Written by David Barham

When children come to the age of puberty, it is necessary to awaken within them an extraordinarily great interest in the world outside of themselves. Through the whole way in which they are educated, they must be led to look out into the world around them and into all its laws, its course, causes, and effects, into human being’s intentions and goals — not only into human beings, but into everything, even into a piece of music, for instance. All this must be brought to them in such a way that it can resound on and on within them — so that questions about nature, about the cosmos and the entire world, about the human soul, questions of history — so that riddles arise in their youthful souls.

Rudolf Steiner, Education for Adolescents GA 302a
June 21, 1922, Stuttgart, Germany

As educators of adolescents, we are called upon to do more than teach our subject. In the same lecture as the quote above, Rudolf Steiner tells the teachers, “The capacity for forming judgments is blossoming at this time and should be directed toward world interrelationships in every field.”

The Waldorf High School Teacher Education Program (WHiSTEP) at Center for Anthroposophy (CfA) is an opportunity for passionate educators to transform themselves in order to become the teachers modern adolescents need us to be.

This is done through studies in three main areas:

• Studies in adolescent development and anthroposophical core texts
• Practice in the arts (eurythmy, special dynamics, sculpture, singing, creative speech, drama)
• Subject seminar specialization where teachers encounter a unique approach to their discipline (mathematics, life sciences, physics & chemistry, the arts, English, history)

The transformed educator, one who truly understands the beginner’s mind and beginner’s heart, is the person able to meet the complex world of modern adolescence. Growing up in a world on fire is often painful, always challenging, and adolescents need to know that there is always light, always hope and always meaning, even when the world seems cruel and harsh.

In his 1946 book, Man’s Search for Meaning, holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl writes that the will to meaning is the predominant urge in the human soul. When this will to meaning is frustrated, it can lead to a state of boredom and distress. Frankl speaks of depression, aggression, and addiction as being natural in the face of this existential vacuum of meaning.

These are the same conclusions Rudolf Steiner had arrived at when he gave the talk quoted above, more than twenty years before Frankl wrote his book.

It is clear that our primary work as Waldorf high school educators is first and foremost to help the young people in our care to find meaning.

There can be no more powerful work in this modern moment.

If you are an educator looking for something richer and deeper in your professional practice, or if you are ready for a career change, or if you simply want to understand better how to serve the endangered kingdom of childhood and adolescence, we hope you will explore WHiSTEP.

Our live two-week residency on the beautiful campus of High Mowing School in Wilton,
New Hampshire begins on July 12.

Transformation leads to meaning.