Winter 2025
by Diana Tesni
Learning to fly is a process. The fledgling needs to try its wings and keep moving forward through many attempts until it finds the stream of air that will carry it up and into the sky. CfA’s Waldorf High School Teacher Education program is carrying young science educators into their vocation of supporting and nurturing the scientists of the future.
Jake Gerber received his Waldorf High School Teaching Certificate this year from CfA with concentrations in Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Mathematics. He is currently teaching in the Science department at the Rudolf Steiner School in New York City, bringing his triple-threat education to teaching the life science main lessons, 9th grade math, and advanced electives for 11th/12th grade in biology and chemistry. “This is a great place to be an early career teacher,” says Gerber. “It is inspiring to be among experienced colleagues at a school that has such a rich history and a deep connection to anthroposophy.”
Finding his wings and flying into the stream of his current career has been a journey for Gerber. In 2016, he was a biology undergraduate student at Furman University in South Carolina. It was here that he conducted research studying bird acoustics, publishing papers on the effects of the total solar eclipse in 2017 on bird vocalizations, and the effects of urbanization on chickadee vocalization.
While the thesis project was a success, Gerber was unsatisfied.
“ I felt that, despite the value in using acoustic recorders to collect large amounts of data for my research, I wanted to experience this data myself through my own perceptual experience. This was a constant trend in the way in which I was taught science: a lack of direct encounters with the world we were meant to be studying,” says Gerber. “My research was trying to come to a conclusion without having an initial experience with a natural process, without having an initial thought inspired by my surroundings.”
Gerber’s search for a deeper spiritual connection and his dissatisfaction with a materialistic, highly abstracted view of the natural world in his scientific studies led him to earn a Masters in Consciousness Studies and Transpersonal Psychology from The Graduate Institute in Connecticut. It was here that he became interested in the philosophy of science, soon after encountering phenomenological science and process philosophy. But then it was unclear where his journey would take him next.
So he flew home to Oswego New York and started working in his high school as a substitute teacher. And that was where everything clicked into place.
“I found that I really enjoyed working with high school students,”Gerber explains.
When he learned about CfA’s training program and how it would connect his science background with his training in consciousness studies and his love for teaching high school students, Gerber knew that he had found his path.
“Waldorf Education is responsive to the needs of the individual students, “ says Gerber. “I am tasked with making my lessons different depending on my audience.”
Conducting a biology class in Central Park, with students who are acculturated to a city environment, requires a teacher to have the creativity to meet students where they are and be in the present moment with them.
In New York, Jake has the opportunity to continue his own scientific research at the embryology lab at Rockefeller University, where he is researching feather development. He has incorporated an emphasis on women in science into his embryology main lesson, focusing on the history of birth control, IVF, and important research done by Hilde Mangold and Rosalind Franklin despite facing sexism and a lack of recognition.
“I hope that this work inspires all students to see themselves taking on these roles in furthering science,” says Jake.
As a Waldorf Educator, Jakes is able to be both a scientist engaged in his own research and a teacher engaged in supporting the scientists of the future.. “I’m not just a medium for communicating “science” to my students, I am a scientist myself: observing phenomena, asking questions, and finding connections. I think it’s important for the students to see that.”
