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Educational Influences, Educational Choices

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road

Discussion and decisions about school are both simple and confusingly complicated. It makes sense that our present thoughts and actions are reactions to our own past experiences and can be influenced by what sort of schooling options our friends and family have chosen for their children.  While trying to clarify thoughts about how much we base our decisions on wanting to recreate for our children what we valued in our own childhoods, or trying to give them what we wished we had experienced as children the discussion can easily move into politics and economics.

Wanting what is best for our children is in part about wanting to spare them some of life's harsh realities, or at least postpone them. But it can also be about feeling the need to help them confront life's pressures by giving them a head-start in life.  Next thing you know the discussion is about supporting our community, elitism, anti-elitism and class.  Complicated!

Most of my school life was spent in pretty run-of-the-mill middle class suburban institutions. I have been fortunate to have had a few rich and transformative learning experiences, or experiences in rich and transformative environments.  These have shaped my life and my understanding of what education can be. Each raised the bar a bit higher.

I attended an elementary school that was modern in the late 60s and early 70s - it was an open concept school and bright and alive, freeing. My switch in grade 5 to an old school with individual classes and long institutional corridors was harsh; the teachers felt as old as the building and the approach to learning was as oppressive as the architecture. I had no vocabulary for it at the time.

My most formative education occurred outdoors, where our motivation to learn was real and intrinsic.  We learned together in what educators might now call a community of practice, but it was summer camp. It was it's own little world and the generations were 4 or 5 years between campers and counsellors so the history of the place developed rapidly and the stories have been told and retold on canoe trips ever since.  

Since that time, after each of my too-many-to-count moves, this book On The Loose has been given a place of honour on my book shelves.  It's status speaks to the book itself, but also to the time of my life when it validated the experinces I was having - learning independence, competence, interdependence, doing things that had real consequences, feeling the weight and the thrill of responsibility. " Crazy kids on the loose; but on the loose in the wilderness. That mades all the difference."

My professional education was a complete immersion in the group experience. The assessment strategies were primarily formative, focused on direct feedback, group work, honest self-assesment and skill development.  The evaluation scheme was satisfactory/unsatisfactory.  The freedom that came from this is hard to describe.  It made me realize how difficult it had been to write all those essays to try and please the marker and how I cowered in the face of competition.  I experienced how the traditional approach to marking and exams had hindered my learning, how my focus had been on passing and not on learning. 

There was an anxiety with this new way of learning, a fear of not knowing enough, a fear that other students elsewhere were learning more and that we would all be publically humiliated when we entered work life.  But mostly we learned because we wanted to and because we felt the responsibility for our own educations - we were actually able to seize the experience as a great opportunity to learn from one another and from the faculty who dedicated such a large part of themselves to the school and our learning. Unfortunately it was indoors.

Having had good experiences in education I am looking for these elements for my children - nature, intrinsic motivation rather than external evaluation, a grounding in some sort of community and real learning situations with real consequences.

I see many people wanting to make sure their children have the skills to get ahead, to stay with the pack and eventually to be able to excel. This is a time of enrichment and remediation outside the school, of families devoted to an exacting schedule of extracurricular activities.  I, too want life to be as rich and as pleasant as possible for my children. I want to give them all the help I can.   The educational enrichment I seek for my children can be found outdoors.

From time outdoors will come:

• a sense of peace and connection with the earth and ones classmates
• the experience of adventure and the development of competence
• independence and interdependence

"It feels good to say "I know the Sierra" or "I know Point Reyes". But of course you don't - what you know better is yourself, and Point Reyes and the Sierra have helped." On the Loose

So, what's happening outside in education?  Next post will be: Forest Schools and Outdoor Classrooms!

Walt Whitman image from: 

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Walt_Whitman_edit_2.jpg

Parenting is Political

Parenting is political - how we choose to raise our children, the values we instil in the ways we live our lives, the toys we buy or make, the schools we send our children to, the way we spend our family time are all political actions.

Parenting focuses ones attention on the state of the world in new ways and can call us to actions at times like this Canadian Federal Election.

It is not the party but the action that matters.
Here is an offering from a group of moms in our community:

Parenting is Political!

Walt-dorf - Crossing the Waldorf-Disney Divide

When my sister-in-law opened the conversation with "I know it's not your thing, but..."  I knew I was going to say yes to something that was going to stretch me.  I figured it was going to be about crossing a divide between my life and the world of popular culture.

I walked home for lunch for my first few years of elementary school and the Flintstones were as much a part of my day as grilled cheese. I can place my babysitting years by the shows on TV (Love Boat and Fantasy Island), I have the Partridge Family on my ipod (should I really admit that??). I am a product of my times.

We are not super orthodox Waldorfians, but we don't have a TV (somewhere around the time of my english degree TV left my life and I embraced my inner geek).  Dora has entered our home in book form, we have been to see theatre productions of Franklin and Sesame Street, we have read Winnie the Pooh - the pre-Disney Winnie.  I think of it as 'popular culture light'.

So when the topic of a family trip to Disney came up what was I to do?

I do what I always do - I made it more complicated and flooded my brain with questions and tried to look at it from a 1000 angles!

How to be of both worlds? 
How to take the best of one and not alienate oneself from the other?
To what extent has the school become the keeper of my values?  my moral compass?  the ideal against which I measure myself?
How can we not accept this invitation?
Will a week of Disney undo years of Waldorf?
How can I not give my parents the gift of us all being together?
Will my children come home with expectations that I cannot/don't want to meet?
Did I not go to Disney as a child - and like it?  I wonder if that Mickey Mouse t-shirt is still at my parents...
Will a week of rides and sensory overload ruin my children's ability to embrace the simple pleases of play at school?
What could be more fun that the 5 cousins together for a week?
Wouldn't it be nice to go without a coat for a bit before hunkering down to snowsuit season?
Why would I avoid something that could be beneficial for all of the relationships in the family?
Will we have to buy a TV when we got home?
Would it really be a form of deprivation to not take my children to Disney?
Why do I make everything so complicated?

My sister-in-law is familiar with the ins and outs of planning a trip to the BIG D and all I had to do was say yes and she would find the deals and tell us when to book and where to show up, it could not be easier.

So we went. We went to spend time with the cousins and grandparents, and it happened to be to Disney. Well that is what I told myself.  But as we made the plans I was looking forward to seeing the room stretch at the Haunted Mansion and was pretty sure I did not need to go on Space Mountain as an adult. I looked forward to my daughter going on the Small World world ride with her grandmother.  Even thinking that thought implanted that song in my head.

In my mind I joked about getting kicked out of the school. I told people our plans like it was a minor misdemeanor.  The issues were all mine. It turns out that lots of other people struggle with these issues and ask similar questions.  Questions about where to draw the line, how firm to make the line and when the line actually interferes with other aspects of life and extended family.  It would be nice to not get noisy plastic toys, but sometimes they come despite polite suggestions and you just have to smile and say thank you.

I didn't give the children much warning that we were going, there was no big hype lead up, it was pretty low key, the excitement was about spending a week with the cousins.

It was a fast education in Disney. My daughter did not know the names of the princesses so in true Waldorf fashion she made a song with all of the names (Ariel, Belle, Jasmin, Cinderella.....) and wandered around singing it to herself until she could rattle them off like an old pro!

And maybe the two, Disney and Waldorf,  fit together like two sides of a coin, both seeking to indulge the spirit and childhood and make a kind of magic.

Waldorf has - gnomes

Disney has - dwarfs

Waldorf has - golden silence

Disney has - a soundtrack

Waldorf has - rhythm

Disney has - beat

Waldorf has - a progression of learning
Disney has - serial peak experiences

Waldorf has - coherence
Disney has - cross marketing

Waldorf has - calm

Disney has - hype

Waldorf has - natural materials

Disney has - materials made to look natural

Waldorf has - a lantern walk
Disney has - an electric light parade

Waldorf is - authentic

Disney is - created reality

Waldorf is - grounded

Disney is - ready for lift-off

Waldorf has - knights

Disney has - princesses!

We had character meals, lunch at The Castle with The Princesses, sparkly shoes, late nights, carousel rides, spinning tea cups, soarin', turtle talk with crush, 3-d sensorama movies, a 2 week safari in under 1/2 hour, parades and more parades, magic wands and wishing stars, fireworks, multiple rides in the doom buggies of the haunted mansion, and roller coaster rides.  We came home with Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse tucked under our arms and thousands of pictures on the hard drive.

The first day back at school my son and some of his friends took the lid off the sand table in the Morning Garden - they made a slide and played with absolute concentration and abandon for 45 minutes.

It was all fine!

I still kinda want to see the Harry Potter park.....

Grade One Readiness

Grade one entry might be considered one of the markers that differentiates a Waldorf education from other schools - the somewhat delayed timing of it, the unique assessment of readiness and the commitment to a curriculum that is different from other schools. It is also a source of mystery and confusion for parents new to Waldorf.

I am one of those parents.

My daughter has a birthday just after the age cut off for our school and in some ways could jump over the line if I pushed.  The issue of whether to push her ahead first occurred when she was still in Morning Garden. When her cohort split and the bulk of them moved ahead from Morning Garden to Kindergarten I was surprised to find myself feeling uneasy and that maybe nobody had bothered to tell us that we had failed Morning Garden. An inner hockey mom was unleashed and I was feeling like the ref had made a bad call against my child.  My rational sane self was well aware the it was not in my daughter's best interest to be rushed into Kindergarten and I was as surprised by this inner hockey mom as anyone could be.  I sat with it and thought about it and talked with the teacher about it, not about her decision but, about my response to the situation.  It made me realize how many issues about school are deep within me and need to be brought to consciousness so as not to cloud my thinking when it comes to what is best for my child/ren.

The situation repeated itself around the transition between the first and second year in Kindergarten. This time it was a bit easier because she clearly did not meet the 'turning 7 in grade one' criteria. The teachers were very willing to consider her grade one readiness if I had wished.  I made jokes about cramming for grade one readiness at home, doing crossing the mid-line drills and checking for deciduous teeth, but the jokes were just a veneer over my uncertainty about whether to push her forward or not.  I was pressured, actually I pressured myself, by thinking about cousins who had started reading at 4 and others who were the same age but already a grade ahead. It was my fear of her falling behind some externally created measure that was getting in the way.  But really it came down to thinking about whether it was better for her to struggle to keep up as the youngest in a 1/2 split or to enjoy another year in Kindergarten and to reap the benefits in terms of sense of self, responsibility and pride by being one of the older children in the class.

When I led myself back to what matters to me educationally I reaffirmed that all I really want is for her to feel good about herself, to be able to enjoy herself at school and to continue to love learning. I am convinced the rest will take care of itself.

I have not regretted not pushing her.

Half way through grade one I am so pleased that I was able to listen to the wisdom of the teachers and other parents. It involved quieting that competitive hockey mom and being aware of my sideways glances to other children of similar age to make sure we were keeping up.  It takes a conscious effort to stay focused on what is best for my daughter and our family, so programmed are we as a culture to compete and think about getting ahead. I am not proud of this aspect of my character, of that hockey mom within, but as an over-educated professional I guess I should not be surprised.

Watching my daughter embrace grade one and absorb the whole experience has been enriching, heart warming and wonderful.  She loves school and does not want to miss anything.  She loves all of it and is ready for it.  She has been playing at writing letters for a couple of years now and I understand what the teachers meant when they said that this was not real readiness, but a stop on the way. Indeed it was merely preparation for where she is now in terms of her ability to write and thirst to read.  She is excited to repeat aspects of her day and make mini main lessons for her younger brother, who is now convinced that he, too, is in grade one.

I cannot speak to the specifics of the readiness assessment though I think of it as a developmental screening test. It is not something that can be prepared for, it just is.  Any maybe this is where my hockey mom was right to put her bum back on the seat and take a deep breath, this is not about skill, or a prediction of future performance it is about children being ready for their next step, as they were for their first step - each at their own time when THEY were ready.

This segues into a  whole other discussion about why we are so intent on rushing things. Life is short, childhood shorter, let us all savour the magic while we can.

Thinking About Education

From the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA):

Ritual and Reverence

I do not experience Waldorf as religious but I do feel the grounding and connecting effect of ritual and reverence.

There is a great deal of ritual in Waldorf education - whether it is the daily and weekly "rhythms' or the community events that mark the annual calendar, things happen in a predictable and comforting way.

As my daughter entered grade 1 this year I was moved to be standing in the circle of the school community with other parents, children and teachers all of whom had gathered to welcome the children to the grade school in word and song.  Each child was given a flower by a student in the graduating class with whom they had been paired, a gift that will be returned at the end of the year when those same students prepare to leave for high school.  On that first day my daughter and her classmates crossed the threshold into their formal education by passing under an arch of boughs held by their teachers from Kindergarten and in turn they each leaped joyfully into their education.



This week the families and teachers of the younger grades gathered in the dark, in the post-Hallowe'en bleakness, for the 'lantern walk'.  This early evening gathering is in celebration of St Martin and the story of how he shared his cloak with another whose need was greater. It is a simple event that honours the act of being a spark of light in the dark night, a spark of light in the world. It is a story that encourages us to be that warmth and light for ourselves and for others.  The opportunities to make this 'religious' or tied to the story of a faith tradition are there, but they are avoided in favour of a story of our shared humanity.

To meet in the dark of the late autumn night, on the brink of winter, with others - to walk in silence except for the repetition of a simple song celebrating hope and kindness and being called to help others and be good in the world - is an act of reverence.

I'm walking with my lantern,
My lantern walks with me.
Above the stars are shining,
Below are shining we.

The night is cold and dark and dim
Ra bimbel, ra bumbel, ra bimm.