David Barham, WHiSTEP Program Director

By the time this Winter issue of Center & Periphery appears, my beloved 24-year-old son, Adriel Jackson, will be a college graduate. I am so proud of him I could almost cry—sometimes I do. As I think about Adriel and his generation, I find myself reflecting deeply on the reality modern adolescents face, and on what Waldorf education is called to become for them.

Adriel was born the day after September 11, 2001. I wrote in my journal: “The Towers came down, and so did you. Welcome to a troubled world, Little Hero.” His childhood and adolescence unfolded against a backdrop of events whose weight none of us could have imagined.

During the pandemic, Adriel finished his senior year of high school alone in his bedroom, our dog Dinah curled in his lap while he stared at a computer screen. He missed his teachers, his friends, his final season of Ultimate Frisbee, and—perhaps most of all—the art and craft studios where he loved to make things. His senior project, designing silver chains and jewelry, was presented online—though this did allow his grandparents in Florida to attend. His graduation consisted of waiting in our parked car until his group was called, a masked walk across the stage, and a quick return to the car.

He delayed college for a year because the prospect of online classes in a dorm room with meals delivered in reusable Tupperware felt unbearable.

And on January 6, 2021, he sat with us on the living room floor watching the U.S. Capitol under siege—horrified by the violence, the symbols of hatred, and the strain placed on a tradition we had long taken pride in: the peaceful transfer of power.

His generation has lived through political instability, racial violence, climate disruption, unprecedented isolation, and the fraying of many shared narratives. They carry a biography shaped by a level of global turbulence few cohorts have faced so young.

And yet, Adriel looks to the future with hope.

Today he is beginning meaningful work with a master Japanese gardener, studying horticulture, the Japanese language, and the principles of traditional garden design, while continuing his own craftwork in metal, clay, and wood. Did his Waldorf education help him find this path of dignity, peace, and purpose? We believe the answer is yes. Make it beautiful. Make it meaningful. Make it in community. Go deep. These values formed a compass that still guides him.

This is what we aim to cultivate for every young person we serve—whether in classrooms, professional development programs, or teacher education. It is an extraordinary offering to a wounded and weary world.

In WHiSTEP and in our online seminar series, Starlight Rays in Darkened Times, we are wrestling with the essential questions:

What must Waldorf education become to meet both the times and the young human beings before us?
What must each teacher transform in themselves?
And what must our schools, institutes, and associations evolve to support?

Every sincere question seems to point toward a single answer: Become ever more human.
Learn to read the riddle of each individual and commit our fullest strength to meeting them where they are, helping them move toward health, courage, and wholeness.

We are living in a moment when education is becoming, unmistakably, a healing profession. It is a tightrope-wire time with few easy answers. Rudolf Steiner gave us a picture of the incarnating human being—body, soul, and spirit—arriving on Earth with intentions that stretch beyond a single lifetime. When we pair that view with a loving relationship to our students and our era, we stand on solid ground.

What do we do with such a potent view of the human being as we face a turbulent present and an unknowable future?
We do the work together.

We invite you to join us as we seek to meet a generation shaped by September 11, the pandemic, January 6, and the anxieties of modern life—a generation that has witnessed so much, and yet still carries hope, love, and dreams.

We welcome seasoned teachers and those just beginning their journey to work side by side in imagining and building a pedagogy that is fresh and vital precisely because it is rooted in an earnest striving to understand the essential, threefold nature of the human being.

It is nothing less than a sacred calling.

Congratulations, Adriel, on your university graduation and on the hopeful spirit you carry as you step forward into your destiny.

And welcome to all of you giving your best to meet these remarkable times.
We hope to see you in Starlight Rays and in our 25-month Waldorf High School Teacher Education Program.

As Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us, “Happy Teachers Change the World.”

We have real work to do.

David Barham
WHiSTEP Program Director
david@centerforanthroposophy.org

https://centerforanthroposophy.org/programs/waldorf-high-school-teacher-education/whistep/

https://centerforanthroposophy.org/programs/waldorf-high-school-teacher-education/starlight/