Waldorf News
Creativity finds a way
June 22, 2020
Undaunted by the pandemic, students of Ashwood Waldorf School's oldest class take on their independent projects. Raising and butchering pigs, pinhole photography, primitive skills, building a wooden chess set — these are just a few of the independent student projects completed by Ashwood Waldorf School’s graduating class this spring. While the global pandemic forced a cancellation of the school’s annual project presentation night, students have compiled a project "look book" that highlights key aspects of each of the yearlong independent projects, including lessons learned, gratitude to mentors, quotes that inspired, and photographs of the students' learning process and final products. Each year the students of Ashwood's oldest class take on independent projects as the culmination of their educational experience. It is an opportunity for the students to have a truly self-determined learning experience based on their individual interests and aspirations. Students combine the academic, artistic, and intellectual capacities fostered by their Waldorf education to research, develop, and present a project of their choosing. The maturity and self-motivation required to accomplish such a project is a prerequisite for moving on to secondary school. The project requires the students to find a mentor, research their topic, complete the work, and share this experience with an audience. They spend many hours, above and beyond their regular academic school work, developing their independent projects. This year for the first time, students were asked to design, create and execute a project without the use of digital technology (with the exception of final photos or video). More »
Meeting Fear
May 11, 2020
There is no need to feel ashamed if you experience moments of fear. We are all in the human condition, and we are currently caught in a worldwide web of fear mongering. We can hardly help but resonate with our fellow human beings in that we are all connected to one another. It is worthwhile, however, and even essential that we take ourselves up and stand in the face of whatever it is that we fear. Otherwise, there could be a rough road ahead. One of the greatest lessons I ever learned when I was in my mid-thirties was to stand up to a dark and ominous energy that was overpowering my ability to function in the world and to state out loud, “I am no longer afraid of you. If you intend to continue to be around me, you will have to choose to become a part of my chosen path in life.” This invitation changed my life. And while I will not say I have never experienced fear since then, I will say that learning to take charge of it, rather than trying to hide from it, makes all the difference. More »
Getting Through a Pandemic With Old-Fashioned Crafts
May 4, 2020
I’ve turned to old-fashioned crafts in recent weeks to calm my anxieties, to hold something tangible in my hands and my thoughts while uncertainty swirls around me. I don’t know how long the pandemic will last; whether the food I’ve stocked is too much or too little; whether I’ll help my community more by stepping up or by simply staying home. In the long chain of actions and accidents that can lead to a stranger’s life or death, I don’t know where I fit or whether I’m doing the right thing. But I know how to do this; I know how to link one loop of thread into another. I know I can unravel my work and start over if I do it wrong. More »
COVID-19 and our existential crisis
March 18, 2020
Looking outside at 7:30 each morning, I no longer see the yellow school bus that has appeared regularly for years and years. All local gatherings are cancelled, and many local stores have sold out on basic products. Thanks to various news outlets, we see images of Rome, Madrid and other cities around the world totally deserted. More than a “news event”, this is an existential crisis that begs a larger question: What is going on? Waldorf high school students are taught to look beyond the presented information, and practice symptomatology. The human spirit yearns for understanding that goes beyond what is incessantly presented in the news; we are in search of meaning as never before. More »
Instead of rote learning useless facts, children should be taught wellbeing: To equip young people to face the challenges of the 21st century, they need to understand their minds and bodies
March 10, 2020
In his treatise on the future of humanity, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, the philosopher-historian Yuval Noah Harari offers the young people of today some advice. In order to survive and thrive in adulthood, they should not rely on traditional academic skills such as solving equations or learning computer code. These will soon become obsolete in a world in which computers can perform such techniques more quickly and accurately than humans. All information-based jobs, in fields as diverse as journalism and medicine, will be under threat by 2050. More »
Recent Jobs
View more jobs »
Newsletter Archive
Join the Mailing List!
Stay Connected…
Each week receive the Waldorf News Weekly Update, full of news, events, and more. Keep abreast of what's happening with Waldorf education.
Add a Job Listing
RSS Feeds