William Blake wrote Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Today, we could write, less poetically, Songs of Information; our children’s innocence is quickly and largely lost to the information in and with which we live.
It used to be that life gave us experience, from the school of hard knocks on up. Until recently, historically speaking, more than 9 out of 10 persons worked in agriculture, and everyone knew a great deal—how and when to plow, till, sow; how to herd and heal, how to shoe, how to hunt, trap, tan, weave, sew, dress, butcher, cook, how to mend a wagon wheel or a fence, how to build, how to clear, and on and on. Those who didn’t farm knew a trade. Experience filled a life.
But if we wanted information we had to go to school (or church, but that’s a different topic). We could say that the job of schools was to provide information that life experience did not—literacy, numeracy, the content and interpretation of books, “subjects” like history, geography, science, philosophy, theology, and on and on. Information filled a school.
Without quite realizing it, we have turned the world upside down.
For young people, especially, information is everywhere and experience is hard to come by.
This makes the job of schools and schooling different. We need to reorient—we are reorienting—education to provide experience, and trust that none of our students will suffer from too little information in the next lifetime or more.
Experience allows us to discern and sift and sort the information flowing past our eyes. It allows us to live as human beings in a world that increasingly seems not to need human input. Schools that offer experience—and trust that we no longer need primarily to be the arbiters of information—will serve their students best.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
Excerpts from a Conversation on Starting a Waldorf High School
I had a stimulating conversation last week with a representative from a Waldorf school with a healthy elementary school enrollment that is interested in starting a high school. Here are some of my notes--slightly expurgated to protect the privacy of all involved.
In my experience one group—parents, teachers, or trustees—usually drives change at a school. It’s better if 2 of the 3 are ready to initiate change. The first step is to identify which group is ready to move forward. If no one group is leading and each group is somewhat split, you may have to adopt a slightly different strategy, one which may be stronger in the long run, and form a coalition of the willing among parents, teachers, and board members.
A high school committee that includes representatives of all constituencies, with a clear mandate to plan (and return to the community at each step to collect information and inform everyone of progress and possibilities), may well be the way to go. One key to our success, I believe, was our willingness to hear criticism, concern, and anxiety, and to acknowledge and deal with them as well as we could.
This group may be the same as—but doesn’t have to be the same as—a study group on adolescence. The study group, for instance, may be more teacher-centered, while a planning committee might be a joint board-faculty-parent group.
Then the question is, how to get others on board? For trustees and parents, reassurance regarding minimizing risk and forwarding the benefits—I believe, for instance, that a HS will slow middle school attrition—will work. Identifying a target class, raising money in advance, and good planning are all helpful. Teachers mostly want to be reassured that a HS won’t mean more work for them. Sorry to by cynical, but it’s often true…
(Our biggest mistake by far occurred early on. In planning, we discussed two possibilities. One was growing the school only to 9th grade for a few years—private schools in our area often have grades through 9th grade; students then transfer to boarding school or another prep school for high school. The other was to carry on adding grades (as we did) until we had a full high school. The 9th grade, as I mentioned, had a good enrollment of 13 students, and then the bottom dropped out of the school with the con man I mentioned. And some of those who had been ready to move forward then recommended stopping at 9th grade to regroup. The trustees waffled through the spring, and students who would have stayed or enrolled in a new 9th grade left to find other schools. The uncertainty was crippling. In the end, it made greater financial sense to have a combined 9th and 10th grade—with more students than 9th alone—and that’s what we did. But the hesitation and uncertainty, born of a lack of clarity, nearly killed us.)
Identify a pioneer class, then inform them and their parents with articles, talks, etc., about the value of the HS you’re planning. Make them part of the process. I think 15 students is a good goal, but it’s a bit high—10-12 might be more reasonable and attainable; crunching numbers will show what’s possible.
Given demographics in our area, we are committed to a school of no more than about 50 students; other areas could support a larger school in the long run. We believe there’s a “deadly middle ground” between about 60 and 150 students—depends on your revenue and expenses—and we’re trying to avoid it. Most Waldorf high schools fall solidly in it, which I believe is a perennial challenge—they need teachers and facilities and resources for a school that could support 200 students, but they only have, say 90 students to pay for it…
Don’t count out local homeschoolers and other feeders—it’s fine for students who haven’t been in Waldorf schools to join in 9th grade, and you may be surprised how many allies you find among those disenchanted with their options. (Many students who had left the Waldorf elementary school returned to us for high school—a year or two at other schools taught them that the grass wasn’t as green as they thought!)
Another strategy—used in Freeport, Maine, for instance—is to identify two lead classes. Graduate the 8th grade and send them off to another school for a year with the promise that they can return to a 10th grade the following year. The next year’s 8th grade then becomes the 9th grade, and you open the HS with 2 classes. Ta da!
One of the hardest things, beyond your control, is creating something where nothing exists. You have no track record, no college acceptances, no happy students, nothing to sell but a good idea and commitment…
I believe it is good to have a paid planner or consultant for a couple of years to move you from idea to reality. Other schools have used this. We didn’t and we probably should have; things came to fruition very quickly for us, and we grabbed the opportunity we had. This was less than ideal, but, given that Great Barrington had closed a high school in the late 80s, may have been our only chance.
I can hardly emphasize enough how much depends on the quality of teaching. You have to have at least one amazing high school teacher, a tough cookie with a warm heart and a good head who can lead a faculty, guide students through the years of a pioneer high school, and reassure parents that their students will be prepared for college and for life. It’s a rare elementary school teacher who can make this leap, but maybe you have one. If not, the search for one is an essential part of your planning. If everything else is in place, and parents and students don’t trust the quality of the teaching and don’t value their relationships with their teachers, it won’t work.
Planning will also include a lot of high school-appropriate topics that elementary school teachers don’t like to deal with—dress, plagiarism, substance abuse policies, and on and on and on. Maintaining school spirit in the face of all this can be challenging. You can easily find out what other high schools do, but you also have to authentically make these things your own.
A final point to emphasize, perhaps prematurely, is that a Waldorf high school is as different from the elementary school as the elementary school is from the preschool. If students perceive that the Waldorf high school is “just more Waldorf,” they won’t want to come. “Selling” the differences—a voice in making some of the rules, choosing elective courses, travel and work opportunities, challenging courses with different, expert teachers, sports, mastery in the arts, etc., etc.—has helped us a lot and continues to be a challenge for us.
In my experience one group—parents, teachers, or trustees—usually drives change at a school. It’s better if 2 of the 3 are ready to initiate change. The first step is to identify which group is ready to move forward. If no one group is leading and each group is somewhat split, you may have to adopt a slightly different strategy, one which may be stronger in the long run, and form a coalition of the willing among parents, teachers, and board members.
A high school committee that includes representatives of all constituencies, with a clear mandate to plan (and return to the community at each step to collect information and inform everyone of progress and possibilities), may well be the way to go. One key to our success, I believe, was our willingness to hear criticism, concern, and anxiety, and to acknowledge and deal with them as well as we could.
This group may be the same as—but doesn’t have to be the same as—a study group on adolescence. The study group, for instance, may be more teacher-centered, while a planning committee might be a joint board-faculty-parent group.
Then the question is, how to get others on board? For trustees and parents, reassurance regarding minimizing risk and forwarding the benefits—I believe, for instance, that a HS will slow middle school attrition—will work. Identifying a target class, raising money in advance, and good planning are all helpful. Teachers mostly want to be reassured that a HS won’t mean more work for them. Sorry to by cynical, but it’s often true…
(Our biggest mistake by far occurred early on. In planning, we discussed two possibilities. One was growing the school only to 9th grade for a few years—private schools in our area often have grades through 9th grade; students then transfer to boarding school or another prep school for high school. The other was to carry on adding grades (as we did) until we had a full high school. The 9th grade, as I mentioned, had a good enrollment of 13 students, and then the bottom dropped out of the school with the con man I mentioned. And some of those who had been ready to move forward then recommended stopping at 9th grade to regroup. The trustees waffled through the spring, and students who would have stayed or enrolled in a new 9th grade left to find other schools. The uncertainty was crippling. In the end, it made greater financial sense to have a combined 9th and 10th grade—with more students than 9th alone—and that’s what we did. But the hesitation and uncertainty, born of a lack of clarity, nearly killed us.)
Identify a pioneer class, then inform them and their parents with articles, talks, etc., about the value of the HS you’re planning. Make them part of the process. I think 15 students is a good goal, but it’s a bit high—10-12 might be more reasonable and attainable; crunching numbers will show what’s possible.
Given demographics in our area, we are committed to a school of no more than about 50 students; other areas could support a larger school in the long run. We believe there’s a “deadly middle ground” between about 60 and 150 students—depends on your revenue and expenses—and we’re trying to avoid it. Most Waldorf high schools fall solidly in it, which I believe is a perennial challenge—they need teachers and facilities and resources for a school that could support 200 students, but they only have, say 90 students to pay for it…
Don’t count out local homeschoolers and other feeders—it’s fine for students who haven’t been in Waldorf schools to join in 9th grade, and you may be surprised how many allies you find among those disenchanted with their options. (Many students who had left the Waldorf elementary school returned to us for high school—a year or two at other schools taught them that the grass wasn’t as green as they thought!)
Another strategy—used in Freeport, Maine, for instance—is to identify two lead classes. Graduate the 8th grade and send them off to another school for a year with the promise that they can return to a 10th grade the following year. The next year’s 8th grade then becomes the 9th grade, and you open the HS with 2 classes. Ta da!
One of the hardest things, beyond your control, is creating something where nothing exists. You have no track record, no college acceptances, no happy students, nothing to sell but a good idea and commitment…
I believe it is good to have a paid planner or consultant for a couple of years to move you from idea to reality. Other schools have used this. We didn’t and we probably should have; things came to fruition very quickly for us, and we grabbed the opportunity we had. This was less than ideal, but, given that Great Barrington had closed a high school in the late 80s, may have been our only chance.
I can hardly emphasize enough how much depends on the quality of teaching. You have to have at least one amazing high school teacher, a tough cookie with a warm heart and a good head who can lead a faculty, guide students through the years of a pioneer high school, and reassure parents that their students will be prepared for college and for life. It’s a rare elementary school teacher who can make this leap, but maybe you have one. If not, the search for one is an essential part of your planning. If everything else is in place, and parents and students don’t trust the quality of the teaching and don’t value their relationships with their teachers, it won’t work.
Planning will also include a lot of high school-appropriate topics that elementary school teachers don’t like to deal with—dress, plagiarism, substance abuse policies, and on and on and on. Maintaining school spirit in the face of all this can be challenging. You can easily find out what other high schools do, but you also have to authentically make these things your own.
A final point to emphasize, perhaps prematurely, is that a Waldorf high school is as different from the elementary school as the elementary school is from the preschool. If students perceive that the Waldorf high school is “just more Waldorf,” they won’t want to come. “Selling” the differences—a voice in making some of the rules, choosing elective courses, travel and work opportunities, challenging courses with different, expert teachers, sports, mastery in the arts, etc., etc.—has helped us a lot and continues to be a challenge for us.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Apologies
Blogger was down yesterday and today (May 12 and 13) and seems to have eaten my recent post (and many others' posts, as well). I've replaced it. If it reappears, then there will be two. C'est la, c'est la.
Waldorf School Theocracy Syndrome (WSTS)
Does your school suffer from Waldorf School Theocracy Syndrome (WSTS)? Now there may be help! Read on to learn more.
Patient complaints/Symptoms:
Checking 3 or more of the following symptoms may be a sign that your school suffers from WSTS.
___ Enrollment attrition, particularly in middle school grades.
___ Too many classes with more girls than boys.
___ “Churn” or large turnover in enrollment (even if numbers overall are holding steady).
___ Stressful parent-teacher relationships.
___ Administrative dysfunction.
___ Arguments that rationalize dysfunction as “karmic.”
___ Failure to produce an organizational chart that makes sense.
___ Parent Association dissatisfaction.
___ Parking lot gossip.
___ Teachers’ room gossip.
___ Trustee attrition.
___ Falling community reputation.
Diagnosis:
Waldorf School Theocracy Syndrome (WSTS)
Waldorf teachers act, and believe they should act, as the priest-interpreters of Rudolf Steiner’s will, allowing their appropriate classroom and pedagogical autonomy to spill over into the economic life or rights and responsibilities life of a school.
Discussion:
Theocracy—rule according to the word of a god, often interpreted according to a fundamental text (hence, fundamentalism)—contradicts Steiner’s threefold social organization, which Waldorf schools espouse as an idea found in some of their fundamental texts. This belief and its attendant behaviors contradict the tenets of anthroposophy, too.
Treatment:
▪ Acknowledge that all members of a school community have rights and responsibilities.
▪ Acknowledge that, with regard to rights and responsibilities, all members of the community are equal. In particular, teachers’ authority does not extend to this area.
▪ Consult all constituencies to create lists of rights and responsibilities for each group.
▪ Constitute a group of teachers, parents, and board members, democratically, separate from the economic life of the school and also separate from the pedagogical life of the school, to administer the life of rights and responsibilities within the community.
▪ Empower this group to recommend and set policies and procedures and mediate conflicts among constituents of the school community.
▪ Figure out where the buck stops, and stop it there.
(Note: WSTS is a condition or syndrome that does not respond to “one size fits all” or “magic bullet” treatments. Each case requires individualized, ongoing attention and care.
Patient complaints/Symptoms:
Checking 3 or more of the following symptoms may be a sign that your school suffers from WSTS.
___ Enrollment attrition, particularly in middle school grades.
___ Too many classes with more girls than boys.
___ “Churn” or large turnover in enrollment (even if numbers overall are holding steady).
___ Stressful parent-teacher relationships.
___ Administrative dysfunction.
___ Arguments that rationalize dysfunction as “karmic.”
___ Failure to produce an organizational chart that makes sense.
___ Parent Association dissatisfaction.
___ Parking lot gossip.
___ Teachers’ room gossip.
___ Trustee attrition.
___ Falling community reputation.
Diagnosis:
Waldorf School Theocracy Syndrome (WSTS)
Waldorf teachers act, and believe they should act, as the priest-interpreters of Rudolf Steiner’s will, allowing their appropriate classroom and pedagogical autonomy to spill over into the economic life or rights and responsibilities life of a school.
Discussion:
Theocracy—rule according to the word of a god, often interpreted according to a fundamental text (hence, fundamentalism)—contradicts Steiner’s threefold social organization, which Waldorf schools espouse as an idea found in some of their fundamental texts. This belief and its attendant behaviors contradict the tenets of anthroposophy, too.
Treatment:
▪ Acknowledge that all members of a school community have rights and responsibilities.
▪ Acknowledge that, with regard to rights and responsibilities, all members of the community are equal. In particular, teachers’ authority does not extend to this area.
▪ Consult all constituencies to create lists of rights and responsibilities for each group.
▪ Constitute a group of teachers, parents, and board members, democratically, separate from the economic life of the school and also separate from the pedagogical life of the school, to administer the life of rights and responsibilities within the community.
▪ Empower this group to recommend and set policies and procedures and mediate conflicts among constituents of the school community.
▪ Figure out where the buck stops, and stop it there.
(Note: WSTS is a condition or syndrome that does not respond to “one size fits all” or “magic bullet” treatments. Each case requires individualized, ongoing attention and care.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Hard Work for Teachers and Students
Students wrote poems and then illustrated them in the style of William Blake. E., a high school English teacher, showed me the students’ work. It was awful. I was their art teacher. “I know she can do much better than that. He can too…” Were talented students just lazy, willing to make beautiful art in art class and then shrug it off in English class? A mystery.
E. showed up at school the next morning with a sample of what she had wanted from the students. She had written her own poem and then, not a natural artist, illustrated it painstakingly. Wow.
“How long did that take you?”
“Four and a half hours.”
A hah.
Students had each spent less than an hour on an assignment that took a teacher four and a half hours to do to her own standards and expectations. They had homework for other classes, they even had other work for English, and they had been given only one night for the assignment. It wasn’t a surprise that none of them, talented or not, spent the hours necessary to fulfill the teacher’s (unspoken) expectation for the quality of the work.
E. showed the students her work, told them how long it had taken her, made her expectations for the assignment explicit, and gave them several days to complete it. Their work was beautiful.
***
Z., a bright, motivated student who seemed interested in everything in the world, one of the few teens I have taught who was willing to say publicly that something academic—the quadratic formula or the defenestration of Prague—was cool, handed in his first essay for me. It was intelligently written but brief and almost illegible. I handed it back to him with this comment: “Brief. Sloppy. Seems hastily written.”
Turns out he wrestled with dyslexia and no one had told me. He had worked as hard on his essay as anyone in the class, it just didn’t show.
I generally grade essays with a check mark if they’re acceptable, a rare “check-plus” if they’re exceptionally good, and a check-minus if they’re unacceptable and should be re-written. But I edit them, correcting every misused comma, spelling mistake, awkward phrase, poor word choice, or lack of proper paragraphing.
(One of my fundamental beliefs as a teacher is that students generally enter high school capable of writing a perfect, simple English sentence and can then, with teachers’ assistance, learn to write more complex but still perfectly grammatical sentences. They will make mistakes along the way, but these can be minimal and instructive, rather than evidence of laziness or apathy.)
The content of Z.’s essays was often excellent, but other factors, most probably due to his dyslexia, kept him from getting check-pluses.
A year later, in a different course (one of the beauties of a small school is that we teachers get to know and teach students over several years), Z. handed in yet another essay. I read it through, pencil poised. Not a single correction. Thoughtful content, as usual, and no errors. Cool!
(Basing my assignments on those I found most meaningful when I was a student, I have students write many brief essays in most of my courses; I would rather read 1-2 really well-written pages than 5-8 pages thinly cribbed from Wikipedia and then padded with adverbs and adjectives.)
I returned the papers to the students. Z. came to see me, grinning. “I decided I was tired of your corrections. I wanted to write an error-free paper, to see if I could do it.” We chatted for a bit. It turns out it had taken him time to achieve his goal, but not quite twice as much time as he normally spent on assignments.
“You’re in trouble now,” I said.
“Why?”
“Now that I know what you can do when you try, you’ll have to do this every time.”
I can’t say that he rose to the bait completely, but the standards to which he held himself did change for the better, dyslexia or no dyslexia.
***
Will, work, and time. Aren’t these the keys to mastery, for teachers and for students, regardless of personal challenges?
E. showed up at school the next morning with a sample of what she had wanted from the students. She had written her own poem and then, not a natural artist, illustrated it painstakingly. Wow.
“How long did that take you?”
“Four and a half hours.”
A hah.
Students had each spent less than an hour on an assignment that took a teacher four and a half hours to do to her own standards and expectations. They had homework for other classes, they even had other work for English, and they had been given only one night for the assignment. It wasn’t a surprise that none of them, talented or not, spent the hours necessary to fulfill the teacher’s (unspoken) expectation for the quality of the work.
E. showed the students her work, told them how long it had taken her, made her expectations for the assignment explicit, and gave them several days to complete it. Their work was beautiful.
***
Z., a bright, motivated student who seemed interested in everything in the world, one of the few teens I have taught who was willing to say publicly that something academic—the quadratic formula or the defenestration of Prague—was cool, handed in his first essay for me. It was intelligently written but brief and almost illegible. I handed it back to him with this comment: “Brief. Sloppy. Seems hastily written.”
Turns out he wrestled with dyslexia and no one had told me. He had worked as hard on his essay as anyone in the class, it just didn’t show.
I generally grade essays with a check mark if they’re acceptable, a rare “check-plus” if they’re exceptionally good, and a check-minus if they’re unacceptable and should be re-written. But I edit them, correcting every misused comma, spelling mistake, awkward phrase, poor word choice, or lack of proper paragraphing.
(One of my fundamental beliefs as a teacher is that students generally enter high school capable of writing a perfect, simple English sentence and can then, with teachers’ assistance, learn to write more complex but still perfectly grammatical sentences. They will make mistakes along the way, but these can be minimal and instructive, rather than evidence of laziness or apathy.)
The content of Z.’s essays was often excellent, but other factors, most probably due to his dyslexia, kept him from getting check-pluses.
A year later, in a different course (one of the beauties of a small school is that we teachers get to know and teach students over several years), Z. handed in yet another essay. I read it through, pencil poised. Not a single correction. Thoughtful content, as usual, and no errors. Cool!
(Basing my assignments on those I found most meaningful when I was a student, I have students write many brief essays in most of my courses; I would rather read 1-2 really well-written pages than 5-8 pages thinly cribbed from Wikipedia and then padded with adverbs and adjectives.)
I returned the papers to the students. Z. came to see me, grinning. “I decided I was tired of your corrections. I wanted to write an error-free paper, to see if I could do it.” We chatted for a bit. It turns out it had taken him time to achieve his goal, but not quite twice as much time as he normally spent on assignments.
“You’re in trouble now,” I said.
“Why?”
“Now that I know what you can do when you try, you’ll have to do this every time.”
I can’t say that he rose to the bait completely, but the standards to which he held himself did change for the better, dyslexia or no dyslexia.
***
Will, work, and time. Aren’t these the keys to mastery, for teachers and for students, regardless of personal challenges?
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