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High School Seminar Week More than 20 Waldorf teachers and student teachers attended a high school seminar this week at RSCC with visiting teacher David Barham. When he’s not traveling around giving courses, David leads the high school program at Centre for Anthroposophy in Wilton NH, having taken over the leadership of that program from Douglas Gerwin.  In addition to the full time RSCC teacher education students, this week was attended by teachers from several Ontario Waldorf schools including Toronto Waldorf School, Trillium Waldorf School and Halton Waldorf School. The lead photo shows most of the folks who attended the week, though the TWS teachers were not there when the picture was taken. While mornings were devoted to classroom sessions at RSCC — a blend of lectures, and small group work, with the opportunity to present skits on various facets of adolescence and the life of high school students, afternoons (for the guest teachers from other schools) were given over to observation in real-life classes in the high school of the Toronto Waldorf School. Last week David was also here at RSCC as part of a group from AWSNA who were here to confirm RSCC’s full member institute for Waldorf teacher education. First photo below is David Barham teaching, next three are of students working in small groups, and the last one is of a blackboard full of class-generated observations about grade nine students. David Barham, teaching at RSCC this past Tuesday October 24th Teacher David Barham looks on as students work in small groups The high-school-week group included both full-time RSCC teacher education students and teachers from local schools. Working together in small groups Students helped fill a blackboard describing common traits of ninth graders on Monday October 23rd.

Journeying often serves as a metaphor both for mapping out a course of education as well as charting a path towards healing. In this spring issue of our newsletter Center & Periphery, we offer several iterations of this image. Continue reading…

The Future of the Teaching Profession with Torin M Finser and colleagues. Information sessions on CfA sponsored Building Bridges Program to start in Baltimore/DC area January 2024! Sunday, April 30 at The Waldorf School of Baltimore from 2:00- 3:30 pm Monday, May 1 at Washington Waldorf School from 3:30- 5:00 pm Open to those who are interested in a Waldorf teacher education program, past Explorations and Foundations Studies participants and friends. For more info on the program go to https://centerforanthroposophy.org/programs/building-bridges-to-waldorf-teacher-training-2/

Close to my home in Central Massachusetts, a clustering of maple trees stands tall and naked against a grey winter sky. Beneath the dark and rough bark of these trees, immensely potent forces of new life are flowing. These will soon become evident as sap begins to flow from small taps jutting from the trunks into little white pales belted around the trees. We are gearing up for a season of sweet maple syrup. Continue reading…

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.

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.