Week 2 — Online
July 6 - Friday, July 10, 2026
From your own chosen location
Preparing for Seventh Grade
Online with Sarah Azzinaro
Seventh grade can be a turbulent time for students, teachers, and parents as young people navigate shifting social dynamics and the challenges of early adolescence. At the same time, the rich seventh-grade curriculum offers a powerful antidote to disengagement—meeting students with subjects that spark curiosity, creativity, and genuine wonder.
From perspective drawing to discovering the golden ratio in nature, seventh grade invites students to stretch their thinking, expand their worldview, and engage more consciously with both beauty and complexity. This course supports teachers in meeting students exactly where they are, with confidence and imagination.
What Makes Seventh Grade Unique?
Seventh graders are actively exploring identity, questioning authority, and testing ideas as they encounter the world with growing independence. Their inner questions are met by a curriculum that is expansive, inventive, and intellectually stimulating—one that channels their energy into meaningful, rigorous, and inspiring learning experiences.
The seventh-grade year offers teachers a unique opportunity to guide students through this dynamic developmental phase with creativity, humor, and thoughtful structure.
What This Course Cover
This Renewal Course is designed to empower teachers with practical tools, developmental insight, and renewed inspiration.
- Engaging Curriculum BlocksPresentations and discussion on each traditional seventh-grade block, including perspective drawing, mathematics, history, science, and more
- Fresh ideas for presenting material in ways that motivate, challenge, and excite adolescents
Child Development Insights
- A deeper understanding of the developmental shifts of seventh graders
- Strategies for meeting students’ evolving needs with empathy, creativity, and flexibility
Justice, Representation, and Relevance
- Exploring ways to thoughtfully integrate themes of justice, representation, and decolonization
- Creating curriculum and classroom experiences that are inclusive, relevant, and responsive to today’s students
Creative Teaching Inspiration
- Concrete suggestions, guiding thoughts, and practical tools to energize your teaching
- Approaches that spark imagination while supporting academic rigor and engagement
What You’ll Take Away
- A clearer understanding of seventh-grade development and curriculum intention
- Practical strategies for lesson design, block planning, and classroom engagement, including resources and materials to inspire your planning throughout the year
- Renewed confidence in guiding students through this complex and creative year
- Inspiration to meet challenges with curiosity, humor, and courage
Who Should Attend?
This course is ideal for classroom teachers, homeschooling parents, online educators, and anyone preparing to teach seventh grade within a Waldorf-inspired framework. Both new and experienced teachers will find meaningful guidance, resources, and collegial support.
Seventh grade is a turning point—one that calls for creativity, depth, and responsiveness. This course prepares educators to meet the year’s challenges while creating learning experiences that are imaginative, rigorous, and deeply human.
Additional Course Offerings
This course also includes Teaching Music and Singing with Meg O’Dell, offering practical ways to support rhythm, musicality, and social cohesion in the classroom; Artistic Engagement with Narsingh Khalsa, providing rich artistic experiences that nurture creativity, pedagogical insight, and inner renewal; and Teaching Science in Grade 7 with Will Minehart, focusing on hands-on scientific exploration that supports adolescents’ growing capacity for critical thinking and discovery.
Join us to explore the challenges and opportunities of seventh grade—and leave inspired, equipped, and ready to create a transformative year for your students.
Sarah Azzinaro is very grateful for having been introduced to Waldorf Education during her college years and discovering the learning methodology she craved and longed for as a child. As a Waldorf teacher, she is dedicated to awakening the potential of each child in her care, so that they can develop into lifelong learners with the ability to see what is hidden and wanting recognition. She earned her B.F. A in Theatre Arts from Cornish College of The Arts, a Fine Arts Certificate in Early Renaissance Art History from Scuola Internazionale d’Arte Santa Reparata Campus di Firenze, and an M.Ed. in Waldorf Elementary Education and Integrated Learning from Antioch University New England. For six years, Sarah was a professional actress in New York City, discovering teaching when hired to work as a teaching artist for three years with The Missoula Children’s Theatre. Since 2013, Sarah Azzinaro has taught at The Brooklyn Waldorf School, Sophia’s Hearth, The Monadnock Waldorf School, and Pine Hill at High Mowing School. She has served as an AWSNA delegate for the past 4 years. In 2025, she graduated the eighth grade class from High Mowing School. She is now headed into third grade with her second class. When she is not teaching, she enjoys crafting, pickling and canning, traveling, hiking, practicing yoga, and learning Italian.
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.