustworthy?

The third question asks if the teacher understands the purpose and meaning of life, if the teacher can discern the child’s inner being, and guide the child to their own highest star.

In Foundations of Human Experience (GA293) Steiner tells the first Waldorf school teachers: “You will not be good teachers if you focus only on what you do and not upon who you are”. 

Steiner reiterates this theme in Discussions With Teachers (GA 295) when he says: “Education occurs because of what you are, or rather, let’s say, what you make of yourself when you are with the children. You must never lose sight of this.”

Well, then! Who are you? Know Thyself!

The children in Waldorf schools are calling you! How will you be prepared to respond to the children’s inner questions? Yes, schools and society require one to know educational philosophy, pedagogy, curriculum, classroom management, child development, academics, arts, communication, and more.

But the children want to know who you are. Not just yourself as you are now, but yourself as you will become – growing and learning as a human being on your path through life and your journey as a Waldorf teacher. Are you the role model the children can imitate, trust, and with whom they can grow?

At Gradalis Teacher Training, these questions are at the heart of the education courses, the arts classes, the biography and inner development practices. These questions live enthusiastically in the hearts of our instructors.

The academics of math, music, sculpture, science, world languages, literature, geography, PE, painting, history, or put at a most basic level, those famous 3Rs of reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic, are most successfully engaged and deeply learned when one has teachers who know who they are on a deep inner level, who can be trusted in the student teacher relationship, and who can see and lead us to our own individual destinies in freedom.

In the same way we teachers can be that for our students. Is that not why we came to be teachers after all?

Gradalis Teacher Training not only establishes a foundation for pedagogical knowledge and instructional skill but guides the teacher candidate into those deep wells of soul and spirit out of which the teacher can authentically answer the children’s questions.

Gradalis provides a balanced mix of online and in-person training that includes practical support for the working teacher and at the same time, personal support for the inner path of Becoming.

This is not easy or fast. Ah, there it is. It is challenging, surprising, slow, frustrating, and plain hard work on an inner and outer level. In the process, Gradalis supports your own inner questions as it develops your capacity to respond to the children’s questions.

The word Gradalis has its root in the Latin word “gral”, which also means grail. Ah, there it is, the holy grail, the meaning of life, authenticity of relationship, worthiness of trust.

The word Gradalis is also related to the word gradual. Ah, there it is, slow. True learning, true growing, true transformation is often slow. It’s a staircase not a slide. Back to the questions of the children, who are calling you. Who are you? Can I trust you? What is my destiny? Not fast or easy questions.

Gradalis Teacher Training can help you live into these questions. For yourselves, and for the children.

As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke says,

     “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
     
The deepest questions of life can’t be answered rapidly, in the process of questioning, learn from experience, our becoming is itself an answer to our questions.

Become with Gradalis.

Click here to learn more about Gradalis