Op Ed Archives - Center for Anthroposophy - Waldorf Teacher Education and Renewal

Out of the Classroom and into Nature

It’s 4 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon in late January. Snow has started to fall and the wind picks up as the 7th grade class from Northeast Woodland Chartered Public School in Conway, NH crosses the frozen ponds of Carter Notch.

Breaking Hearts, Opening Hearts

Waldorf education for adolescents can meet the outer and inner, spoken and unspoken needs of young people. And yet, like every generation of teenagers, Waldorf education needs reimagining.

How can we use pedagogy to deal with the consequences of war and trauma?

An Introduction to Emergency Pedagogy by Franka Henn (May 5, 2023) How can we use pedagogy to deal with the consequences of war and trauma? At the Rudolf Steiner House on May 9–10, there will be a double lecture and seminar with Berndt Ruf. Ruf is well known as a doctor in anthroposophical emergency and trauma education which he advocates for with the initiative ‹Emergency Education Without Borders›. In two seminars on Tuesday evening from 6 pm, he will be speaking about trauma caused by war, and fleeing from it, and then about the possibilities offered by emergency pedagogy. The following morning from 10 a.m., the seminar will focus on dealing with traumatised children and young people. Open to everyone, the events are primarily intended as an introduction to people working with traumatised children and youth. The event is organised by MenschMusik Hamburg and Gesundheit Aktiv Nord. – Reprinted from the Das Goetheanum Newsletter

Leading through Change

The last few years have brought unprecedented challenges to schools, especially to our teachers and administrators. Layered over long-standing issues of low pay, long hours, helicopter parents, shared governance (and confusion over roles and authority), schools have had to navigate a third year of covid while enhancing their DEI activities and working with new financial constraints, to name but a few issues.

Lighting Up the Darkness

This is the season of light. Which is a paradoxical way to describe––at least here in the northern hemisphere––the darkest time of the year. So, what does it mean to refer to this time as the season of light?

To use an example you all will know: you enter a dark room, light a match or click the flashlight button on your phone, and suddenly the room is illuminated. The light overcomes, in other words, the darkness.

ADVENTURE IN CYBERSPACE

Siegfried Finser It was a matter of synchronicity. Just as I happened to rediscover tubes of my Grumbacher water paint, brushes, and paper, the New York Times ran a story about “NFTs” (non-fungible tokens). I rarely buy newspapers, but Singsong, my canary, needed fresh paper for lining the bottom of his cage. I knew the cheapest paper was in value packs and other advertisements, but Singsong is an aristocrat and deserves something better, so I splurged on a copy of the New York Times. And there it was! A prominent artist had painted several thousand simple pictures and offered them online for a fixed price. He gave his ardent collectors the choice of having the real painting or the virtual representation, known as an NFT (Non-Fungible Token). To his surprise and mine, many buyers preferred the virtual version and purchased them at the same price as the physical version. After all, the virtual one required no physical space for hanging, special storage to maintain its quality, or concern about ownership and security. These, it turns out, are some of the many benefits of NFTs and the underlying record-keeping system, called blockchain technology. The most well-known blockchain for such transactions is the Ethereum network, which uses the cryptocurrency called “Ether”. In overly simplified terms, every transaction is recorded and distributed across many computers spread around the world, without relying on a concentrated set of institutions. In many ways, this began to seem like the common person’s answer to rising distrust of large Wall Street banks after the great financial crisis and the transactions of corrupt politicians around the world. I was astounded by this revelation. Why would collectors pay for nothing when they could, for the same price, have something? It turned all my thoughts about buying and selling upside down. Esoteric Science, by Rudolf Steiner, helped provide some insights. I had carefully studied all the phases of that evolutionary story and accepted that our universe really could, in its very beginning, be physically nothing and reach the present stage of being physically something. I had rejected the claim by some scientists that no beginning is possible without a physical something; that matter is eternal, and the real God is empirical science. In other words, the idea of going from nothing physical, only virtual, to almost fully physical seemed like a creditable imagination of evolution. Is this clumsy early experimentation with virtuality an instance of humanity’s struggle to become involved in what the world will be like in the next evolutionary phase of the earth? Will what we create virtually today become the new physical reality of the very distant future? Why should we stand by while others are shaping and qualitatively inputting their ideas, feelings, and creative activity into the next world in which we will have to live? This article is the story of one man’s journey into an unknown world in which cryptocurrency is considered a new reality and digital belongings are considered equally valuable, and in some cases even more valuable, than the physical counterpart. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ There are multitudes of intelligent people who shift in and out of virtuality at will, like miners disappearing into a virtual mine and re-emerging miraculously with real gold. Is cyberspace the 21st century version of that other gold rush in early America? As a student of Anthroposophy, how should I position myself in this electric, tumultuous current of activity? It may be real, or it may be fake. It could be permanent or temporary… a fad. It might be a manipulated plot by a few or the start of a social movement enhancing the freedom and well-being of the proverbial “everyman!” One person I consulted described the crypto world as the new “wild, wild west.” Currencies appear and disappear in the twinkling of an eye. Virtual platforms, exchanges, and wallets grow and die even faster. For some time during Covid, blockchains seemed to multiply at a greater rate than rodents. Fortunes are made and lost, just like the Ol’ West of our country. Laws and regulatory controls are lagging far behind in effectiveness, and some traders seem to like it that way. In virtuality, we evidently have found a non-place where we make the customs as we move along. Those connected to the world of Anthroposophy need to be at the table in some way, even if greatly outnumbered. For once, those of us devoted in service to the spirit of our time should be involved earlier rather than later, when everything is set in concrete. Once we as humans know something, we can’t un-know it. Besides, what would we do today if the printing press had never been developed? Almost a year ago, I began to look for kindred spirits who were unafraid to tangle with the unknown and who knew more about this world than I did. Gradually, as though somewhat out of the hidden crevices of Anthroposophy, they emerged one at a time. Then there were eight of us meeting virtually in different constellations every Sunday in a virtual room on Zoom. Looking back, I am in awe of the amazing individualities who climbed in and out of the project with supportive ideas, examples, options, and suggestions. While I was trying to get safely into virtuality, they were urging, “Jump, you’ve got to jump. You’ll never know anything until you’re in because it all changes when you are in it. Stop planning! Stop knowing it all! Stop wanting to be safe! It will all be different anyway by the time you get there.” They were all so far ahead of me, already so much more at home in virtuality. I know now that I was a drag, struggling to understand and learn what to do with all I was hearing and learning from them. EARLY DECISIONS A few decisions fell into place relatively early. The focus for this project would be on the fruits of Anthroposophical endeavors. NFTs were not the

High School Eurythmy

During the first 100 years of the international Waldorf movement, we had much to be proud of––a century of striving to meet the true physical, soul, and spiritual needs of individuals and the planet. And now, here we are, post 100-year anniversary, approaching post-Covid-19, ready to look ahead to prepare for the future, rather than look back to celebrate the past.

My Internship at Isha Home School

Genevieve Dagobert, a graduate of the Waldorf Program at Antioch University New England, describes her voyage to a school in the foothills of India’s Velliangiri Mountains, where children learn seven days a week, four months at a time, in a parent-free, multi-age sibling atmosphere

Students for Soil – A Call to Action

Just a few years ago, we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the very first Waldorf school in the world in September of 1919 as well as the birth of the worldwide Waldorf movement inaugurated by Rudolf Steiner. Today, there are more than 1,090 Waldorf / Steiner schools in 64 countries, and 1,857 Waldorf kindergartens in more than 70 countries, plus Waldorf associations and teacher-training centers for Waldorf educators and Waldorf teachers around the world.