Torin M. Finser, Director of Building Bridges
After a year-long hiatus, CfA resumed its “Building Bridges” program this past September with a vibrant group of faculty and staff from the Northeast Woodland School in Conway, New Hampshire. Although a few participants in this program had taught at the former White Mountain Waldorf School, most were new to Waldorf education.
Thus, the program served as an ideal introduction to anthroposophy, curriculum, human development, and artistic work featuring movement, clay modeling, drawing, painting, eurythmy, and a taste of projective geometry. Participants commented that, in addition to learning from their course work, they felt more connected to each other thanks to a year of monthly weekend sessions. Indeed, one of the goals of our Building Bridges Program is to help a school build a professional learning community in service of the current needs of our children.
Many of these teachers are now applying to the Waldorf Program at Antioch University New England, where they will receive advanced standing for the work completed this past year.
Our next cycle of Building Bridges will feature a return to the Golden Valley School in Folsom, California, where 20 teachers and staff have already signed up for another school-sponsored round of this program. Yet, with a constant need to innovate and meet the challenges of our time, we have once again slightly modified the program to allow participants’ access to our online Explorations Program before they start the face-to-face weekend sessions next fall. This will allow them more time to process and explore basic aspects of anthroposophy and the arts before engaging in the dynamic, interactive work of the two-day weekends offered on site at their school.
As with all our CfA programs, we will once again evaluate the work at the end of this next cycle to see if there are ways to further improve what we offer. During these past three years, our conviction has grown stronger that change is the new normal.
