Waldorf Myths and Realities - Reading and Writing

Myths 

- Waldorf kids don't learn how to read

- Waldorf kids are 'held back' or 'delayed' in acquiring core academic skills

The early childhood focus on stories that are expertly told by the teachers and often acted out with puppets or wooden or woollen toy props is not just a nice thing, it is the beginning of literacy in Waldorf education.   The children, through experience, learn what a good story sounds and feels like. They  know that there is a beginning, a middle and a conclusion. They learn how to introduce characters and develop plot. They learn by example the cadence and flow of a good story.  

For many days or even weeks the children hear a story and learn it effortlessly by heart.  Not through drills or rote memorization - through integration and interest.

In this way I have seen both of my children develop excellent (though still at times selective!) listening skills and attention spans. And now my son, in pre-kindergarten, can tell us at supper the stories he has learned at school. My daughter, in grade two will tell stories from her memory and her imagination. Now though she will also write and illustrate them in books.  

The experience of watching my daughter learn stories aurally in the Kinder and Morning Garden classes was tinged with the same fear that many parents have when they see other children of a similar age reading or using electronic devices aimed at developing literacy.  But to watch her, along with her friends and classmates, dive into literacy in grade one was a beautiful thing. They were ready and were strong out of the gates.  They learned to draw forms and structure their drawings, they learned the alphabet and began to write letters and words. Now they write sentences and paragraphs and read the stores they have written.  It all seems so effortless, so painless, so fun and natural. This speaks to the pedagogical progression and to the gifts of the teacher who gently lead the students along this path.

So, what have I learned?  I trust the process.  Waldorf kids learn to read and write for sure, but first they learn to listen and to see.  From the whole to the parts, rather than the other way around.

For your viewing pleasure I offer two videos by Eugene Schwartz on the subject of Writing and Reading in Waldorf Education.

This link will take you to another blog post on How reading is Taught in Waldorf School, from the perspective of a Waldorf trained teacher.

Low-tech High-tech - Waldorf and computers - 1

One afternoon I came into the school yard to collect my daughter and above the din I heard one of the older boys bellowing; I turned to see him racing across the yard, chasing someone and calling out "he's got my laptop!"

It was the mention of a computer that made this one comment stand out above all of the excited chatter and play. I though "How very un-Waldorf". A few seconds later I saw him running back across the yard with his "laptop" under his arm - and I realized it was two pieces of wood! I could only think - "How very Waldorf!"

A few months later my daughter set up a workspace in our backyard. She has made other places of work, stores for selling stones she has cracked, or play food made from sand and things found in the garden, she has made art galleries and theatres. This time it was an office, complete with a computer - another wooden computer!

Computers are not part of the classroom at our school.  The classrooms contain blackboards, wooden desks and the children learn to draw and print and then to write - cursive writing.

Is this a quaint anachronism? Are we a bunch of Luddites?
Won't our children lag behind?  What will happen if they don't learn to use a mouse before they enter the grade school? Are the wooden computers an expression of need or a sign of profound deprivation?


I see technology changing so rapidly that it makes no sense to learn anything other than for immediate application. The interface with all things technical is becoming more seamless and intuitive all the time, it is not something that needs to be practiced. People don't need extra lessons in video games, or wasting time on the internet, that is the easy stuff. We should not kid ourselves that anything we could teach children now about computers will be applicable in 5 years.  We need to help them to maintain their sense of wonder and imagination, to foster their creativity and to acquire the cognitive skills and sense of historical context and give them access to the great stories of humanity so that they are prepared for a future that we cannot even imagine. It's about thinking, the technology is just a tool.

It turns out that some of the folks who are actually creating these technologies, the earliest of early adopters of technology, the geekiest of the geeky, the disciples of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, the dwellers of Silicon Valley agree! And they send their kids to Waldorf Schools!

The New York Times, in a series called Grading the Digital School, looks at the results of the push for technology in the classroom. The third article in the series, A Silicon Valley School That Doesn't Compute, focuses on Waldorf education.

Maybe they have wooden laptops there too.

The First Day of School

Last year I wrote about Ritual and Reverence and included the first day of school as both a ritual and an act of reverence:
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.

I was moved by this simple ceremony again this year.  Joining us were new children and new families. Missing from the circle were families that had moved away.  As I looked around the circle I saw all of standing there together and I thought of all that had happened within this community of people in the last year, the multiple ways in which we come to know each other by sharing the experience of being a school community.  Some had suffered losses that touched us all.  We had also acknowledged and celebrated the successes and joys, big and small. These events happened in the context of the school community and connected us further - as friends. 


The school year began with parents and children joining with teachers and staff to mark the beginning of the year, to welcome new students and teachers, to hear what the work of each class will be over the year and to celebrate the teachers who will create the magic that is learning. We also gathered to shine a special light on the children entering into the grade school.  Under an arch of sunflowers, the students and teachers passed from the communal space of the yard, into their classroom homes. New students were welcomed with a potted plant to care for. My daughter returning to a new grade but to  her classroom with her teacher - the same as last year. She was carrying the plant she had been given to care for at the beginning of last year; returning to her desk where her coloured pencils and crayons waiting for her, her knitting project was also waiting in the classroom.  


Ready for the new but eased and comforted by the familiar, there had been very little anxiety or nervousness associated with the beginning of the school year, my daughter knew what to expect. We parents, left in the yard, paused for a few moments to let the emotion runs its course, and to share with each other how surprisingly moving it all is every year.

Waldorf Yarns Word Cloud

Nature's Classroom

Let Nature be your teacher. 

William Wordsworth

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. 

Rachel Carson

What do parents owe their young that is more important than a warm and trusting connection to the Earth…?

Theodore Roszak, The Voice of the Earth

Teaching children about the natural world should be treated as one of the most important events in their lives.

Thomas Berry

Yes, yes, yes and yes!
So what is happening in education to support this?  What is a forest school?  How close is Waldorf to some of these initiatives?   Below are some of the things I found while sitting inside trolling around looking for exciting things happening outside. There are lots of exiting things, things that can and should act as encouragement for us to spend more time outside - during school and away from school. How can we argue with that?

The Coombes School was covered in The Globe and Mail, November 12, 2010 and the article tells us: "Studies suggest that interacting with nature can help children pay attention, motivate them to learn and improve both classroom behaviour and scores on standardized tests. Neuroscientists and psychologists are investigating why nature is good for young brains and how being around trees and shrubs helps recharge the circuitry that children use to focus on a page of fractions or a spelling test." All of this makes sense to me, I have not yet found the research papers, but would love to see them for confirmation of what I already believe to be true!

But what of the actual 'forest schools', what are they?

"A forest kindergarten is a type of preschool education for children between the ages of three and six that is held almost exclusively outdoors. " Forest Kindergarten, (wikipedia).  This article gives a bit out background and arguments in favour of Forest Schools. There are also links to some existing programmes in Scotland, England, Germany and Scandanavian countries.  It sounds like a lot of the things I value at our school, and makes me wonder if we could push the amount of outdoor time even more.

Closer to home, CBC profiles a Forest Pre-school on the Carp Ridge outside Ottawa, at the Carp Ridge Learning Centre.

Outside Thunder Bay is The Forest School:

I'm a teacher, get me OUTSIDE here! is a blog from the perspective of a teacher and outdoor education consultant.

Outdoor play and learning, an online resource about just that.

All of this makes me wonder how we, as a family,  can spend more time outdoors and can help the school to move more education outdoors, to expand our definition of classroom.  May an awareness of variety and options be the beginning of this discussion!

"Must we always teach our children with books? Let them look at the mountains and

the stars up above. Let them look at the beauty of the waters and the trees and

flowers on earth. They will then begin to think, and to think is the beginning of a real

education.” 
David Polis

top of page quotes from Nature for Kids blog

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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