In Blog#1 I described a nearly ideal teaching situation in which the teacher, myself, was free to present material in the way he felt was fit. Of course it was suited to the immediate situation and certainly followed the time tested best practices of Waldorf education. The school was in Santa Cruz, CA, and the students were, for the most part, white and middle class.
I became involved in Waldorf education because it was a form of teaching that made sense to me, that saw children as I believe they should be seen. I believed, and still wholeheartedly do, that this model was one that could and should be incorporated into the way teaching is practiced in virtually any classroom situation. It is a model which can play a positive role in upgrading the overall quality of education, and through this the level of our culture in general.
While teaching I felt that I was honing and developing this model. Over the past 10 years my experience has been broadened through working in Waldorf-inspired public charter schools, with their particular challenges regarding standards, testing and so on. Most of the following blogs will speak to the topic of what Waldorf education has to offer to mainstream education. In the course of this series I will expand upon ideas that at first may seem somewhat fragmentary to create a fuller picture.
