Week 2 — Online
July 6 - Friday, July 10, 2026
From your own chosen location
Preparing for Fourth Grade
Online with Irene Richardson
Fourth grade is an exciting and dynamic time in a child’s development. Students are increasingly grounded and capable, ready to meet new academic challenges, while also awakening to differences—between themselves and others, between inner experience and the outer world. As the dreamy qualities of early childhood continue to recede, fourth graders develop a sharper sense of self, often questioning authority, testing social boundaries, and exploring what it means to belong.
This year offers rich opportunities for self-reflection, resilience, and connection. With thoughtful guidance and a curriculum that speaks directly to this developmental stage, teachers can help students navigate growing independence while fostering empathy, responsibility, and community awareness.
Why Fourth Grade Is Unique
The fourth-grade curriculum meets children where they are—curious, questioning, and eager to explore the world with greater clarity. Through myth, geography, history, and natural science, students are invited to engage deeply with themes of individuality, courage, moral choice, and relationship within community.
Mythological stories provide powerful mirrors for the child’s inner life, while studies of local geography and history ground students in their place on the earth. Animal studies allow children to explore human qualities reflected in the natural world, supporting both intellectual understanding and emotional insight.
What This Course Covers
This Renewal Course supports teachers in meeting the developmental needs of fourth graders with clarity, creativity, and confidence.
Curriculum Highlights
Story, myth, and cultural imagination; animal studies; local history and geography; fractions; literature and grammar; form drawing and artistic work.
Lesson Design and Classroom Life
Ideas for plays, projects, class trips, and engaging lessons that foster curiosity, collaboration, and meaningful learning.
Inclusive and Responsive Teaching
Approaches for integrating diversity, justice, and belonging into curriculum content and classroom culture.
Practical Pedagogy
Guidance on lesson planning, classroom management, assessment, and parent communication through a Waldorf lens.
Teacher Well-Being
Strategies for sustaining balance, reflection, and personal well-being while meeting the demands of teaching this lively and complex year.
What You’ll Take Away
- A deeper understanding of fourth-grade development and curriculum purpose
- Practical lesson ideas, projects, and artistic activities
- Tools for fostering inclusion, community, and thoughtful classroom leadership
- Renewed confidence and inspiration for guiding students through this pivotal year
Who Should Attend
This course is designed for classroom teachers, homeschooling parents, online educators, and anyone preparing to teach fourth grade within a Waldorf-inspired framework. Both new and experienced teachers will find valuable insights, practical resources, and supportive collegial exchange.
Fourth grade is a time of discovery—inner and outer. As students explore who they are and how they belong, teachers play a vital role in helping them recognize themselves as individuals within a greater whole. This course equips you to create a dynamic, inclusive, and developmentally responsive classroom while inspiring students to embrace the adventure of learning.
Additional Course Offerings
This course also includes Teaching Music and Singing with Meg O’Dell, offering practical and developmentally aligned ways to bring rhythm, song, and musical life into the classroom, and Artistic Engagement with Narsingh Khalsa, providing rich artistic experiences that deepen teaching practice, creative confidence, and inner renewal.
Join us for a week of collaboration, creativity, and exploration as we prepare to lead fourth graders through this transformative year with clarity, joy, and purpose
Irene Richardson is the gardening, woodworking, and middle school history teacher at River Valley Waldorf School. She has served as class teacher to three groups of Waldorf students in Princeton, Tucson, and Philadelphia. A love of mythology and folklore, the natural world, and growing things runs as a common thread through her undergraduate degree in comparative religion from Bard College, her master’s degree in education from Sunbridge College, and her certificate in biodynamics from the Pfeiffer Center.
When she is not teaching, Irene supports collaborative leadership and self-development in Waldorf schools through her work as an AWSNA delegate. She is enthusiastic about carrying Waldorf education forward into its second century and toward liberation for all. Irene balances her professional life with time spent exploring forests and museums with her child—and collecting stacks of books she hopes to read eventually.
Included with all Online Renewal Courses:
Music and Singing
with Meg O’Dell
Leading Artistic Engagement
with Narsingh Khalsa
Meg O’Dell loves helping people access their innate capacity for wellness, vitality, and connection. She does this as a somatic coach, supporting individuals and couples in growth, transformation, and healing, and also as a music teacher and vocal mentor. She teaches music at The Bay School, a Waldorf school on the coast of Maine, and leads a large intergenerational all-comers chorus called Misty Mountain Singers. Meg serves as faculty for Antioch University’s Waldorf Teacher Training and CfA’s Waldorf High School Teacher Education Programs. She is a regular instructor for CfA’s the Renewal Courses and introductory Explorations program, and she has taught with LifeWays North America. She received her M.Ed. from Antioch University New England in 2008. Her great joys include spending time with her growing children and visiting the small, misty mountain that rises out of the sea near their home.
Narsingh Khalsa is a Waldorf educator and artist with a degree in Education from Prescott College and teacher training from Sunbridge Institute. Currently teaching a combined 2nd and 3rd grade class at the Waldorf School of Princeton, Narsingh brings 18 years of experience teaching fine arts to students from 1st through 12th grade. Passionate about creativity, she enjoys making children’s books, developing Waldorf curriculum for homeschoolers and teachers, and engaging in handwork. Outside the classroom, Narsingh loves hiking, yoga, and exploring the beauty of nature.
Community Gatherings Online
For all Renewal Participants, Monday, July 6 – Friday, July 10, 2026, 11:30-12:30 ET.
Daily Keynote
with Sarah Nelson and Rubeena Sandhu
Principles Into Practice: A five-part keynote series designed to bridge the depth of Waldorf pedagogy with the realities of daily teaching, leading, and learning. Each morning will also include Community Singing with Meg O’Dell, inviting us to begin the day together in song—strengthening connection, enlivening our hearts, and creating a shared rhythm that carries us into the learning.