News

In these trying days, the faculty and staff of CfA send their good thoughts and prayers to the Waldorf schools, parents, teachers, and especially the children of Ukraine. Here is one report on how they are faring.

Center & Periphery The Online Newsletter of the Center for Anthroposophy Winter | 2022 In This Issue   Dateline Freeport, ME: Passing the Baton of Waldorf High School Teacher Training    Dateline Wilton, NH: Preview of Renewal Courses for Summer 2022   Dateline Wilton, NH: Healing Children’s Trauma in a World of Need   Dateline Keene, NH: New Cycle of CfA’s Waldorf Leadership Development Course   Dateline Wilton, NH: “Explorations” Goes International   Dateline Wilton, NH: “Explorations” for High School Teachers, Too    Dateline Punxsutawney, PA: The Significance of Groundhog Day for High Schools   Dateline Wilton, NH: Taking Orders for Our Alumni Conversation Café  From the Editor’s Notepad Midway between winter solstice and spring equinox comes a potent period of gestation, during which time the earth begins to stir with intense yet still invisible growth. Likewise, at our Center for Anthroposophy, we are entering a season of immense yet still largely behind-the-scene activity in virtually all of our programs, which this year have grown to six with a seventh still to be seeded. In this issue of our thrice-yearly online newsletter, we preview changes in our established programs and sketch out some new ones about to be launched during the coming seasons. –– Douglas Gerwin Executive DirectorCenter for Anthroposophy Dateline Freeport, ME: Passing the Baton of Waldorf High School Teacher Training   CfA has chosen David Barham to assume the leadership of its Waldorf high school teacher education program starting next year, taking over from its founder, Douglas Gerwin. Here is a brief portrait of Douglas’ successor.    Known in some high school circles as “Cap’n Waldorf”, Douglas Gerwin has for the past quarter-century steered the helm of the Waldorf High School Teacher Education Program, a vehicle for training high school teachers that he launched in 1996 at the Center for Anthroposophy (CfA) and affiliated with the Waldorf program at Antioch University New England. During his time as founding leader of this specialized program, Douglas has welcomed aboard some 200 high school trainees from Waldorf schools across North America, as well as overseas from Latin and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia.  On this continent alone, alumni of this program are currently teaching in 33 of the 40 extant North American Waldorf high schools, as well as in some two dozen other schools and institutes here and abroad. Now, after 25 years on the bridge of this seasoned vessel, Douglas will begin to hand on the wheel to his successor, David Barham, who has been appointed Director of high school program starting in September 2022. Douglas will retain his other chief role at CfA as its Executive Director during a further year of transition. David will be heading up the sole program in the English-speaking world that focuses specifically on the preparation of Waldorf high school teachers in their subject specializations. At present the program––affectionately nicknamed “WHiSTEP”––offers six such areas, each led by seasoned and practicing Waldorf high school teachers with decades of experience in their specific subjects:  Arts & art history [ Patrick Stolfo ] Biology and earth science [ Michael Holdrege ] English language and literature [ David Sloan ] History and social studies [ Paul Gierlach ] Mathematics [ Jamie York ] Physics and chemistry [ Michael D’Aleo ]  In addition to Douglas Gerwin, the high school program includes long-standing faculty members who lead courses for all trainees, including Eurythmy [ Laura Radefeld ], Creative Speech [ Craig Giddens ], Music [ Meg Chittenden ], Spacial Dynamics [ Jan Lyndes ], and Painting [ Charles Andrade ], along with a wide circle of expert guest presenters and mentors. For the past 30 years, David Barham has worked in four North American Waldorf schools, including one in Mexico, dividing his tenure equally between elementary school class teaching and high school humanities. For the past decade he has taught English and history at the Maine Coast Waldorf School in Freeport, ME, where he currently resides. While teaching full time in schools, David has also served as College chair, high school faculty chair, trustee, and school delegate to the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America (AWSNA). In the fall of 2021, he was appointed to AWSNA’s Leadership Council as Leader for the Northeast/Quebec region.  A graduate with a Master’s degree in Waldorf education from Antioch University New England, David is currently completing a CfA certificate program in Waldorf Leadership Development. His undergraduate degree at Tufts University was in English and Religion. An ardent folk singer and guitar player, David formed an acoustical rock-n-roll band some years ago with the name “Almond Butters Band”, a five-person group that appears at local gigs. He also leads online seminars for AWSNA on reimagining the Waldorf high school humanities curriculum as well as workshops for elementary and high school teachers. David is married to Kelly, a Waldorf early childhood educator, and has had three children move through Waldorf education. David came to anthroposophy first as a biodynamic farmer, then as a worker at a Camphill village before signing on as a class teacher, initially at Pine Hill Waldorf School and later at the Maine Coast Waldorf School. In between he also taught high school humanities at High Mowing School and, for the past 12 years, at Maine Coast. In 2018, David used a half-year sabbatical to walk the entirety of the Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain. “I knew I was ready for a new direction on my Waldorf vocational path, but could not clearly see the future,” he writes. “As I look back, I now see all of the changes that have led to this moment.” As WHiSTEP Director, David will be teaching not only prospective and practicing high school teachers but also adults in other programs sponsored by CfA, while keeping his hand active in the Waldorf high school classroom. CfA is fortunate to be welcoming David Barham into its leadership circle and adding his expertise to the line-up of senior-level high school instructors who constitute the full crew of the WHiSTEP faculty. David Barham     Dateline Wilton, NH: Preview of Renewal Courses for 2022 Karen Atkinson, Coordinator of CfA’s annual Renewal Courses, previews the coming summer of week-long professional development courses imbued with active engagement in the arts and anthroposophy.     Dear Friends and Colleagues, Recently, I ventured out on […]

  Center & Periphery The Online Newsletter of the Center for Anthroposophy   Fall | 2021    In This Issue    Dateline Amherst, MA: Feeling Blue  Dateline Keene, NH: “Paying Forward” for Explorations International  Dateline Wilton, NH:Exploring Relations with Parents  Dateline Conway, NH:Speech and Self-Development in a Forest Glade  Dateline Keene, NH:From Renewal to Remediation  Dateline Wilton, NH: Renewal in New Hands  Dateline Keene, NH:New Training Course for School Leaders and Administrators  Dateline Wilton, NH: Preparing to Teach Science in a Waldorf High School  Dateline Wilton, NH:Where Are They Now?  Dateline Wilton, NH:A New Vision for Alumni of CfA and Antioch programs   From the Editor’s Notepad The word “new” keeps cropping up in this issue of our three-yearly newsletter: new leadership, new programs, new formats, new ideas about funding, and the formation of a new institute. And yet, the temporal and transitional is framed by the eternal and the enduring. We invite you to explore this juxtaposition of timely and timeless. –– Douglas Gerwin Executive DirectorCenter for Anthroposophy Dateline Amherst, MA: Feeling Blue Now and again, you may come across a remark by Rudolf Steiner in which he captures an infinitely complicated and seemingly ephemeral reality in simple down-to-earth words that speak across the centuries to the immediate needs of our time. Here is such an example:  Now I must show you how we can arrive at such an assumption that behind our physical nature there is an etheric or life body—strictly speaking, an etheric or life world—that is a multiplicity of differentiated beings. To express how we can arrive at this, I can clothe it in simple words: we are more and more able to recognize the etheric or life world behind physical nature when we begin to have a moral feeling and perception of the world around us.  What do I mean by perceiving or sensing the whole world morally? First of all, we direct our gaze upward from the Earth into the ranges of cosmic space from which the blue of the sky comes to meet us. Suppose we look upward into this blue sky spread out above us on a day when there are no clouds, not even the faintest, silver-white cloudlet. Whether we recognize it in the physical sense as something real or not, does not matter. The point is the impression that this wide expanse of the blue heavens makes upon us.  Suppose that we can yield ourselves up to this blue of the sky, and that we do this with intensity for a long, long time. Imagine that we can do this in such a way that we forget everything else that we know in life and all that is around us. Suppose that we are able, for one moment, to forget all external impressions, all memories, all cares and troubles of life, and can yield ourselves completely to the single impression of the blue heavens.  What I am now saying to you can be experienced by every human soul that fulfills the necessary conditions; this can be a common human experience. Suppose a human soul gazes in this way at nothing but the blue of the sky. A certain moment then comes when the blue of the sky ceases to be blue—when we no longer see blue or anything that can be called “blue” in human language.  If we turn our attention to our own soul at that moment when the blue ceases to be blue to us, an infinity arises before us, and in this infinity we experience a quite definite mood. A quite definite feeling, a quite definite sensation pours itself into the emptiness that arises where the blue had been before.  If we would give a name to this soul feeling, or sensation, and to what would soar out there into infinite distances, there is only one word for it: devotion, a devout feeling in our soul, a feeling of pious devotion toward infinity.  —Rudolf Steiner,Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and in the Kingdoms of Nature [CW 136; Lecture 1 of 10 given in Helsinki,  3-14 April 1912]   Dateline Keene, NH: Paying Forward for Explorations International “Explorations”, CfA’s popular online program of foundational studies, is drawing a growing number of participants from around the world. Many of them, however, face the yawning gap between their level of income and the value of their currencies when set against the U.S. dollar. Torin Finser, President of the CfA Board of Trustees, outlines a way to help bridge this gap.   Thanks to an increasing number of donors to our annual appeal last year, we were able to award several diversity scholarships to eligible candidates for their teacher training. Recipients of these funds were most grateful for this new form of assistance, and our diversity fund will continue this year. At the same time, we recognize how few of these candidates generally apply to our teacher education programs, thereby limiting the scope of this new initiative.   By contrast, our Explorations Program, now fully online this year, has become much more accessible, thus increasing both the number of participants (we grew from 40 to over 100 this past year) and the scope of diversity. We are now planning to launch our first-ever international Explorations Program, thanks to active conversations with interested groups in Indonesia, Kenya, Denmark, and other parts of the world.   We hope that many will be attracted to this trend-setting program, which provides prerequisite foundational studies for prospective and practicing teachers (see program flyer here).  If we can reach an even wider audience through Explorations, we can expect to increase the diversity of applicants wishing to become Waldorf teachers and, in this way, better serve our schools.  We will also need to determine an appropriate level of tuition for those who apply from other countries while still paying in U.S. dollars. This very real challenge affords us an opportunity to finally implement an aspect of social finance we have long yearned to initiate. Simply put, it is the concept of “paying forward”.   We propose that if we can raise the money needed for our first international Explorations cohort (approximately $30,000) through the generosity of […]

Download the flyer below to learn more.

When: Oct. 6th, 2021, 3 PM to 5 PM Where: Waldorf School of Cape Cod 22 Tupper Rd. Sandwich, MA What: Are you a teacher or parent interested in earning an AWSNA recognized teaching certificate in Waldorf? An accredited MEd? This workshop is for you if you have ever thought about becoming a Waldorf educator. Join us to learn about the opportunity to be part of a Waldorf training program called Building Bridges to Waldorf. Building Bridges is a series of workshops in Waldorf education that engages students in lively presentations, group discussions, self-development, and classroom arts. The content of these courses will include foundational course work in preparation for further Waldorf teacher training at Antioch University New England (AUNE). Weekends are designed to accommodate working teachers. This workshop will be presented by Torin Finser, Ph.D., President of Center for Anthroposophy Board of Trustees, Director of Waldorf Programs at Antioch University New England

Dear Friends: Over the years, CfA has pioneered a growing number of different programs related to Waldorf education, from introductory courses and teacher preparation to administrative training and ongoing rejuvenation – seven programs in all. In this issue of our online newsletter, we briefly showcase their latest offerings and most recent innovations. And we examine a basic right of all students. — Douglas Gerwin Executive Director Center for Anthroposophy Dateline Amherst, MA: The Right to Write In barely a generation, students have reversed the order in which they learn to write and to type. Douglas Gerwin, Executive Director of the Center for Anthroposophy (CfA), explores what happens when keyboard replaces cursive. The last time I wrote out a major-length paper by hand was during the early 1980s, when I was working on my graduate dissertation. Under pressure of time, I disciplined myself to compose some ten pages per day––or 50 pages a week––so that in eight weeks I had completed a first draft of the manuscript.  To speed the process, I placed a typewriter at my elbow in order, with minimum distraction, to keep a running tab of footnote references and supplementary remarks.  However, notwithstanding impending deadlines, I opted to write––at times to scribble––the body of the dissertation itself in long-hand. At the time, it was quite evident to me that the tone and style arising from long-hand cursive (or sometimes my short-handed approximation of cursive) were quite different from the more clipped tone and style of the typed footnotes. At some level I was aware that linking one letter to another by hand was helping me construct an argument in which one thought was linked (“seamlessly”, I hoped my dissertation advisor would say) to the next. Footnoting, by contrast, did not require that kind of textual weaving. Only after a final edit did I undertake the weary task of converting the written manuscript into a 391-page typed document. Were I to engage in such a project today, I would doubtless opt for the convenience of a computer –– not least because of that convenient button labeled “delete”, to say nothing of the time-savers “cut” and “paste”. In retrospect, however, I am grateful that I chose to compose that thesis on a notepad, rather than an electronic Notebook.  Nowadays, in light of government-mandated Common Core standards, I read with alarm how cursive has been dropped as a curricular requirement in many schools (to be precise, Common Core remains silent on this issue), though several states––among them California, Idaho, Kansas, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee––have opted to give cursive another look. One reason to be alarmed is that, according to William Klemm, a neuro-scientist at Texas A&M University, writing in cursive makes kids smarter.  below“Cursive writing, compared to printing,” he concludes, is more beneficial “because the movement tasks are more demanding, the letters are less stereotypical, and the visual-recognition requirements create a broader repertoire of letter representation.” His is not the only voice to speak up for the merits of cursive writing, though there are others who challenge his conclusions. But the National Association of State Boards of Education, for one, stands with Professor Klemm: it has issued a report saying that cursive helps develop memory, fine motor skills, and better expression.   belowKlemm’s conclusions are further supported by a study in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, which reports that children who practice cursive writing show improved symbol recognition, leading to a heightened ability to read fluently. The study’s published fMRI scans show that physically writing the letters by hand links visual processing and motor experience, thereby strengthening students’ ability to recognize––and later to write––words and sentences. Writing by hand also improves memory and comprehension among adults. According to a study published in the journal Psychological Science, college students who take notes longhand write less but remember more than those who type their notes on a laptop. However, even those elementary schools that retain cursive in their curriculum are giving their students less time to practice it. Catholic schools, famous for emphasizing penmanship, are devoting considerably less class time these days to this skill. Instead of getting it for a half hour or so a day––or roughly 7 1/2 hours per week––students may get 15 minutes’ practice three times a week. That comes to less than an hour a week, or a tenth of the time once allotted to this exercise.  Meg Kursonis, principal at St. Peter Central Catholic Elementary School in Worcester, nevertheless points to research that comprehension and retention improves among students who write in cursive. “Students who print or type on a keyboard see individual letters when writing,” she says, “whereas cursive writers see the word as a whole, using the bridges and circular movements to join letters for connectivity. Seeing the whole word also helps them to be better spellers.” Meanwhile, an online poll by Harris Interactive reports that 79 percent of adult respondents––and even 68 percent of kids, ages 8-18––feel cursive should still be taught in school. Nearly half the adults polled (49%) and more than a third of the kids (35%) said that practicing reading and writing in cursive improved literacy.  Regardless of what schools decide about their curricula, most children these days begin to peck their way around the keyboard of a computer or smartphone long before they enter school and years before they are handed their first pen (if indeed they are handed a pen in school at all). And even when––in some cases we may need to say if––they pick up a pen, a growing number of children don’t even attempt to learn cursive, since they are allowed to remain with printing as they exercise their writing skills. Some teachers worry that students may leave school unable to sign their name in cursive.  What does this developmental switch––from writing or printing to typing or keyboarding––imply for future generations of writers –– and of thinkers? At a superficial level, one could say that they will not be able to decipher great historical documents such […]