Our German teacher, a Jew whose family escaped from Germany prior to World War II, attended the Munich-Schwabing Rudolf Steiner School after the war, and remembers carrying bricks to school in the morning, as many children did, to assist in building the school.
Earlier this week, I learned that an east coast Waldorf high school will close this spring after about five brief years of operation. As I understand it, the school has only about 20 students enrolled for next year, and the powers that be can’t support it. One consultant apparently told the school that is would need to find $2 million in the next few years while it tried to grow to full strength, and advocated closing it if this amount could not be found.
I don’t know that the school made the right decision or the wrong decision, but I do know that a school of only 20 students does not necessarily need $2 million to succeed and grow, given time, creative thinking, appropriate resources, commitment, and a conservative model or business plan. I know that the high school with which I have been involved for the past ten years has graduated five classes; operated in the black for six of ten years—including the past four; paid its debts from the years it was in the red; and hasn’t spent $2 million total in that whole time.
The story of how we built our “organic, free-range” Waldorf high school is worth telling. As a farmer friend of mine, an organic vegetable grower, said toward the beginning of our enterprise, “Someone can tell me how much it costs to grow corn, but that presupposes that I’m going to grow corn according to the prevailing model of corn growing. If I do it in a different way, his assessment of the costs will simply be wrong. Growing corn is the easy part; if I want to succeed and not to pay his costs, my job is to figure out a different way of growing corn.”
It only costs millions of dollars to educate a few private school kids, Waldorf or other, if that’s the model you use to build your school.
Here are the key points that have enabled us to succeed against the odds. (And, don’t be fooled: The odds aren’t very good even if you have pots of money. A day school near us started a high school around the same time we did, poured a few million dollars into it, and, unable to attract sustainable numbers—which, given its model, were much higher than ours—closed it four years later. The only way—the only way—to try to beat the odds is to have an endowment of such size that the existence of the school is ensured regardless of enrollment. And this model, almost impossible to attain, brings a huge and different set of challenges with it.)
1. Independence:
We began as an outgrowth of the Great Barrington Rudolf Steiner School, a pre-K to grade 8 school, and, during our second year, the Board of Trustees voted to close us. We had enrolled 13 students in our pioneer class, but could enroll only 4 for the following year. Our choice was to close or to incorporate independently. We chose the latter, and, as difficult as this separation was, have been grateful for it ever since. Although we recognize the ideological value of being “one school,” this ideology rarely seems to serve practical necessity. We have been able to make our own decisions, stand on our own feet, take our own risks, write our own budget, and not contend with or worry about elementary school teachers, parents, trustees, decision-making, or governance. We incorporated, formed a small board of committed members, found a building in town in which we could rent the second floor, and set to work.
2. Community resources:
We had a building, a used school bus, some blackboards that were hand-made by a trustee’s husband, and a core faculty. What about a library, a science lab, athletic facilities, art studios, and so on? We found them. Students obtained community-use library cards at a local college for $5. The college rented us use of a chem. lab in January and May when their students were on break. All we provided was an insurance waiver and our own chemicals. We scheduled use of the elementary school playing fields for soccer, and, with the elementary school, rented a basketball court at a local athletic center. We rent a performance space and have a “real” theater for our annual play. We mined the area for local artists who could teach in their own studios—pottery, blacksmithing, glass-blowing. Without intending this, exactly, this “practical arts” program became one of the strongest in the school. Yes, there were some disasters. A wonderful weaver turned out not to have the touch with adolescent students. All escaped with their lives.
We may grow to the point at which we no longer require such involvement in the community, but we have grown to value this integration. We plan to continue it long after it is mere necessity. Our students gain immeasurably from having teachers who are professional artists, from meeting community standards of behavior when they’re out of our building, from being treated not like immature teens but like members of a community.
3. Big world:
One of our first ads, copied almost immediately by another school in the area, read “Small school, Big world.” Because we were so small, we deliberately sought to get out into the world, not just in our integration in the local community (see above), but in trips to New York, Montreal, Boston, and, in our third year, Munich and Lima. Students and families raised money, and, ever since, every student has traveled abroad at least once in high school, regardless of ability to pay. Every student at our school can take a semester abroad; what big school can say that?
4. Part-time teachers:
We currently have one full-time teacher/administrator (me), two ¾ time teachers (one in English and drama, one in math and physical science), and two 3/8 time teachers (our foreign language teachers). The rest are paid smaller salaries or work hourly—arts and physical education, mostly, although some itinerant humanities or science teachers. If we had had to wait until we could afford 3-4 full time teachers, we never would have begun. We plan to add full-time teachers as we grow, another possibly next year, and 2-3 more in the next five years. Fortunately, we have found excellent, committed, experienced teachers, many with experience in Waldorf schools, some of good will who otherwise have no prior experience in Waldorf schools, to help us.
5. Combined classes:
With the exception of math sections, we have combined grades or classes throughout our history. Sometimes, as in a foreign language class, this is a compromise—it’s difficult (difficult, but not impossible) to teach two sections simultaneously. Sometimes, as in, say, history or science seminars, it’s a compromise—students have occasionally learned courses out of sequence (modern lit. before medieval history, for example). Sometimes, students have had a course a year earlier or a year later than “the” Waldorf curriculum “says” they should. We have found that our students have thrived, regardless. Their enthusiasm for their school and their education has not been compromised.
Basically, in seminars (what other Waldorf schools call “main lessons”) and other classes, combining classes introduces an economy in that we’re generally paying two teachers where other schools might pay four. We rotate the curriculum every year, so every student graduates having completed every course.
We have found that the educational costs of combining classes are minimal and that the social benefits of combining classes are enormous. We have decided that, even when we can afford not to combine classes, we will still combine many because to do so introduces a healthy cross-class dialogue and understanding that introduces social harmony far outside the classroom. We simply do not have “class consciousness” in our school, and students are as likely to have school friends two years older or younger as they are to have them in their own class.
6. Conservative planning:
By writing a budget based on actual money received, we have crept forward, growing each year from a low of 13 to a current high of 35. When we were in the red, it was because of unforeseen circumstances. In each case, we have been able to adapt, cut our losses, carry debt for a while, and pay it off. Every teacher has deliberately made sacrifices to work here. In at least two cases, teachers worked for a year for no salary in order to support our effort. It could have been different. We came close to closing many times, but, each time, asked ourselves if we could go forward one more semester, one more year. We cannot underestimate the flexibility our small size and conservative view has given us. We have no debt, and we have run a small surplus each of the past three years.
7. Commitment:
Between our first and second year, one parent, committed to our endeavor, announced to what I call the “game of chicken” meeting, that her daughter would be in the school the following year even if she was the only student and the meeting place was someone’s living room. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that.
I call it the game of chicken because you have a room full of people each of whom would like to send a student to the school, but very few of whom are happy to be the first to commit.
The intense commitment required characterizes our early years, necessarily, because the commitment was to an idea, not yet to a school—we had yet to demonstrate that we could educate students and send them off to college and out into life. (This is the Catch-22 of any school start-up: You have nothing to sell but a vision and those committed to it.)
From the start, we saw no conflict between academic excellence and Waldorf education. We are committed to preparing those students who wish to attend highly selective colleges to do so. Teaching bright, motivated students is easy; the challenge is to teach to the top of each class and then work like heck to bring the rest along.
We also believed completely in the value of the creative, humanistic aspects of Waldorf education. We are committed to educating students to think for themselves and to think of their own lives, responsibly, as creative works-in-progress.
We are not a private school because we believe in private education; if we believed we could teach as we like in a public school, we might do so. But our experience is otherwise. Similarly, we are not a Waldorf school because we believe in Waldorf education. We have found, individually, and for as many reasons as there are teachers who teach here, that the principles of Waldorf education are healthy for adolescents. We do not see ourselves as implementing some already thought-through program, handed down by Steiner or AWSNA, but as educating students according to the best practices and best principles we can find.
8. Small is beautiful:
At first, we apologized for our small size. People believed in us anyway. After a few years, however, we began to discover the value of being small. Small schools are incredibly flexible—fiscally, educationally, you name it. Want photography class? Give us three weeks to locate some equipment and a teacher, and you have it.
Small schools are highly individualized. No one falls between the cracks because there are none. Want to come for one class? We can arrange that. We’ll take your little bit of money, give you a great course, and you’ll contribute to the social life of our school.
Small schools are inclusive. Everyone plays on the sports team or the team doesn’t exist. There’s no room for cliques. The students don’t even date each other—as one boy said to me, “it would be like dating your sister.”
Small schools, necessarily, are creative. If necessity is the mother of invention, at this point we are practically Thomas Edison, and not just the teachers and board members, the students, too. How do you have a Student Council in a school of 35? How can you raise money to go to Germany in such a small community? Many, many of the rules the govern our day—eating out, computer and cell phone policies—were written by the students and approved by the teachers.
9. Miscellaneous
This list could go on and on, and I’d be happy to answer questions for anyone who is interested. We have never had tuition remission. We can’t afford it, and we are all in the same boat. A teacher should pay whatever he or she can, just like everyone else. Fundraising happens because of volunteers and passion. Our business manager has been a volunteer; next year will be the first year we pay someone to oversee accounts. (We have had a paid bookkeeper since the beginning.)
At the graduation of our third senior class, one of our trustees reminded me that this was the first graduation—in our seventh year—that we closed up for the summer knowing that we would reopen in September. He was right; every previous June brought the uncertainty of wondering if we could get everything in place—especially including enough students—to open again in September. Since then, however, we haven’t looked back.
One of our first graduates made a short film about our first three years. She called it “The Pioneers.” By the looks of it, we were all laughing all the time. It was great fun, an adventure. We laughed all day, perhaps, and stared into the darkness at 3 in the morning, when her camera wasn’t running, wondering how long we could keep things going.
She’s now in graduate school in creative writing. Three of our first seven graduates are in graduate school, soon to be four. We’re no longer so young; our board will meet later this week to discuss accreditation and our first five year strategic plan (our strategic plan to date has been, “All hands on deck!”). We have survived, even thrived, so far. In doing so, we’ve learned a lot.
We hope our experience can encourage other small, committed schools and groups to make a go of it, a rational, hard, risky go of it. Adolescents need the best education we can give them, and we can’t rely on one model or one vision to provide this for them.
Showing posts with label waldorf education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label waldorf education. Show all posts
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
Waldorf School, Home School, Win, Win
A couple of years ago, our slowly-growing high school had an idea: Why not allow homeschool students to take courses at our school? Maybe mom can teach everything except chemistry, or Spanish. Homeschool students could enroll in those courses at our school, pay us a prorated fee, and learn. Our classrooms would be fuller, we would have a few more dollars, and homeschool families would benefit from our school.
Objections included ones I’ve heard for years, about “disrupting the class,” “distracting our students,” “lowering, potentially, our standards,” and the “immaturity” of sheltered homeschoolers.
We decided to try it anyway.
And the objections turned out to be, almost entirely, wrong. New kid in Spanish? Our students perk up and pay attention—who is this person? As Elton Mayo’s “Hawthorne experiments” showed early in the 20th century, change provokes an increase in productivity.
Also, any doubts we had about homeschool students’ preparation were largely unfounded. It’s true that they often don’t have a complete background in everything we could wish. I came to picture the profile of their knowledge like a piece of Swiss cheese—very solid in some areas (knows all about ancient Egypt), very empty in others (often, math). By contrast, students with a more conventional preparation—public middle school or Waldorf middle school—are more like cake, less dense than cheese, but with smaller holes.
Despite this contrast, which I’ve characterized only generally (and I’ve ignored the real differences between public middle school and Waldorf middle school students, a topic for another time), homeschool students are almost always eager to learn and have excellent work habits. If there are holes to fill, they fill them rapidly and well. Basically, kids everywhere are probably more resilient than we often give them credit for being, and, in the absence of experience, stereotypes about homeschooling (or Waldorf schooling) can spin far from reality.
Socially, too, the homeschool kids tend to fit right in. They are generally a bit quieter—new kids usually are—and more mature (less immature peer pressure and exposure in their lives?), but navigate quickly and successfully within a class.
The largest benefit, however, is not one we had anticipated.
Nearly every homeschool student who enrolls for a course or two—there have now been at least twelve (some of whom had tried other schools before coming to us)—enrolls as a full time student within a few weeks. The students discover the pleasure of the company of their peers, and parents are reassured that our school isn’t the “prison” one parent told me she believed it would be for her son. I also guess that parents, in many cases, feel some relief in not to have to carry on homeschooling an adolescent through high school.
Win. Win.
Objections included ones I’ve heard for years, about “disrupting the class,” “distracting our students,” “lowering, potentially, our standards,” and the “immaturity” of sheltered homeschoolers.
We decided to try it anyway.
And the objections turned out to be, almost entirely, wrong. New kid in Spanish? Our students perk up and pay attention—who is this person? As Elton Mayo’s “Hawthorne experiments” showed early in the 20th century, change provokes an increase in productivity.
Also, any doubts we had about homeschool students’ preparation were largely unfounded. It’s true that they often don’t have a complete background in everything we could wish. I came to picture the profile of their knowledge like a piece of Swiss cheese—very solid in some areas (knows all about ancient Egypt), very empty in others (often, math). By contrast, students with a more conventional preparation—public middle school or Waldorf middle school—are more like cake, less dense than cheese, but with smaller holes.
Despite this contrast, which I’ve characterized only generally (and I’ve ignored the real differences between public middle school and Waldorf middle school students, a topic for another time), homeschool students are almost always eager to learn and have excellent work habits. If there are holes to fill, they fill them rapidly and well. Basically, kids everywhere are probably more resilient than we often give them credit for being, and, in the absence of experience, stereotypes about homeschooling (or Waldorf schooling) can spin far from reality.
Socially, too, the homeschool kids tend to fit right in. They are generally a bit quieter—new kids usually are—and more mature (less immature peer pressure and exposure in their lives?), but navigate quickly and successfully within a class.
The largest benefit, however, is not one we had anticipated.
Nearly every homeschool student who enrolls for a course or two—there have now been at least twelve (some of whom had tried other schools before coming to us)—enrolls as a full time student within a few weeks. The students discover the pleasure of the company of their peers, and parents are reassured that our school isn’t the “prison” one parent told me she believed it would be for her son. I also guess that parents, in many cases, feel some relief in not to have to carry on homeschooling an adolescent through high school.
Win. Win.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Interview on my new book
Interview on my new book, The Story of Waldorf Education in the United States: Past, Present, and Future. (Or through SteinerBooks.)
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Elevator Speech--Part II
(My friend Winslow Eliot, a former Waldorf student and administrator and current part-time Waldorf high school English teacher, sent me her version of an elevator speech. I've decided to post it here rather than in comments on the old post in an attempt to re-spark the discussion. What do you think? What would you say?)
Person in Elevator: “What’s Waldorf Education?”
Me: “Waldorf Education, based on Rudolf Steiner’s insights into human beings, integrates three essential components:
1. It’s holistic. Education is not just about learning facts and figures; it’s about exposing students to emotional and character building skills and physical, active development. This means showing them how to accomplish and finish projects so they know they can DO things as well as think and feel them.
2. It’s developmental: A seven-year-old doesn’t learn the same way a seventeen-year-old does. We teach kinesthetically and experientially in the lower grades. We try to inspire more interest and engagement in the middle years – teaching history through the telling of biographies, for example, instead of asking students to memorize historical facts. In high school, their intellectual lives are ripe for analysis, knowledge, and weighing what matters and what students themselves can do to impact the world for the better.
3. It’s phenomenological. It’s developed and presented by teachers’ own experience and observations of children and of the subject matter.”
Person in Elevator: “What’s Waldorf Education?”
Me: “Waldorf Education, based on Rudolf Steiner’s insights into human beings, integrates three essential components:
1. It’s holistic. Education is not just about learning facts and figures; it’s about exposing students to emotional and character building skills and physical, active development. This means showing them how to accomplish and finish projects so they know they can DO things as well as think and feel them.
2. It’s developmental: A seven-year-old doesn’t learn the same way a seventeen-year-old does. We teach kinesthetically and experientially in the lower grades. We try to inspire more interest and engagement in the middle years – teaching history through the telling of biographies, for example, instead of asking students to memorize historical facts. In high school, their intellectual lives are ripe for analysis, knowledge, and weighing what matters and what students themselves can do to impact the world for the better.
3. It’s phenomenological. It’s developed and presented by teachers’ own experience and observations of children and of the subject matter.”
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Is Waldorf Education a Religion? Is it Religious? Is it Based on a Religion Called Anthroposophy?
The issue of religion and Waldorf education is not a simple one. The field extends, minimally, over three points of view. The first might be that all education, all meaningful human endeavor, has, in the broadest sense, a religious component. As A.N. Whitehead (1929/1967) said, “The essence of education is that it be religious.” (14) To speak of value, explicitly or implicitly, is to give evidence of a religious engagement with the world. This view is too broad to consider here, however, and does not necessarily distinguish Waldorf education from other methods.
The second point of view, probably the source of Waldorf critics’ frustration with aspects of Waldorf education as manifested by certain teachers or, potentially, by certain schools, is that Waldorf education is religious in a more conventional sense because some ideologues, through misunderstanding and misapplication of Steiner’s work, make it so. As Dorothy St. Charles, former principal of the Milwaukee Urban Waldorf School said in a radio interview, Waldorf education is not a religion, “but some people make it one.”
The third point of view, and the more carefully considered, is that Waldorf education and anthroposophy, the method that underlies it, are not religions at all. Douglas Sloan, former coordinator of the joint program in Religion and Education between Union Theological Seminary and Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, made this point eloquently as an expert witness in a lawsuit arguing that charter Waldorf schools, as religious schools, violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Sloan (2004) argued against this view:
St. Charles, D. (1994) Interview by Alan Chartock on WAMC, 90.3 FM, Northeast Public Radio, Albany, NY. April; exact date unavailable. Reference obtained from undated cassette tape recording.
Sloan, D. (2004) “Declaration of Douglas Sloan in Support of Defendants’ Opposition to Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgment…” Case No. CIV. S-98-0266 FCD PAN. PLANS, Inc. v. Sacramento City Unified School District, Twin Ridges Elementary School District, DOES 1-100. United States District Court, Eastern District of California. July 30, 2004.
Whitehead, A. (1929/1967) The Aims of Education and Other Essays. New York: Free Press.
The second point of view, probably the source of Waldorf critics’ frustration with aspects of Waldorf education as manifested by certain teachers or, potentially, by certain schools, is that Waldorf education is religious in a more conventional sense because some ideologues, through misunderstanding and misapplication of Steiner’s work, make it so. As Dorothy St. Charles, former principal of the Milwaukee Urban Waldorf School said in a radio interview, Waldorf education is not a religion, “but some people make it one.”
The third point of view, and the more carefully considered, is that Waldorf education and anthroposophy, the method that underlies it, are not religions at all. Douglas Sloan, former coordinator of the joint program in Religion and Education between Union Theological Seminary and Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, made this point eloquently as an expert witness in a lawsuit arguing that charter Waldorf schools, as religious schools, violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Sloan (2004) argued against this view:
By all scholarly criteria of what constitutes religion, anthroposophy is not a religion. ...
The attempt to define religion has been notoriously difficult, and the approaches to doing so are many. In general there have been three main approaches.
The first can perhaps be called the essentialist approach. Essentialist definitions tend to focus on the inner essence or substance, the metaphysical reality claims, of religions, and the relationships to these demanded of human beings by the claimed realities. One of the conceptual difficulties with this focus is that philosophers and others can make metaphysical and ethical arguments about the nature of reality without advancing these as themselves constituting a religion, although they may well have implications for religion.
The second main approach to the study and definition of religion can be called the functional approach, and is probably the theoretical approach most favored by social scientists, although as I shall point out, some theologians also favor it. Functional definitions of religion stress the effects, the functions of religion, in actual life—the ways in which religion functions to fulfill basic human needs, both individually and communally. Different scholars stress different functions as the defining characteristic of religion. Among these various functional definitions are, for examples: the cognitive—religion provides meaning systems for understanding and coping with life; the psychological—religion functions to meet psychological needs, such as, a sense of security in the face of life’s uncertainties, a sense of identity, a sense of purpose, and so forth; the social—religion serves primarily to provide values for social cohesion and the preservation of the social group; and the ideological (Marxist definitions of religion are a good example)—religion serves the power interests of governing elites by deluding the masses. Each of these taken by itself is decidedly reductionist, and, in order to avoid inordinate reductionism, most scholars attempt to fashion combinations of various functional approaches.
One form of functionalism, often utilized by students of religion, is that of the twentieth-century American theologian, Paul Tillich. Religion Tillich defined as expressing “the ultimate concern” of an individual or of an entire culture. Every person and every society, he argued, has its “ultimate concern” (often, to be sure, directed toward less than ultimate objective realities).
In fact, for Tillich, every culture is grounded in its own ultimate concern, to which it gives concrete expression. Culture itself as a whole is, therefore, the religious expression and activity par excellence.
“Religion,” Tillich famously wrote, “is the substance of culture, culture is the form of religion.” Tillich’s position can be a good illustration of how the strength of the functionalist can also be its main weakness. The strength is that it enables one to see the religious functions, as noted above, of many human activities not usually recognized as religious: the state, the university, science, technology, the stock exchange, Sunday afternoon football, and so on. Each has its ultimate concern, and often its own “priesthood,” paths of initiation, dogmas, sacred texts, and other marks of religion.
The weakness is that a definition which begins to apply to everything often ends up telling us little about anything.
In view of these various approaches, it is not surprising that one leading historian of American religion (Catherine Albanese of UC Santa Barbara), whose works I reviewed in forming my opinion, has observed that scholars have become increasingly less certain about what should be counted as religion as a general phenomenon. “In the end,” she writes, “religion is a feature that encompasses all of human life, and therefore it is difficult if not impossible to define it.”
In this light it is probably also not surprising that historians of religion turn mainly to the third approach to the definition of religion, namely, the formal. Scholars in the history of religion and comparative religion deal primarily with the actual religious forms manifested by concrete religious groups and movements. These religious forms include such things as beliefs and doctrines (creeds), ritual activities, forms of worship, sacred texts, and recognized sources of authority. The advantage and strength of this approach is that it is concrete and makes it possible to determine whether a group actually functions, not just religiously in general, a la Paul Tillich, for instance, but as a formal, identifiable religion as such. It also is possible then to distinguish it in detail from other religions and their forms, and to trace the actual development of a specific religion over time. In this perspective, a religious group is one that manifests and is organized around these common religious forms, albeit with its own distinct versions of them. This approach can also incorporate aspects of the first two approaches.
It is especially from the perspective of this third approach to the definition of religion, the formal, that I can meaningfully and concretely testify that anthroposophy is not a religion. …
Anthroposophy is the name given by Rudolf Steiner to designate the way of knowing, the method of inquiry, that he established. …
It is a wholly personal choice not only whether one follows Steiner’s method of knowing and tries to develop it, but also whether, out of conviction, one accepts–or does not–Steiner’s own results and content flowing from that method as he practiced it. If the principle of individual freedom based on knowledge is violated in following Steiner’s indications, then the entire method is vitiated.It is worth noting that the case was dismissed and dismissed again upon appeal. I believe PLANS plans another appeal. Stay tuned.
St. Charles, D. (1994) Interview by Alan Chartock on WAMC, 90.3 FM, Northeast Public Radio, Albany, NY. April; exact date unavailable. Reference obtained from undated cassette tape recording.
Sloan, D. (2004) “Declaration of Douglas Sloan in Support of Defendants’ Opposition to Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgment…” Case No. CIV. S-98-0266 FCD PAN. PLANS, Inc. v. Sacramento City Unified School District, Twin Ridges Elementary School District, DOES 1-100. United States District Court, Eastern District of California. July 30, 2004.
Whitehead, A. (1929/1967) The Aims of Education and Other Essays. New York: Free Press.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
The Elevator Speech: What is Waldorf Education?
What do you say? I mean it, what do you say? Comment below!
It happened again. A dinner with strangers, four couples at a round table in a big room. –And what do you do? –I’m co-founder, Faculty Chair, and a teacher at the Great Barrington Waldorf High School. –Oh. Great. Waldorf? What’s that?
And, as usual, I’m at a bit of a loss. I just don’t have an elevator speech. Depending on the noise level of the room and my assessment of the question, I say something about balancing academics, arts, physical activity, and social health. Or I say something about a non-denominational, non-sectarian approach to spiritual questions.
Sometimes I find myself in a meaty, fruitful conversation. Sometimes people’s eyes glaze over and I turn the conversation to another topic as soon as possible.
When I started looking into definitions and descriptions of Waldorf education, more than fifteen years ago, I believed it would be easy to find, say, a pithy paragraph in Rudolf Steiner’s work that would begin, “Waldorf education is…” But such a paragraph doesn’t exist. So I looked at the work of Henry Barnes, Jeffrey Kane, Eugene Schwartz, Steve Talbott, Douglas Sloan, and other very smart writers and thinkers about Waldorf education. All of them had lots of good things to say, but none had a synopsis that could fuel the elevator speech or the dinner table introduction.
So I’m putting it to those who read this blog: What do you say?
It happened again. A dinner with strangers, four couples at a round table in a big room. –And what do you do? –I’m co-founder, Faculty Chair, and a teacher at the Great Barrington Waldorf High School. –Oh. Great. Waldorf? What’s that?
And, as usual, I’m at a bit of a loss. I just don’t have an elevator speech. Depending on the noise level of the room and my assessment of the question, I say something about balancing academics, arts, physical activity, and social health. Or I say something about a non-denominational, non-sectarian approach to spiritual questions.
Sometimes I find myself in a meaty, fruitful conversation. Sometimes people’s eyes glaze over and I turn the conversation to another topic as soon as possible.
When I started looking into definitions and descriptions of Waldorf education, more than fifteen years ago, I believed it would be easy to find, say, a pithy paragraph in Rudolf Steiner’s work that would begin, “Waldorf education is…” But such a paragraph doesn’t exist. So I looked at the work of Henry Barnes, Jeffrey Kane, Eugene Schwartz, Steve Talbott, Douglas Sloan, and other very smart writers and thinkers about Waldorf education. All of them had lots of good things to say, but none had a synopsis that could fuel the elevator speech or the dinner table introduction.
So I’m putting it to those who read this blog: What do you say?
Monday, September 12, 2011
Waldorf Schools: Where are the Boys?
Several years ago, one of my master’s degree students wrote a study (unpublished) based on a sample of 4000 U.S. Waldorf school students in grades 1 through 8 and found that there were 8% fewer boys than girls in Waldorf schools. These results are independent of the gender of the teacher (we had theorized that male teachers might attract or retain more male students) and independent of the grade. That is, first grades are “missing” boys just as often as the higher grades. (We had theorized that boys and girls might enter in equal numbers, but that boys would leave over the years for one reason or another.)
Following this work, another student (also unpublished) surveyed Waldorf school parents. Parent attitudes largely determine school choice, and, perhaps, mothers choose Waldorf schools for their children. Fathers are then more likely to intercede and insist that their sons attend another school, one with a more competitive sports program or an apparently beefier math and science program. The study, not conclusive, suggested that this was the case. Anecdotally, that has been true of several families at the school in which I teach.
A further study might investigate what aspects of Waldorf education are perceived as more appropriate for girls than for boys.
Regardless, Waldorf schools—individually and jointly in teachers’ conferences—would do well to keep an eye on the breakdown of their enrollments between boys and girls, and attempt to address imbalances through study, research, experimentation, and hard work. Eight per cent is two students in a class of 25; what school can afford to overlook such an enrollment boost?
(My own small Waldorf high school currently enrolls 16 boys and 15 girls, but we continue actively to address the questions I raise above.)
Following this work, another student (also unpublished) surveyed Waldorf school parents. Parent attitudes largely determine school choice, and, perhaps, mothers choose Waldorf schools for their children. Fathers are then more likely to intercede and insist that their sons attend another school, one with a more competitive sports program or an apparently beefier math and science program. The study, not conclusive, suggested that this was the case. Anecdotally, that has been true of several families at the school in which I teach.
A further study might investigate what aspects of Waldorf education are perceived as more appropriate for girls than for boys.
Regardless, Waldorf schools—individually and jointly in teachers’ conferences—would do well to keep an eye on the breakdown of their enrollments between boys and girls, and attempt to address imbalances through study, research, experimentation, and hard work. Eight per cent is two students in a class of 25; what school can afford to overlook such an enrollment boost?
(My own small Waldorf high school currently enrolls 16 boys and 15 girls, but we continue actively to address the questions I raise above.)
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
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.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Teaching 8th grade history in a Waldorf school in a nutshell…
I produced the following BRIEF outline for my adult students. I have others on other grades that I'll post soon. Hope it's helpful to some; if it's not, ignore it!
Tell stories of cultural changes—in the arts, science and technology—from 1600 to the present. This focuses on the Industrial Revolution and Romanticism (which, of course, should be considered not only as an anti-industrial response, but as the seed of everything from the environmental movement to anthroposophy, not that you’ll tell the students this—see Barfield’s “Romanticism Come of Age.”)
NOTE: Many schools call this a “Revolutions” block and focus also on the American, French, and even Soviet Revolutions. This is fine, but this topic can also wait for 9th grade. (I believe that because many Waldorf schools do not have high schools, they seek to push some high school material—especially cultural history—into the 8th grade curriculum. This may not be a bad thing.)
NOTE: Many schools teach U.S. history in 8th grade. If this is done according to the theme of “human transformation of the world”—the inner world of human consciousness and, more important for 8th graders, the outer world of politics, economy, and technology—and not as “mere” U.S. history, then this is fine (but not an ideological necessity). From this point of view—the cultural—wars are less important than they would be from a different point of view.
Depending on the direction you choose you will have an endless supply of fascinating biographies from which to choose (and you can create a longer list from which students may choose projects). Because you have honed your techniques in teaching history in grades 5, 6, and 7, the practice of using human lives to narrate events and illustrate themes will come easily to you. Whittle down the number of lives with which you will contend and don’t belabor any too much (presentation and review for each; no need to spend days and days on John and Abigail Adams, for goodness sake; but, if you love John and Abigail Adams, then have at it).
The lives of inventors and industrialists point to the themes of urbanization, industrialization, transportation, and communication. The world moves rapidly from a perennial simplicity to the acceleration we experience today (Henry Adams, tongue in cheek, saw such an acceleration in human use of energy that he predicted the end of the world in 1926. He was right.) But be on the lookout for the quirks and foibles of your characters (the quirky, foible-full eighth graders love them)—James Watt was so terrified of steam power that he never built an industrial steam engine—he worked on table-top models.
Revolutions, again, point to a larger question about teaching history to youth in general. Life has always been brutal (nasty, brutish and short, in Hobbes’s formulation), from ancient slaughter through torture to modern genocide and holocaust. You can easily acknowledge this—and other forms of human suffering, as in the story of Buddha—without indulging it. Please choose biographies that inspire by example, and mention brutality matter-of-factly in passing. An experienced teacher I know assigned Schindler’s List as a class reader in 8th grade; I believe this is wrong—not that individual 8th graders won’t pick up such books on their own, or that students shouldn’t read exactly this in a few years—because we shouldn’t expose students to the brutality of human existence before they can contend with it in their own emotional lives. To ask them to do so stunts their inner growth, and may—in the presence of other life-factors—express itself in unhealthy, risky behaviors like cutting, drug abuse, or eating disorders.
Tell stories of cultural changes—in the arts, science and technology—from 1600 to the present. This focuses on the Industrial Revolution and Romanticism (which, of course, should be considered not only as an anti-industrial response, but as the seed of everything from the environmental movement to anthroposophy, not that you’ll tell the students this—see Barfield’s “Romanticism Come of Age.”)
NOTE: Many schools call this a “Revolutions” block and focus also on the American, French, and even Soviet Revolutions. This is fine, but this topic can also wait for 9th grade. (I believe that because many Waldorf schools do not have high schools, they seek to push some high school material—especially cultural history—into the 8th grade curriculum. This may not be a bad thing.)
NOTE: Many schools teach U.S. history in 8th grade. If this is done according to the theme of “human transformation of the world”—the inner world of human consciousness and, more important for 8th graders, the outer world of politics, economy, and technology—and not as “mere” U.S. history, then this is fine (but not an ideological necessity). From this point of view—the cultural—wars are less important than they would be from a different point of view.
Depending on the direction you choose you will have an endless supply of fascinating biographies from which to choose (and you can create a longer list from which students may choose projects). Because you have honed your techniques in teaching history in grades 5, 6, and 7, the practice of using human lives to narrate events and illustrate themes will come easily to you. Whittle down the number of lives with which you will contend and don’t belabor any too much (presentation and review for each; no need to spend days and days on John and Abigail Adams, for goodness sake; but, if you love John and Abigail Adams, then have at it).
The lives of inventors and industrialists point to the themes of urbanization, industrialization, transportation, and communication. The world moves rapidly from a perennial simplicity to the acceleration we experience today (Henry Adams, tongue in cheek, saw such an acceleration in human use of energy that he predicted the end of the world in 1926. He was right.) But be on the lookout for the quirks and foibles of your characters (the quirky, foible-full eighth graders love them)—James Watt was so terrified of steam power that he never built an industrial steam engine—he worked on table-top models.
Revolutions, again, point to a larger question about teaching history to youth in general. Life has always been brutal (nasty, brutish and short, in Hobbes’s formulation), from ancient slaughter through torture to modern genocide and holocaust. You can easily acknowledge this—and other forms of human suffering, as in the story of Buddha—without indulging it. Please choose biographies that inspire by example, and mention brutality matter-of-factly in passing. An experienced teacher I know assigned Schindler’s List as a class reader in 8th grade; I believe this is wrong—not that individual 8th graders won’t pick up such books on their own, or that students shouldn’t read exactly this in a few years—because we shouldn’t expose students to the brutality of human existence before they can contend with it in their own emotional lives. To ask them to do so stunts their inner growth, and may—in the presence of other life-factors—express itself in unhealthy, risky behaviors like cutting, drug abuse, or eating disorders.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Another Exchange on Waldorf School Administration
What follows is another brief exchange on administration in a Waldorf school. The questions are from a person thinking of applying to work in a Waldorf school; the responses are mine.
What I have seen in the Waldorf schools I have been associated with are Administrators who have no Waldorf training background or Anthroposophical study (or interest, for that matter).
It seems to me that this is just not workable in the long run—how can the administrator gain the trust of the teachers without at least some real interest? In one school at which I worked, however, one administrator was an anthroposophist through and through but then not a good administrator. This person would sit in the office talking about the influence of Jupiter while the bookkeeper’s questions went unanswered… That was a disaster and the person ended up losing the job. So some interest in anthroposophy is probably essential, but that alone, of course, isn’t sufficient.
It also appears to be a relatively new concept for a Waldorf school to allow someone outside of the faculty to assist with the running of the school. Having been an administrator for a lot of my previous career, I see this as a positive move for the sustainability of Waldorf schools, if a school can afford that position.
I agree, and I think there are differences between what Steiner meant by “administration,” which really has to do with things that impact the children’s experiences in the classrooms, and what we now call “governance,” which includes lots of things that the first Waldorf school simply didn’t have to deal with (and, I’ll bet, when they did have to deal with such things, Emil Molt, not the administrative committee of the teachers, handled them), things like admissions, business management, publicity, development, etc.
I also believe that the role of Administrator is probably different in each school, meeting the school's needs where it is and helping to carry it where it needs to go.
I couldn’t agree more. There is no blueprint. Each school is a different organism.
That being said, do you find that there are some "general" experiences that prove to be beneficial in being an Administrator (qualifications, etc)?
Yes—things that any good administrator would have—organization, a sense for the whole, an even temper, mediation and facilitation skills, management (of admin. staff) skills, strategic thinking, and on and on… And, in my experience, I had to develop what I didn’t have!
Is it necessary to have been a Waldorf teacher? (I know you say it is optimal, but I agree that usually a teacher prefers a classroom--administration, being a part of a team, requires another set of skills--at least that's been my experience).
No, not necessary. BUT I believe it’s powerful (and perhaps, according to Steiner, necessary) for an administrator to teach, even if just a period or two per week—if nothing else, the administrator can have a third grade reading group, for example, or teach a middle school main lesson block, or whatever matches with her or his abilities. This contact with students is invaluable—it keeps an administrator “grounded” in the work of the school.
I also wonder if the skills I have in being a director/administrator for several programs for children would be useful in the administration of a Waldorf school? Are they "universally translatable" skills? Or do they need to be more anthrophosophically based?
Yes, I believe solid administrative skills are directly translatable. More than 90% of the work is the same from organization to organization. It’s also valuable to have a solid understanding of Steiner’s work on threefold organization because of the way it informs so much of the rhetoric around Waldorf school governance, administration, and organization. And it’s NOT well understood, in my experience. An administrator who is willing to develop a good understanding of this aspect of work in a school can be invaluable to the institution.
What I have seen in the Waldorf schools I have been associated with are Administrators who have no Waldorf training background or Anthroposophical study (or interest, for that matter).
It seems to me that this is just not workable in the long run—how can the administrator gain the trust of the teachers without at least some real interest? In one school at which I worked, however, one administrator was an anthroposophist through and through but then not a good administrator. This person would sit in the office talking about the influence of Jupiter while the bookkeeper’s questions went unanswered… That was a disaster and the person ended up losing the job. So some interest in anthroposophy is probably essential, but that alone, of course, isn’t sufficient.
It also appears to be a relatively new concept for a Waldorf school to allow someone outside of the faculty to assist with the running of the school. Having been an administrator for a lot of my previous career, I see this as a positive move for the sustainability of Waldorf schools, if a school can afford that position.
I agree, and I think there are differences between what Steiner meant by “administration,” which really has to do with things that impact the children’s experiences in the classrooms, and what we now call “governance,” which includes lots of things that the first Waldorf school simply didn’t have to deal with (and, I’ll bet, when they did have to deal with such things, Emil Molt, not the administrative committee of the teachers, handled them), things like admissions, business management, publicity, development, etc.
I also believe that the role of Administrator is probably different in each school, meeting the school's needs where it is and helping to carry it where it needs to go.
I couldn’t agree more. There is no blueprint. Each school is a different organism.
That being said, do you find that there are some "general" experiences that prove to be beneficial in being an Administrator (qualifications, etc)?
Yes—things that any good administrator would have—organization, a sense for the whole, an even temper, mediation and facilitation skills, management (of admin. staff) skills, strategic thinking, and on and on… And, in my experience, I had to develop what I didn’t have!
Is it necessary to have been a Waldorf teacher? (I know you say it is optimal, but I agree that usually a teacher prefers a classroom--administration, being a part of a team, requires another set of skills--at least that's been my experience).
No, not necessary. BUT I believe it’s powerful (and perhaps, according to Steiner, necessary) for an administrator to teach, even if just a period or two per week—if nothing else, the administrator can have a third grade reading group, for example, or teach a middle school main lesson block, or whatever matches with her or his abilities. This contact with students is invaluable—it keeps an administrator “grounded” in the work of the school.
I also wonder if the skills I have in being a director/administrator for several programs for children would be useful in the administration of a Waldorf school? Are they "universally translatable" skills? Or do they need to be more anthrophosophically based?
Yes, I believe solid administrative skills are directly translatable. More than 90% of the work is the same from organization to organization. It’s also valuable to have a solid understanding of Steiner’s work on threefold organization because of the way it informs so much of the rhetoric around Waldorf school governance, administration, and organization. And it’s NOT well understood, in my experience. An administrator who is willing to develop a good understanding of this aspect of work in a school can be invaluable to the institution.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Why are some Waldorf school parents so emotional?
Parents love and want the best for their children. They live vicariously through their children’s experiences, good and bad, and defend and protect their children vigilantly. All of this, healthfully pursued, is noble, good, and understandable.
The emotions that attend parent experiences in Waldorf schools, however, seem more frequently than at other schools to spill over into extremes.
Sometimes, parents who apply to a Waldorf school have their child rejected, and then seem, instantly, to develop animosity to the school, a school they were almost desperate to be part of moments before; their hopes were high, then their hearts were broken. By contrast, parents of applicants rejected by local prep schools are much more likely to be upset but still to hold the school in high esteem; and, if a place there opens in the future, to send their children. Those rejected by a Waldorf school may form a negative impression that they carry for years. They don’t just feel rejected, they feel ill-used.
Or parents enter a Waldorf school community with tremendous energy, enthusiasm, and idealism, only to have their perceptions change a couple of years later when they realize that the school actually doesn’t, can’t, live up to their image of it. In my experience, this process is more intense than the general “burnout” that parents who volunteer at any school can feel. And schools contribute to this phenomenon—maybe even cause it—by allowing expectations to be so high. Out of insecurity, perhaps, Waldorf schools may represent ideals, far more than they can ever deliver, without offering a healthy dose of reality.
Or parents withdraw their students—sometimes for perfectly valid reasons, and sometimes for reasons that have more to do with adult interactions and not with a child’s experience in school—and badmouth the school for years afterward. Again, by comparison, parents who leave a more conventional school may blame a teacher or an administrator or a social dynamic, but they are less likely, I believe, to blame the school as a whole.
In all of these cases, it seems as if the emotions attached to the experiences are greater than the emotions attached to parallel experiences at another school—Montessori, Country Day, public school.
I have two interlocking theories about why this is so.
First, the idealism and even zealotry of the convert can be dangerous. To the extent that parents act as “converts” to Waldorf education and see Waldorf schools as “more” than just schools, or to the extent that Waldorf schools raise parents’ expectations too high, higher than the schools can ever fulfill, they are in for an awakening down the road. Many families navigate this terrain well, but for a few it provides a shock from which they don’t easily recover.
Second, parents see the world through their children’s eyes and occasionally forget that it’s not appropriate for an adult to see the world only as a third or seventh grader sees it. Research demonstrates, for example, that children lose confidence or faith in school between third and fourth grade. Whether we call this evidence of a “nine year change” or something else, it’s a genuine phenomenon. Teachers see it all the time. Children who loved school and loved their teachers in second grade begin to question these things in third and fourth grade. A parent invested in perfection just can’t stand to hear the words—perhaps uttered more as a test than as a fact, “I hate my teacher.” The teacher is the same one of whom the student said the year before, “I love my teacher.” Usually it’s the student who is changing, of course, not the teacher. (This is not an argument for parent blindness—not all teachers are good teachers for every student, and no parent should be so zealous as to keep a child in a class or school against better judgment.)
And parents don’t just lend undue credence to the reports of their children, they often affect the behavior of their children, as well. I have seen seventh grade parents, upset with children’s behavior that caused hurt feelings and schisms in the class, behave to each other exactly in order to create hurt feelings and schisms among the parents. A rule of thumb for teachers and administrators might be, parents may look like adults, but, when pushed, will behave like the children in whom they have such a great stake.
I don’t say this to insult parents (I have two children myself, and my wife frequently used to ask, “How can you be so good with other people’s children, and so obtuse with your own?”) but to warn of unconscious behavior that can only make some difficult situations worse.
What do you think?
The emotions that attend parent experiences in Waldorf schools, however, seem more frequently than at other schools to spill over into extremes.
Sometimes, parents who apply to a Waldorf school have their child rejected, and then seem, instantly, to develop animosity to the school, a school they were almost desperate to be part of moments before; their hopes were high, then their hearts were broken. By contrast, parents of applicants rejected by local prep schools are much more likely to be upset but still to hold the school in high esteem; and, if a place there opens in the future, to send their children. Those rejected by a Waldorf school may form a negative impression that they carry for years. They don’t just feel rejected, they feel ill-used.
Or parents enter a Waldorf school community with tremendous energy, enthusiasm, and idealism, only to have their perceptions change a couple of years later when they realize that the school actually doesn’t, can’t, live up to their image of it. In my experience, this process is more intense than the general “burnout” that parents who volunteer at any school can feel. And schools contribute to this phenomenon—maybe even cause it—by allowing expectations to be so high. Out of insecurity, perhaps, Waldorf schools may represent ideals, far more than they can ever deliver, without offering a healthy dose of reality.
Or parents withdraw their students—sometimes for perfectly valid reasons, and sometimes for reasons that have more to do with adult interactions and not with a child’s experience in school—and badmouth the school for years afterward. Again, by comparison, parents who leave a more conventional school may blame a teacher or an administrator or a social dynamic, but they are less likely, I believe, to blame the school as a whole.
In all of these cases, it seems as if the emotions attached to the experiences are greater than the emotions attached to parallel experiences at another school—Montessori, Country Day, public school.
I have two interlocking theories about why this is so.
First, the idealism and even zealotry of the convert can be dangerous. To the extent that parents act as “converts” to Waldorf education and see Waldorf schools as “more” than just schools, or to the extent that Waldorf schools raise parents’ expectations too high, higher than the schools can ever fulfill, they are in for an awakening down the road. Many families navigate this terrain well, but for a few it provides a shock from which they don’t easily recover.
Second, parents see the world through their children’s eyes and occasionally forget that it’s not appropriate for an adult to see the world only as a third or seventh grader sees it. Research demonstrates, for example, that children lose confidence or faith in school between third and fourth grade. Whether we call this evidence of a “nine year change” or something else, it’s a genuine phenomenon. Teachers see it all the time. Children who loved school and loved their teachers in second grade begin to question these things in third and fourth grade. A parent invested in perfection just can’t stand to hear the words—perhaps uttered more as a test than as a fact, “I hate my teacher.” The teacher is the same one of whom the student said the year before, “I love my teacher.” Usually it’s the student who is changing, of course, not the teacher. (This is not an argument for parent blindness—not all teachers are good teachers for every student, and no parent should be so zealous as to keep a child in a class or school against better judgment.)
And parents don’t just lend undue credence to the reports of their children, they often affect the behavior of their children, as well. I have seen seventh grade parents, upset with children’s behavior that caused hurt feelings and schisms in the class, behave to each other exactly in order to create hurt feelings and schisms among the parents. A rule of thumb for teachers and administrators might be, parents may look like adults, but, when pushed, will behave like the children in whom they have such a great stake.
I don’t say this to insult parents (I have two children myself, and my wife frequently used to ask, “How can you be so good with other people’s children, and so obtuse with your own?”) but to warn of unconscious behavior that can only make some difficult situations worse.
What do you think?
Friday, November 12, 2010
Notes on Starting a Waldorf High School
What follow are answers to questions posed by Douglas Gerwin in research on starting a Waldorf high school (so far unpublished, I believe). I thank the half-dozen or so of my colleagues who helped me come up with these answers a couple of years ago.
What helped the most and least in preparation and founding?
Most:
• A years-long anthroposophical adolescence and high school study group of teachers and parents.
• Students who wanted to continue in a Waldorf school and asked their parents to help make it happen—not many, at first, but a couple with real initiative.
• Steadfast and enthusiastic parents, teachers, and trustees.
• The attitude that we’re going to do this even if we have to meet in someone’s living room to save money; that my child will be there in September even if she’s the only one.
• An experienced lead teacher to inspire students and parents (who had taught the lead class in 7th and 8th grade).
Least:
• A “wait and see” or “prove this is worthy” attitude from some trustees, teachers, and parents.
• Antagonism from elementary school parents concerned that their money would support others’ children’s high school education.
• Selfishness and resentment about “lending” elementary school teachers to the high school.
• That the elementary school had been established for more than 30 years—no pioneer spirit left.
• That the elementary school had “lost” a high school in the 1980s—had started one and then had to close it fewer than four years later.
• Presence of Hawthorne Valley School—including a Waldorf high school—c. 25 min. away. (Although we believed—and still believe—that two healthy elementary schools can support two healthy high schools; that there’s room for healthy cultural variation among Waldorf schools—more choice is better; and that, like gas stations clustered near the center of a town, people will go where the education is.)
• Culture among elementary school parents; expectation that 8th grade “graduates” will go on to prep school.
What were the big surprises, miscalculations?
• The whole thing has been a surprise... That we’re still here and have grown through the nation’s recession, that we’ve had a balanced budget for the last three years, that our students and parents are happy and that the students are accepted to excellent colleges means we haven’t miscalculated too badly...
• That we had a fantastically successful 9th grade year (first year of high school) and then were told that others had misgivings about moving ahead with grade 10. (To be precise, some of us remember agreeing to see how 9th grade went before deciding if there would be a 10th grade—like many prep schools, we could imagine being a K-9 school for a few years before moving to a full high school; others remembered an agreement that we were not adding a 10th grade, no matter what. The lack of clarity here—no minutes or written Board decision—hurt us.)
• How difficult it was to have part of a high school (9th grade, 9th and 10th, and 9th, 10th, and 11th) without a senior class. Seniors are real leaders, and the school didn’t really start to feel complete and entirely happy until spring 2006, just before our first graduation.
• Skepticism of supposedly committed elementary school teachers.
• Economic hardship—more than one teacher worked for a year for nothing. Nothing.
• Community involvement has been spectacular.
• Exceptional visiting teachers.
What were the biggest obstacles, hurdles?
• The sheer difficulty of the operation, top to bottom. The infinite detail.
• Initial lack of money and students. The high school “paying for” a crisis in the elementary school at the time of founding with reduced enrollment. Little money for PR; low visibility...
• Perception that we were “just” a continuation of the elementary school; that we would use elementary school understandings of students and teaching methods. (Which is like assuming that elementary school teachers will use early childhood understandings and techniques…)
• Perception that, because another Waldorf school is 25 min. away, our work was unnecessary or redundant.
• Faculty turn-over. Several teachers miscalculated their commitment or the difficulty of starting a school and left for greener or at least more predictable pastures.
• No tuition remission for our teachers. We couldn’t afford it. Now we don’t support it because not giving remission is a signal to our community that we’re all in this together. Teachers can enter the tuition assistance pool just like everyone else.
What do you wish you had done that you did not do? What would you do differently if you had it to do over again?
• Emphasize value of small school from the start (we spent a couple of years apologizing for our small size before our parents correctly pointed out to us the many benefits of our size): flexibility, motivation of students, caliber of work, focus, structure.
• “Sell” to students in grades 5-8. (We started with the belief that parents should make the decision about their children’s high school, even if we knew that students were making it. And we found each year that including 7th grade families wasn’t enough, nor 6th... “marketing” needs to include the whole elementary school, and targeting events—open houses, plays, etc.—needs to begin with 5th grade families.)
• Emphasize the need for confidentiality among colleagues as we go through the “birth pangs” of starting a school—specifically, for example, when we missed a pay period, it was harmful to the school (and didn’t help anyone get paid any faster) when teachers complained to parents or others.
• Establish a more structured relationship with our Elementary School to allow for greater clarity in planning for the future. We had an ad hoc joint committee of teachers and trustees, but this functioned reactively; we would have benefitted from a more durable, proactive group.
• Devote more energy to educating our elementary school teachers (especially in grades 5-8) about who we were and what we were doing. Like many parents, they assume that a Waldorf high school is “just” a continuation of the elementary school, not a transformation of it...
What are you grateful that you did do?
• That we started (instead of waiting).
• Engaged resources in the community—artists, studios, internships, Simon’s Rock college athletic center, lab, library, and, especially, the “language” trips that we instituted to Germany and Peru every other year.
• Stuck to our strong substance abuse policy. We lost a couple of valuable families by sticking to our guns, but, in the long run, we’re stronger and healthier and our enrollment has grown.
What was most helpful in generating enrollment, philanthropy?
• No annual appeal, just informative letters and requests every other month or so. Relationships with major donors.
• Success of pioneer classes—college acceptance, graduation speeches, general student presentation convinced many parents and students that we were worthwhile.
• Positive student attitudes and supportive students (and these developed more strongly from our 4th year on...)
What best persuaded 8th graders to join high school?
• Visiting days. Skeptical students were usually “wowed” by spending a day with us. Even those who went elsewhere recognized the quality of the school.
• Our annual play, too.
• And the possibility of travel and exchange.
• Also our flexibility—willingness to add courses or, for example, a darkroom and photography to curriculum based on student requests.
• The high quality of our teaching—a Core Faculty experienced in Waldorf schools; 2 PhDs; four of six Core Faculty members attended Ivy League schools and the others are also exceptionally well-educated.
What is essential in starting? What can you do without?
• At least one “real” Waldorf high school teacher, whatever that is, and enough committed families to create a pioneer class—our smallest number in the school has been 12 (our smallest class has been 3, if you don't count the year we had senior class of 4 and a junior class of zero).
• Passion, unity of purpose, and a mission shared among colleagues.
• Everything else, we’ve demonstrated so far, is extraneous, or at least can be jerry-rigged year-to-year.
How did you handle elementary school anxieties?
• Primarily by incorporating separately, not because we wanted to, but because it was the only way we could continue.
• Openness—willingness to meet, to answer questions, to allow visitors to classes, board meetings, etc., etc.
• As more and more nearby Waldorf schools founded high schools, however, the argument that, although it is risky to start a high school, it may be riskier not to, gained some traction among thoughtful parents and trustees.
How did you seek and secure “buy in” from community?
• By quietly representing ourselves openly and honestly. We had open board meetings from the start (and were followed a year later by our elementary school!).
• We try, with limited resources, to make sure that all our families, high school and elementary school, get the student newsletter, our fundraising letters (which we try to make as “meaty” as possible), etc.
What helped the most and least in preparation and founding?
Most:
• A years-long anthroposophical adolescence and high school study group of teachers and parents.
• Students who wanted to continue in a Waldorf school and asked their parents to help make it happen—not many, at first, but a couple with real initiative.
• Steadfast and enthusiastic parents, teachers, and trustees.
• The attitude that we’re going to do this even if we have to meet in someone’s living room to save money; that my child will be there in September even if she’s the only one.
• An experienced lead teacher to inspire students and parents (who had taught the lead class in 7th and 8th grade).
Least:
• A “wait and see” or “prove this is worthy” attitude from some trustees, teachers, and parents.
• Antagonism from elementary school parents concerned that their money would support others’ children’s high school education.
• Selfishness and resentment about “lending” elementary school teachers to the high school.
• That the elementary school had been established for more than 30 years—no pioneer spirit left.
• That the elementary school had “lost” a high school in the 1980s—had started one and then had to close it fewer than four years later.
• Presence of Hawthorne Valley School—including a Waldorf high school—c. 25 min. away. (Although we believed—and still believe—that two healthy elementary schools can support two healthy high schools; that there’s room for healthy cultural variation among Waldorf schools—more choice is better; and that, like gas stations clustered near the center of a town, people will go where the education is.)
• Culture among elementary school parents; expectation that 8th grade “graduates” will go on to prep school.
What were the big surprises, miscalculations?
• The whole thing has been a surprise... That we’re still here and have grown through the nation’s recession, that we’ve had a balanced budget for the last three years, that our students and parents are happy and that the students are accepted to excellent colleges means we haven’t miscalculated too badly...
• That we had a fantastically successful 9th grade year (first year of high school) and then were told that others had misgivings about moving ahead with grade 10. (To be precise, some of us remember agreeing to see how 9th grade went before deciding if there would be a 10th grade—like many prep schools, we could imagine being a K-9 school for a few years before moving to a full high school; others remembered an agreement that we were not adding a 10th grade, no matter what. The lack of clarity here—no minutes or written Board decision—hurt us.)
• How difficult it was to have part of a high school (9th grade, 9th and 10th, and 9th, 10th, and 11th) without a senior class. Seniors are real leaders, and the school didn’t really start to feel complete and entirely happy until spring 2006, just before our first graduation.
• Skepticism of supposedly committed elementary school teachers.
• Economic hardship—more than one teacher worked for a year for nothing. Nothing.
• Community involvement has been spectacular.
• Exceptional visiting teachers.
What were the biggest obstacles, hurdles?
• The sheer difficulty of the operation, top to bottom. The infinite detail.
• Initial lack of money and students. The high school “paying for” a crisis in the elementary school at the time of founding with reduced enrollment. Little money for PR; low visibility...
• Perception that we were “just” a continuation of the elementary school; that we would use elementary school understandings of students and teaching methods. (Which is like assuming that elementary school teachers will use early childhood understandings and techniques…)
• Perception that, because another Waldorf school is 25 min. away, our work was unnecessary or redundant.
• Faculty turn-over. Several teachers miscalculated their commitment or the difficulty of starting a school and left for greener or at least more predictable pastures.
• No tuition remission for our teachers. We couldn’t afford it. Now we don’t support it because not giving remission is a signal to our community that we’re all in this together. Teachers can enter the tuition assistance pool just like everyone else.
What do you wish you had done that you did not do? What would you do differently if you had it to do over again?
• Emphasize value of small school from the start (we spent a couple of years apologizing for our small size before our parents correctly pointed out to us the many benefits of our size): flexibility, motivation of students, caliber of work, focus, structure.
• “Sell” to students in grades 5-8. (We started with the belief that parents should make the decision about their children’s high school, even if we knew that students were making it. And we found each year that including 7th grade families wasn’t enough, nor 6th... “marketing” needs to include the whole elementary school, and targeting events—open houses, plays, etc.—needs to begin with 5th grade families.)
• Emphasize the need for confidentiality among colleagues as we go through the “birth pangs” of starting a school—specifically, for example, when we missed a pay period, it was harmful to the school (and didn’t help anyone get paid any faster) when teachers complained to parents or others.
• Establish a more structured relationship with our Elementary School to allow for greater clarity in planning for the future. We had an ad hoc joint committee of teachers and trustees, but this functioned reactively; we would have benefitted from a more durable, proactive group.
• Devote more energy to educating our elementary school teachers (especially in grades 5-8) about who we were and what we were doing. Like many parents, they assume that a Waldorf high school is “just” a continuation of the elementary school, not a transformation of it...
What are you grateful that you did do?
• That we started (instead of waiting).
• Engaged resources in the community—artists, studios, internships, Simon’s Rock college athletic center, lab, library, and, especially, the “language” trips that we instituted to Germany and Peru every other year.
• Stuck to our strong substance abuse policy. We lost a couple of valuable families by sticking to our guns, but, in the long run, we’re stronger and healthier and our enrollment has grown.
What was most helpful in generating enrollment, philanthropy?
• No annual appeal, just informative letters and requests every other month or so. Relationships with major donors.
• Success of pioneer classes—college acceptance, graduation speeches, general student presentation convinced many parents and students that we were worthwhile.
• Positive student attitudes and supportive students (and these developed more strongly from our 4th year on...)
What best persuaded 8th graders to join high school?
• Visiting days. Skeptical students were usually “wowed” by spending a day with us. Even those who went elsewhere recognized the quality of the school.
• Our annual play, too.
• And the possibility of travel and exchange.
• Also our flexibility—willingness to add courses or, for example, a darkroom and photography to curriculum based on student requests.
• The high quality of our teaching—a Core Faculty experienced in Waldorf schools; 2 PhDs; four of six Core Faculty members attended Ivy League schools and the others are also exceptionally well-educated.
What is essential in starting? What can you do without?
• At least one “real” Waldorf high school teacher, whatever that is, and enough committed families to create a pioneer class—our smallest number in the school has been 12 (our smallest class has been 3, if you don't count the year we had senior class of 4 and a junior class of zero).
• Passion, unity of purpose, and a mission shared among colleagues.
• Everything else, we’ve demonstrated so far, is extraneous, or at least can be jerry-rigged year-to-year.
How did you handle elementary school anxieties?
• Primarily by incorporating separately, not because we wanted to, but because it was the only way we could continue.
• Openness—willingness to meet, to answer questions, to allow visitors to classes, board meetings, etc., etc.
• As more and more nearby Waldorf schools founded high schools, however, the argument that, although it is risky to start a high school, it may be riskier not to, gained some traction among thoughtful parents and trustees.
How did you seek and secure “buy in” from community?
• By quietly representing ourselves openly and honestly. We had open board meetings from the start (and were followed a year later by our elementary school!).
• We try, with limited resources, to make sure that all our families, high school and elementary school, get the student newsletter, our fundraising letters (which we try to make as “meaty” as possible), etc.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Threefold Social Organization and Waldorf School Governance
According to Rudolf Steiner, social organizations should have three cooperative but independent administrations—one to administer economic functions, one to administer rights and responsibilities of members of the organization, and one to administer what he calls the spiritual or cultural functions—he uses these words interchangeably in discussions of social questions—of the organization. These three administrations scale to cover the smallest institutions and the largest social groups. One administration may consider itself more central than the others to the mission of a particular organization, but all must balance if the organization is to maintain itself in health. A school, for instance, could mirror a theocracy if educational concerns are used to trump or bully the genuine concerns of the rights of its consumers.
This example points to the intuitive correctness of Steiner’s view. Take the opposite view; do we believe that justice should be bought and sold, or that the state should govern religion? For those seeking a more conventional (but no less difficult to comprehend) statement of a view of the theefold structure of society, Jurgen Habermas’s concept of a “lifeworld,” discussed in detail in the second volume of his Theory of Communicative Action, outlines a view that is essentially the same as Steiner’s. For Habermas, every communicative act—asking a question, making a statement—expresses all three of the human subsystems of thinking, feeling, and will. (That is, the most rigorous thought is still communicated with some emotional investment and some intention of will; the most emotional outburst still gives evidence of a thought and an intention, and so on.) Further, every communicative act, in that it is directed from one person to another or to a group of others, extends the human capacities of thinking, feeling, and will into a social interaction. Thinking extended into social interaction we may call culture; feeling extended becomes politics; and will extended concerns economic relations.
For Steiner, an economic administration should function according to a principle of solidarity (Steiner says “brotherhood,” but we should update this) through an “association of producers, distributors, and consumers.” For a school, a child’s education is a product in the economic sphere. It is more than this, but it is also this. Hence, a school should have an administrative body that is comprised of producers—representatives of teachers and staff—and consumers—representatives of the parent body as proxies for their children. Such an administration, to ensure that its work is legal and effective, will also require legal and financial expertise. (Introducing expertise of any kind, we should acknowledge, introduces something from the spiritual-cultural sphere.)
The work of this administration is to balance the needs, desires, and resources of producers and consumers to produce a budget and to plan for the future. Clearly, this administrative body may be identified with a school’s board of trustees.
An administration of the spiritual-cultural area of a school functions according to a principle of freedom, and so—despite tradition and received wisdom—it is difficult if not impossible to say how this administration will or should be governed. It might operate as a so-called College of Teachers that uses a consensus decision-making model, but, in freedom, there is no requirement that it do so.
Steiner did not specify a decision-making process for cultural organizations (and, if he did, we would still have to decide for ourselves whether or not we agree with his statements), and, in fact, in the meetings to reorganize the Anthroposophical Society in 1923-1924, stated that the process mattered little and should be left up to individual groups. One group might choose to function aristocratically, another more democratically. His position was that the structure mattered less than the persons involved, and that those chosen to carry out a task be given the freedom to do it. I believe his views here on constituting the administration of branches of the Society are directly applicable to constituting the administration of a Waldorf school. And, in the first Waldorf School, Steiner was the Director, appointed by acclamation (not by vote).
A spiritual-cultural administration consists of the teachers in the school, regardless of how they structure their governance or decision-making. As Steiner said, “no one who is not a teacher is to have anything to say [about how education is conducted].” Powerful words, if true. Of course, visiting teachers—consultants, mentors—and doctors and therapists who work with the students in a school may be included. But that’s about it. In a Waldorf school we may call this group the College of Teachers, the Core Faculty, the Council, or something else. We may worry that it is too small and too exclusive (and then work to make it larger and more inclusive—there are many ways to do this), but this is the body in most Waldorf schools that corresponds to the free administration of the spiritual-cultural life of a school.
And the work of this administration is the education of students.
A third administration, an administration of rights and responsibilities, which functions democratically according to a principle of equality, should clearly include representatives of every constituency of the school community, anyone who has any rights within the organization, anyone who has any responsibilities to the organization. Here we include students, parents, teachers, staff, alumni, retired faculty and staff, and even donors. All have some number of rights and responsibilities to the organism of the school. These include legally recognized rights, and so this administration requires legal representation, if not at every meeting, at least as a resource on-call.
(I use “rights and responsibilities” because I believe that to be a more revealing phrase in this context than “politics,” a word that is tainted in contemporary colloquial use, and more revealing than “legal,” which doesn’t go far enough to describe what I’m talking about. And I include “responsibilities” because these are clearly conceptually necessary, with rights, to describe what I’m talking about. Steiner includes them, although this is often overlooked or forgotten. To call it a “rights” administration alone indulges a kind of knee-jerk American selfishness—I’ll insist on my rights—and ignores the obligations that we owe each other in social interactions.)
Rights are myriad. Perhaps they begin with clear legally recognized rights, but they also include the policies and procedures of the school. Among other things, for instance, applicants have a right to a clear response to their application in a reasonable time. Responsibilities, too, are myriad. Parents must pay their bills. Teachers must engage in appropriate professional development. Breach of rights or responsibilities is reason for discipline or termination.
Policies, procedures, working conditions, contracts, all belong to this administration. Its work is to set and negotiate the boundaries within which the human beings in the organization conduct their work.
Often, it seems, this work is fragmented in Waldorf schools, is not given to one administration. The Board sets its own policies and procedures, as does the College of Teachers or Council. The support staff (administrative staff) may do the same. A Human Resources committee may assume responsibility for some aspects of this work.
This fragmentation may lead to confusion and miscommunication among parents, teachers, and board members. Dysfunction in this area seems to plague Waldorf schools, and I would say that this is, in part, because schools are clear about the function of a Board and a College but remarkably unclear about the function of this third administration—in fact, there is usually no single name we can use to designate it in a Waldorf school, and there is no single administrative body that consists of representatives of all the constituencies of the school.
(In many schools, the Board may see this administration as part of its legal function, but may then micromanage, fail to distinguish properly between economic concerns and those of rights and responsibilities, or fail to constitute and empower a committee that can take full responsibility for this work. Similarly, Colleges of Teachers may fail to distinguish their appropriate educational function from that of a separate rights and responsibilities administration.)
Schools would undoubtedly be stronger if there was a single administrative team, constituted according to correct principles, that oversaw this work. As it is, too often, policies are weak or incomplete, forgotten or ignored, or simply absent, sending persons of otherwise good will up a wall and out of a school.
As a test case, we might ask first about a clear process for terminating a teacher who is not fulfilling her responsibilities to her students or the school. Schools accomplish this, but often with far greater ill will and rancor than sister institutions (that don’t claim to have such an idealistic view of the world but that function with better management and clarity). And as a second test case, we might ask about a clear process and procedure for terminating this person if she is the Faculty Chair or other person who might otherwise be central to the termination of another colleague. Is there a safety valve or a back door?
Democracy here does not imply voting, or not voting alone. Dewey’s broad definition of democracy as “conjoint community” may point us in the right direction. Decision-making may be democratic and consensus-driven (within legal boundaries), or it may be representational and use some other decision-making process. The point is that all voices are heard and considered.
(I am indebted to my students at Sunbridge Institute for helping me clarify several aspects of this article; it attempts to summarize a week of work in an intensive course on school governance.)
This example points to the intuitive correctness of Steiner’s view. Take the opposite view; do we believe that justice should be bought and sold, or that the state should govern religion? For those seeking a more conventional (but no less difficult to comprehend) statement of a view of the theefold structure of society, Jurgen Habermas’s concept of a “lifeworld,” discussed in detail in the second volume of his Theory of Communicative Action, outlines a view that is essentially the same as Steiner’s. For Habermas, every communicative act—asking a question, making a statement—expresses all three of the human subsystems of thinking, feeling, and will. (That is, the most rigorous thought is still communicated with some emotional investment and some intention of will; the most emotional outburst still gives evidence of a thought and an intention, and so on.) Further, every communicative act, in that it is directed from one person to another or to a group of others, extends the human capacities of thinking, feeling, and will into a social interaction. Thinking extended into social interaction we may call culture; feeling extended becomes politics; and will extended concerns economic relations.
For Steiner, an economic administration should function according to a principle of solidarity (Steiner says “brotherhood,” but we should update this) through an “association of producers, distributors, and consumers.” For a school, a child’s education is a product in the economic sphere. It is more than this, but it is also this. Hence, a school should have an administrative body that is comprised of producers—representatives of teachers and staff—and consumers—representatives of the parent body as proxies for their children. Such an administration, to ensure that its work is legal and effective, will also require legal and financial expertise. (Introducing expertise of any kind, we should acknowledge, introduces something from the spiritual-cultural sphere.)
The work of this administration is to balance the needs, desires, and resources of producers and consumers to produce a budget and to plan for the future. Clearly, this administrative body may be identified with a school’s board of trustees.
An administration of the spiritual-cultural area of a school functions according to a principle of freedom, and so—despite tradition and received wisdom—it is difficult if not impossible to say how this administration will or should be governed. It might operate as a so-called College of Teachers that uses a consensus decision-making model, but, in freedom, there is no requirement that it do so.
Steiner did not specify a decision-making process for cultural organizations (and, if he did, we would still have to decide for ourselves whether or not we agree with his statements), and, in fact, in the meetings to reorganize the Anthroposophical Society in 1923-1924, stated that the process mattered little and should be left up to individual groups. One group might choose to function aristocratically, another more democratically. His position was that the structure mattered less than the persons involved, and that those chosen to carry out a task be given the freedom to do it. I believe his views here on constituting the administration of branches of the Society are directly applicable to constituting the administration of a Waldorf school. And, in the first Waldorf School, Steiner was the Director, appointed by acclamation (not by vote).
A spiritual-cultural administration consists of the teachers in the school, regardless of how they structure their governance or decision-making. As Steiner said, “no one who is not a teacher is to have anything to say [about how education is conducted].” Powerful words, if true. Of course, visiting teachers—consultants, mentors—and doctors and therapists who work with the students in a school may be included. But that’s about it. In a Waldorf school we may call this group the College of Teachers, the Core Faculty, the Council, or something else. We may worry that it is too small and too exclusive (and then work to make it larger and more inclusive—there are many ways to do this), but this is the body in most Waldorf schools that corresponds to the free administration of the spiritual-cultural life of a school.
And the work of this administration is the education of students.
A third administration, an administration of rights and responsibilities, which functions democratically according to a principle of equality, should clearly include representatives of every constituency of the school community, anyone who has any rights within the organization, anyone who has any responsibilities to the organization. Here we include students, parents, teachers, staff, alumni, retired faculty and staff, and even donors. All have some number of rights and responsibilities to the organism of the school. These include legally recognized rights, and so this administration requires legal representation, if not at every meeting, at least as a resource on-call.
(I use “rights and responsibilities” because I believe that to be a more revealing phrase in this context than “politics,” a word that is tainted in contemporary colloquial use, and more revealing than “legal,” which doesn’t go far enough to describe what I’m talking about. And I include “responsibilities” because these are clearly conceptually necessary, with rights, to describe what I’m talking about. Steiner includes them, although this is often overlooked or forgotten. To call it a “rights” administration alone indulges a kind of knee-jerk American selfishness—I’ll insist on my rights—and ignores the obligations that we owe each other in social interactions.)
Rights are myriad. Perhaps they begin with clear legally recognized rights, but they also include the policies and procedures of the school. Among other things, for instance, applicants have a right to a clear response to their application in a reasonable time. Responsibilities, too, are myriad. Parents must pay their bills. Teachers must engage in appropriate professional development. Breach of rights or responsibilities is reason for discipline or termination.
Policies, procedures, working conditions, contracts, all belong to this administration. Its work is to set and negotiate the boundaries within which the human beings in the organization conduct their work.
Often, it seems, this work is fragmented in Waldorf schools, is not given to one administration. The Board sets its own policies and procedures, as does the College of Teachers or Council. The support staff (administrative staff) may do the same. A Human Resources committee may assume responsibility for some aspects of this work.
This fragmentation may lead to confusion and miscommunication among parents, teachers, and board members. Dysfunction in this area seems to plague Waldorf schools, and I would say that this is, in part, because schools are clear about the function of a Board and a College but remarkably unclear about the function of this third administration—in fact, there is usually no single name we can use to designate it in a Waldorf school, and there is no single administrative body that consists of representatives of all the constituencies of the school.
(In many schools, the Board may see this administration as part of its legal function, but may then micromanage, fail to distinguish properly between economic concerns and those of rights and responsibilities, or fail to constitute and empower a committee that can take full responsibility for this work. Similarly, Colleges of Teachers may fail to distinguish their appropriate educational function from that of a separate rights and responsibilities administration.)
Schools would undoubtedly be stronger if there was a single administrative team, constituted according to correct principles, that oversaw this work. As it is, too often, policies are weak or incomplete, forgotten or ignored, or simply absent, sending persons of otherwise good will up a wall and out of a school.
As a test case, we might ask first about a clear process for terminating a teacher who is not fulfilling her responsibilities to her students or the school. Schools accomplish this, but often with far greater ill will and rancor than sister institutions (that don’t claim to have such an idealistic view of the world but that function with better management and clarity). And as a second test case, we might ask about a clear process and procedure for terminating this person if she is the Faculty Chair or other person who might otherwise be central to the termination of another colleague. Is there a safety valve or a back door?
Democracy here does not imply voting, or not voting alone. Dewey’s broad definition of democracy as “conjoint community” may point us in the right direction. Decision-making may be democratic and consensus-driven (within legal boundaries), or it may be representational and use some other decision-making process. The point is that all voices are heard and considered.
(I am indebted to my students at Sunbridge Institute for helping me clarify several aspects of this article; it attempts to summarize a week of work in an intensive course on school governance.)
Monday, June 28, 2010
Rigidity and Dogma in Waldorf Schools--Some Theories
Let’s face it. Here is a question central to the practice of Waldorf education: Why are some Waldorf schools and Waldorf school teachers so rigid and dogmatic?
I have five operating theories and would be glad to hear more, so long as they’re sincere and expressed politely. Here they are in the order in which they occur to me:
1. Do we express the zeal of adult converts, treating a method of education as a religion, confusing method with world-view?
2. Do we suffer from insecurity because none of us can measure up to our image of Steiner’s expectations and, perhaps, we believe our colleagues will criticize us if we appear to think too strongly for ourselves?
3. Do we allow “lowest common denominator” extremism in so-called consensus decision-making (those who feel most strongly about an issue forward their views or block others and receive little opposition from those who don’t feel so strongly)?
4. Is a rigid, dogmatic, literalist attitude toward the world a default position of our modern mentality, one that doesn’t cause us trouble when we’re washing the car or watching a movie, one that is disguised by the ease with which we can get through each day but which confronts us when we try to participate in the life of an idealistic institution like a Waldorf school?
5. In the absence of a clear culture of our own—distancing ourselves, for better and worse, from our own American culture—do we unknowingly perpetuate and assimilate to a culture that, prior to the loosening and opening of the last half century (civil rights, women’s rights, the environmental movement, the democratizing influence of television and the Internet), simply was more rigid and dogmatic—I mean, particularly, German culture in the 1920s, when Waldorf education got its start?
I have five operating theories and would be glad to hear more, so long as they’re sincere and expressed politely. Here they are in the order in which they occur to me:
1. Do we express the zeal of adult converts, treating a method of education as a religion, confusing method with world-view?
2. Do we suffer from insecurity because none of us can measure up to our image of Steiner’s expectations and, perhaps, we believe our colleagues will criticize us if we appear to think too strongly for ourselves?
3. Do we allow “lowest common denominator” extremism in so-called consensus decision-making (those who feel most strongly about an issue forward their views or block others and receive little opposition from those who don’t feel so strongly)?
4. Is a rigid, dogmatic, literalist attitude toward the world a default position of our modern mentality, one that doesn’t cause us trouble when we’re washing the car or watching a movie, one that is disguised by the ease with which we can get through each day but which confronts us when we try to participate in the life of an idealistic institution like a Waldorf school?
5. In the absence of a clear culture of our own—distancing ourselves, for better and worse, from our own American culture—do we unknowingly perpetuate and assimilate to a culture that, prior to the loosening and opening of the last half century (civil rights, women’s rights, the environmental movement, the democratizing influence of television and the Internet), simply was more rigid and dogmatic—I mean, particularly, German culture in the 1920s, when Waldorf education got its start?
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
More on Administration...
The following entry is in response to this comment:
Dear Steve, I came across your blog for the first time today and was impressed by [the] exchange on school governance. A writer myself, I am very interested in education and foundation lessons, which really get to the heart of the matter. I really responded to your words and was curious to know your specific thoughts on Administration, and what advice you would give to others on best practice.
In this piece, you also talk about structure, and I wondered what was lightest possible administrative structure you've encountered or could envisage?
Yours most warmly,
Nicola
First (I’m assuming you have some familiarity with Waldorf schools; if not, I’d be happy to answer questions), Rudolf Steiner never said that Waldorf schools should be “faculty run;” the phrase he used was “self-administered,” by which I believe he meant “not administered by the state.” Which is to say, much more the case for U.S. schools than for most European schools—we have always enjoyed greater local control and freedom in how we educate our youth than have nations with more powerful ministries of education. (I’ve read that the Federal government provides roughly 10% of educational funding in the U.S. and 90% of the—mostly unfunded—directives and mandates.)
Given this, it’s really tough to say that a good administrator in a Waldorf school should be somehow different (beyond her commitment to the mission of the school) from an administrator at another school. In my experience, the toughest part of the administrator’s job is gaining the trust of the teachers. For this reason alone, it may be good for Waldorf schools to select an experienced teacher to hold this position. The problem is that it’s a rare teacher who can be a good administrator. And if the administrator is seen by parents as being partial to teachers’ points of view, trust erodes quickly.
On the other hand, the peculiar structure of Waldorf schools requires any administrator to adapt to the school. By this, I refer primarily to the tension that often exists among parents, boards, and teachers’ councils or colleges, especially when times are tough. Most Waldorf schools, by bylaw or practice, for example, simply don’t give the power to hire and fire to one person. So an administrator, then, becomes a diplomat—lots of responsibility, little authority—carrying messages from one camp to the other, attempting to negotiate a peaceful settlement.
When you ask about minimal structure, I think of the school at which I currently work. I’m a full-time teacher and the only (part-time) administrator. We have an office manager/assistant here three mornings a week. We have an off-site, hourly bookkeeper, and a volunteer treasurer. Teachers pitch in to help with admissions events, open houses, and so on. Trustees (volunteers) handle fundraising. Our Core Faculty (about 7 teachers) meets weekly. Our Board meets monthly. We have as close to no administrative structure as it’s possible to have, I believe.
By contrast, I know a school that was advised by a highly paid professional to hire a full-time fundraiser. The school did this and, three years in, has yet to raise close to the cost of the fundraiser’s salary and benefits. And I don’t believe this is a comment on the fundraiser’s ability—more on the school’s inability to see that their situation, despite the recommendation of a consultant, simply doesn’t warrant one full-time person devoted to development.
In creating structure, it’s too easy, I believe, to copy what everyone else does—admissions officer, development, business manager, administrator, etc.—even when the numbers don’t justify it.
This brings up another point, which is that of scale. Small schools can break even; large schools can break even. Smallish schools that act like large schools, however, will lose money. And no private school can afford to do that for long. And there is a “deadly middle ground.” For many private schools, it occurs between roughly 60 students and 150-200 students. This middle ground is precisely where many Waldorf high schools find themselves, unfortunately.
In growing from a small school to a larger school, schools add administration as they grow, and are happy for the increase in students. When, a few years later, perhaps, enrollment declines, rather than facing the actuality of the situation (there was a time when they would have been overjoyed to have as many students as they are now groaning about), they often freeze salaries, cut salaries, add to workloads or otherwise diminish the morale of the school.
Which brings up another point: When schools act like their real business is providing support for a community of like-minded adults, rather than doing all they can to educate the children in their care as well as possible (and, in the process, spend the parents’ tuition dollars as wisely and efficiently as possible), they quickly lose their way, creating a vicious spiral that leads to further loss of enrollment…
I don’t know if this addresses your basic questions; sorry if it contains too much opinion or too many digressions…
Dear Steve, I came across your blog for the first time today and was impressed by [the] exchange on school governance. A writer myself, I am very interested in education and foundation lessons, which really get to the heart of the matter. I really responded to your words and was curious to know your specific thoughts on Administration, and what advice you would give to others on best practice.
In this piece, you also talk about structure, and I wondered what was lightest possible administrative structure you've encountered or could envisage?
Yours most warmly,
Nicola
First (I’m assuming you have some familiarity with Waldorf schools; if not, I’d be happy to answer questions), Rudolf Steiner never said that Waldorf schools should be “faculty run;” the phrase he used was “self-administered,” by which I believe he meant “not administered by the state.” Which is to say, much more the case for U.S. schools than for most European schools—we have always enjoyed greater local control and freedom in how we educate our youth than have nations with more powerful ministries of education. (I’ve read that the Federal government provides roughly 10% of educational funding in the U.S. and 90% of the—mostly unfunded—directives and mandates.)
Given this, it’s really tough to say that a good administrator in a Waldorf school should be somehow different (beyond her commitment to the mission of the school) from an administrator at another school. In my experience, the toughest part of the administrator’s job is gaining the trust of the teachers. For this reason alone, it may be good for Waldorf schools to select an experienced teacher to hold this position. The problem is that it’s a rare teacher who can be a good administrator. And if the administrator is seen by parents as being partial to teachers’ points of view, trust erodes quickly.
On the other hand, the peculiar structure of Waldorf schools requires any administrator to adapt to the school. By this, I refer primarily to the tension that often exists among parents, boards, and teachers’ councils or colleges, especially when times are tough. Most Waldorf schools, by bylaw or practice, for example, simply don’t give the power to hire and fire to one person. So an administrator, then, becomes a diplomat—lots of responsibility, little authority—carrying messages from one camp to the other, attempting to negotiate a peaceful settlement.
When you ask about minimal structure, I think of the school at which I currently work. I’m a full-time teacher and the only (part-time) administrator. We have an office manager/assistant here three mornings a week. We have an off-site, hourly bookkeeper, and a volunteer treasurer. Teachers pitch in to help with admissions events, open houses, and so on. Trustees (volunteers) handle fundraising. Our Core Faculty (about 7 teachers) meets weekly. Our Board meets monthly. We have as close to no administrative structure as it’s possible to have, I believe.
By contrast, I know a school that was advised by a highly paid professional to hire a full-time fundraiser. The school did this and, three years in, has yet to raise close to the cost of the fundraiser’s salary and benefits. And I don’t believe this is a comment on the fundraiser’s ability—more on the school’s inability to see that their situation, despite the recommendation of a consultant, simply doesn’t warrant one full-time person devoted to development.
In creating structure, it’s too easy, I believe, to copy what everyone else does—admissions officer, development, business manager, administrator, etc.—even when the numbers don’t justify it.
This brings up another point, which is that of scale. Small schools can break even; large schools can break even. Smallish schools that act like large schools, however, will lose money. And no private school can afford to do that for long. And there is a “deadly middle ground.” For many private schools, it occurs between roughly 60 students and 150-200 students. This middle ground is precisely where many Waldorf high schools find themselves, unfortunately.
In growing from a small school to a larger school, schools add administration as they grow, and are happy for the increase in students. When, a few years later, perhaps, enrollment declines, rather than facing the actuality of the situation (there was a time when they would have been overjoyed to have as many students as they are now groaning about), they often freeze salaries, cut salaries, add to workloads or otherwise diminish the morale of the school.
Which brings up another point: When schools act like their real business is providing support for a community of like-minded adults, rather than doing all they can to educate the children in their care as well as possible (and, in the process, spend the parents’ tuition dollars as wisely and efficiently as possible), they quickly lose their way, creating a vicious spiral that leads to further loss of enrollment…
I don’t know if this addresses your basic questions; sorry if it contains too much opinion or too many digressions…
Thursday, February 25, 2010
The Word "Waldorf"
I don't know where the phrase comes from, but let's "stop the insanity." For a couple of years, I've been collecting uses of what I call the free-floating "Waldorf." That is, the word Waldorf attached to some other word or concept in order to give it some (Waldorf) meaning, whether it deserves it or not, whether it actually means anything or not. (For those who don't know, the word Waldorf in Waldorf school comes from the Independent Waldorf School, founded in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1919. It was so-called because it was, initially, a school for the education of the children of the employees of the Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Factory, although it quickly outgrew this clientelle. And, yes, the owners were the same family as the owners of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in NYC. So, in the end, Waldorf salad and Waldorf school are, indeed, loosely connected.)
Here's the list. Feel free to add other examples in Comments, and I'll update periodically.
Waldorf Administrator
Waldorf Advocate
Waldorf Alliance
Waldorf Alumni
Waldorf Answer
Waldorf Approach
Waldorf Art(work)
Waldorf Child(ren)
Waldorf Crayon
Waldorf Critic(ism)
Waldorf Curriculum
Waldorf Development
Waldorf Doll
Waldorf Education
Waldorf Emphasis
Waldorf Family
Waldorf Festival
Waldorf Fundraising
Waldorf Furniture
Waldorf Grace
Waldorf Graduate
Waldorf History
Waldorf Home
Waldorf Homeschooling
Waldorf Initiative
Waldorf Inspired
Waldorf Kindergarten
Waldorf Library
Waldorf Life (skills)
Waldorf Math
Waldorf Method
Waldorf Movement
Waldorf Music
Waldorf Mythology
Waldorf Oriented
Waldorf Painting
Waldorf Parent
Waldorf Pedagogy
Waldorf Philosophy
Waldorf Prayer
Waldorf Pupil
Waldorf Resource
Waldorf Ritual
Waldorf Room
Waldorf School
Waldorf Science
Waldorf Student
Waldorf Treasure
Waldorf Trustee
Waldorf View (point of)
Waldorf World
Here's the list. Feel free to add other examples in Comments, and I'll update periodically.
Waldorf Administrator
Waldorf Advocate
Waldorf Alliance
Waldorf Alumni
Waldorf Answer
Waldorf Approach
Waldorf Art(work)
Waldorf Child(ren)
Waldorf Crayon
Waldorf Critic(ism)
Waldorf Curriculum
Waldorf Development
Waldorf Doll
Waldorf Education
Waldorf Emphasis
Waldorf Family
Waldorf Festival
Waldorf Fundraising
Waldorf Furniture
Waldorf Grace
Waldorf Graduate
Waldorf History
Waldorf Home
Waldorf Homeschooling
Waldorf Initiative
Waldorf Inspired
Waldorf Kindergarten
Waldorf Library
Waldorf Life (skills)
Waldorf Math
Waldorf Method
Waldorf Movement
Waldorf Music
Waldorf Mythology
Waldorf Oriented
Waldorf Painting
Waldorf Parent
Waldorf Pedagogy
Waldorf Philosophy
Waldorf Prayer
Waldorf Pupil
Waldorf Resource
Waldorf Ritual
Waldorf Room
Waldorf School
Waldorf Science
Waldorf Student
Waldorf Treasure
Waldorf Trustee
Waldorf View (point of)
Waldorf World
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Waldorf School Governance
The following questions and answers come from an email exchange regarding school governance and administration. I have removed all references to specific schools, places, times, and individuals.
1. How do “Waldorf schools” tend to be governed? What does it mean to have a style of governance that is consistent with and reflects Waldorf principles?
My view is that most Waldorf schools are not governed well. The 3 “spheres” to which Waldorf schools frequently refer—cultural, economic, political—exist in all schools, Waldorf and not. And these are not reflected, in my opinion, in bodies of the school--teachers, parents, trustees--that others claim correspond with Steiner’s ideas of a “threefold” social or institutional organization. What Steiner envisaged was three cooperative administrations—one for cultural (i.e., educational) questions (the faculty or college of teachers or council); one for economic questions (an association of producers and consumers); and one for legal or political questions and questions of rights (including expertise in this area and representing the rights of all—children, parents, teachers, admin., and trustees in a school…). I know of no Waldorf school that well represents this picture. To equate a group—say, trustees—with a “sphere”—say, legal/financial—is to confuse this picture (legal questions are separate from financial considerations, to a degree) and, in practice, to exclude other community members or stakeholders who have an interest in these areas. Steiner is clear in his writing on this question that each of us is an integral part of each administration, although we may have a greater personal stake in one or another. You have a chance to do it better!
2. How do other schools draw boundaries—or do they?—between decisions that are the purview of the faculty and those that are the purview of the Board? (And if overlap is recognized, how are decisions reached?) The decisions that have recently caused distress within our school have been ones where it seemed that there is inevitably an overlap between pedagogical concerns and concerns relating to such practical matters as enrollment, marketing, and tuition schedules.
Just as a brain that consists of working neurons needs an adequate blood supply, and muscles and bones need nervous apparatus to operate, there really are no decisions that belong to one group alone—ideally, a faculty group could have board representation (which would promote a better understanding between the 2 groups) just as boards often have teachers on them. (Emil Molt, who acted in the role closest to that of a trustee in the first Waldorf school attended faculty meetings.) The Board generally delegates day-to-day operation to the Faculty, but has a right—and need—to be informed of processes and decisions.
Decision-making is a stumbling block. Steiner didn’t care how decisions were made—aristocratic, democratic, or republican. He was concerned that those who were given responsibilities were given freedom to fulfill them. Most faculties in American Waldorf schools use some form of consensus decision-making process, but could do better to understand and refine this process. It seems to break down in the face of hard decisions, when, in fact, here it should be most closely followed. Boards often use Robert’s Rules or something similar. I believe this is fine; I do not favor consensus decision-making for Boards, which rely on the legal and financial expertise of their members.
I believe the most important principles include: 1.) joint decision-making between Board and Faculty, most especially when there is a need to make a tough decision; 2.) Clarity regarding process and personnel—who gets to make a decision and how the decision will be reached—prior to engaging the issue; 3.) Transparency to the community about the process and personnel (and timeline). Community members don’t need to have confidential conversations rehashed for them, but they have a right to know that a clear process was followed and to know who was involved in reaching the decision.
3. I am interested in the role of parents, or parent bodies, in Waldorf school governance—I hear reference to three groups (faculty, board, and a parent body) and I don’t know what they are each responsible for.
Parents are the economic engine of the school. Their tuition and fees provide the economic foundation for the work of the school. I don’t believe Waldorf schools acknowledge this simple point frequently enough. (Yes, individually we all understand this, but schools are not organized in a way that fully acknowledges this.) It is appropriate to have parent representation on the Board.
4. One of the things that has come to seem significant to me is that we have very different “cultures” in our faculty and board—faculty members see each other regularly, meet once a week, and share philosophies and professional common ground, and they operate on a consensus basis. Our Board overall has a certain common interest but much more diverse professional backgrounds than the faculty (we don’t even know what everyone does, for example), much greater diversity in our understanding and embodiment of Waldorf philosophies, we are very limited in our time together, and we operate in a rough sort of Roberts Rules format with majority rule. How does this “fit” the model offered by other schools? Is this desirable? Sustainable? Consistent with other Waldorf precedent?
I believe it fits with what other schools do. I believe it’s sustainable. It’s not undesirable, and you could change it over time to suit the needs of your community if you wanted to. Most Waldorf school boards micromanage (often in the absence of good clear management from the teachers/administration) instead of focusing on strategy, planning, budget, fundraising, etc. Board and faculty should meet socially at least twice a year (I’m basing this on experience; there’s no rule); they should meet to make joint decisions when necessary; and they should meet at least once a year to discuss vision, mission, etc. (more if they haven’t been engaged together in the past or, like your school, if you face major changes).
5. What might we expect over time? That is, are there special needs or challenges that are specific to our early stage (i.e., things that need special consideration now but that will pass), and what might be the things that are “permanent” or more specific to the future more mature stage?
Structure is necessary, but shouldn’t be confused with organization, which is living and changes as the needs of the school community change. Too often we believe that changing a governance structure will change an institution; if the same persons are involved in the work of the school, however, structural changes are unlikely to produce real change. Not to say that some structures aren’t better or more suitable or more efficient; there’s always room for improvement.
Managing cultural change is the necessary challenge, and requires greater ethics, communication, attention to process, willingness to compromise, transparency, etc. I believe one or a very small group can gradually change the culture of an institution, although it’s not easy. For one thing, it’s easier to change when times are good, although the incentive to change more often arises when times are tough. Getting agreement on a clear process (for example, by what process are new teachers hired?) is easiest in the abstract, not when a rift exists over the hiring of a particular candidate.
I believe the job of the administrator is to be a watch-dog and “connector” between others on these issues (ethics, communication, attention to process, willingness to compromise, transparency, timeliness, etc.)—she or he should, ideally, sit on the Board and College (and HR committee or other “rights” group of the school), as either voting member or ex-officio. She doesn’t belong only to one group, but serves them all. When I was a school administrator, I believed I was doing my job if the teachers believed I was listening too much to the parents and the parents believed I was listening too much to the teachers. (I worked with a particularly supportive board, but the same trust applies here, too.) Community trust in my ethics, compassion, communication, etc., was my only basic currency. If I was seen as partisan, I was ineffective.
1. How do “Waldorf schools” tend to be governed? What does it mean to have a style of governance that is consistent with and reflects Waldorf principles?
My view is that most Waldorf schools are not governed well. The 3 “spheres” to which Waldorf schools frequently refer—cultural, economic, political—exist in all schools, Waldorf and not. And these are not reflected, in my opinion, in bodies of the school--teachers, parents, trustees--that others claim correspond with Steiner’s ideas of a “threefold” social or institutional organization. What Steiner envisaged was three cooperative administrations—one for cultural (i.e., educational) questions (the faculty or college of teachers or council); one for economic questions (an association of producers and consumers); and one for legal or political questions and questions of rights (including expertise in this area and representing the rights of all—children, parents, teachers, admin., and trustees in a school…). I know of no Waldorf school that well represents this picture. To equate a group—say, trustees—with a “sphere”—say, legal/financial—is to confuse this picture (legal questions are separate from financial considerations, to a degree) and, in practice, to exclude other community members or stakeholders who have an interest in these areas. Steiner is clear in his writing on this question that each of us is an integral part of each administration, although we may have a greater personal stake in one or another. You have a chance to do it better!
2. How do other schools draw boundaries—or do they?—between decisions that are the purview of the faculty and those that are the purview of the Board? (And if overlap is recognized, how are decisions reached?) The decisions that have recently caused distress within our school have been ones where it seemed that there is inevitably an overlap between pedagogical concerns and concerns relating to such practical matters as enrollment, marketing, and tuition schedules.
Just as a brain that consists of working neurons needs an adequate blood supply, and muscles and bones need nervous apparatus to operate, there really are no decisions that belong to one group alone—ideally, a faculty group could have board representation (which would promote a better understanding between the 2 groups) just as boards often have teachers on them. (Emil Molt, who acted in the role closest to that of a trustee in the first Waldorf school attended faculty meetings.) The Board generally delegates day-to-day operation to the Faculty, but has a right—and need—to be informed of processes and decisions.
Decision-making is a stumbling block. Steiner didn’t care how decisions were made—aristocratic, democratic, or republican. He was concerned that those who were given responsibilities were given freedom to fulfill them. Most faculties in American Waldorf schools use some form of consensus decision-making process, but could do better to understand and refine this process. It seems to break down in the face of hard decisions, when, in fact, here it should be most closely followed. Boards often use Robert’s Rules or something similar. I believe this is fine; I do not favor consensus decision-making for Boards, which rely on the legal and financial expertise of their members.
I believe the most important principles include: 1.) joint decision-making between Board and Faculty, most especially when there is a need to make a tough decision; 2.) Clarity regarding process and personnel—who gets to make a decision and how the decision will be reached—prior to engaging the issue; 3.) Transparency to the community about the process and personnel (and timeline). Community members don’t need to have confidential conversations rehashed for them, but they have a right to know that a clear process was followed and to know who was involved in reaching the decision.
3. I am interested in the role of parents, or parent bodies, in Waldorf school governance—I hear reference to three groups (faculty, board, and a parent body) and I don’t know what they are each responsible for.
Parents are the economic engine of the school. Their tuition and fees provide the economic foundation for the work of the school. I don’t believe Waldorf schools acknowledge this simple point frequently enough. (Yes, individually we all understand this, but schools are not organized in a way that fully acknowledges this.) It is appropriate to have parent representation on the Board.
4. One of the things that has come to seem significant to me is that we have very different “cultures” in our faculty and board—faculty members see each other regularly, meet once a week, and share philosophies and professional common ground, and they operate on a consensus basis. Our Board overall has a certain common interest but much more diverse professional backgrounds than the faculty (we don’t even know what everyone does, for example), much greater diversity in our understanding and embodiment of Waldorf philosophies, we are very limited in our time together, and we operate in a rough sort of Roberts Rules format with majority rule. How does this “fit” the model offered by other schools? Is this desirable? Sustainable? Consistent with other Waldorf precedent?
I believe it fits with what other schools do. I believe it’s sustainable. It’s not undesirable, and you could change it over time to suit the needs of your community if you wanted to. Most Waldorf school boards micromanage (often in the absence of good clear management from the teachers/administration) instead of focusing on strategy, planning, budget, fundraising, etc. Board and faculty should meet socially at least twice a year (I’m basing this on experience; there’s no rule); they should meet to make joint decisions when necessary; and they should meet at least once a year to discuss vision, mission, etc. (more if they haven’t been engaged together in the past or, like your school, if you face major changes).
5. What might we expect over time? That is, are there special needs or challenges that are specific to our early stage (i.e., things that need special consideration now but that will pass), and what might be the things that are “permanent” or more specific to the future more mature stage?
Structure is necessary, but shouldn’t be confused with organization, which is living and changes as the needs of the school community change. Too often we believe that changing a governance structure will change an institution; if the same persons are involved in the work of the school, however, structural changes are unlikely to produce real change. Not to say that some structures aren’t better or more suitable or more efficient; there’s always room for improvement.
Managing cultural change is the necessary challenge, and requires greater ethics, communication, attention to process, willingness to compromise, transparency, etc. I believe one or a very small group can gradually change the culture of an institution, although it’s not easy. For one thing, it’s easier to change when times are good, although the incentive to change more often arises when times are tough. Getting agreement on a clear process (for example, by what process are new teachers hired?) is easiest in the abstract, not when a rift exists over the hiring of a particular candidate.
I believe the job of the administrator is to be a watch-dog and “connector” between others on these issues (ethics, communication, attention to process, willingness to compromise, transparency, timeliness, etc.)—she or he should, ideally, sit on the Board and College (and HR committee or other “rights” group of the school), as either voting member or ex-officio. She doesn’t belong only to one group, but serves them all. When I was a school administrator, I believed I was doing my job if the teachers believed I was listening too much to the parents and the parents believed I was listening too much to the teachers. (I worked with a particularly supportive board, but the same trust applies here, too.) Community trust in my ethics, compassion, communication, etc., was my only basic currency. If I was seen as partisan, I was ineffective.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Teaching and Research
It’s true that you don’t need a master’s degree to teach in a Waldorf school (not that this is necessarily a good thing). Having an advanced degree does not make you (necessarily) a better teacher.
The common wisdom, however, that, at the university level, professors with advanced degrees are so distracted by research that they don’t or can’t really teach, is false. Research by Robert McCaughey, chair of the history department at Barnard College, across a number of universities shows the strong correlations among research, advanced degrees, recognition from colleagues, and great teaching. The best teachers in universities, as ranked by their unforgiving students, are those who have contributed to their fields, obtained the highest degrees, and kept open and alive their commitments to research and to teaching—these are, at a high level, one and the same.
I believe the same could apply to high school, elementary school, and even early childhood teachers.
Let me examine briefly what it takes to get a master’s degree.
You start with some ideas about graduate school and a fear of formal writing. You haven’t been in school in years, maybe decades. You don’t know how to cite a reference according to the Style Manual of the American Psychological Association or the Modern Language Association. Until now, you have had better things to do.
You want to write a thesis that will change the wacky Waldorf world, bite off a big piece of research and chew it well. Colleagues will read your work and recognize your expertise. Journals will seek you out. Young children with wide eyes will ask for your autograph. You also want to graduate on time.
Your advisor and your cohort help you find and hone some topic in which you’re interested, something not too large or too small. About 45 pages worth, give or take. You talk through topic, questions, methods, literature with your advisor. You badger your spouse and colleagues. You can’t sleep. You pile books on a table or nightstand. Good job. As my wife says, if you buy the fabric, you’ve made the quilt.
You type the title page, including the statement at the bottom, “Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements…” You feel like you’re halfway there.
You write a sentence, a paragraph. You type quotations into a laptop or, like me, you stick an army of post-its into your books. Progress.
Gradually, you steal hours here and there. Your husband take the kids to his parents for the weekend and, after watching five hours of television, folding all the laundry, and cleaning the kitchen, you start to write. As David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, says, “everyone knows it takes eight hours to write for two hours.”
In Milan, a monk complained that Leonardo da Vinci, who was supposed to be painting “The Last Supper,” spent too much time sitting in front of the painting doing nothing. Who knew? Leonardo wasn’t just a painter and an original thinker. He was a graduate student. Really, of course, like you, he was deep in contemplation.
Gradually, your work takes shape. You fill it in like a puzzle: A bit of chapter three, some more in chapter two. It hurts, but you throw away whole paragraphs that no longer fit. If you’re like me, you cut these but you can’t stand to see them go. I paste them, in order, at the end of the paper. Sometimes what I end up with is shorter than the unused paragraphs stuck at the end, waiting in vain for their moment. I wrote them. They must mean something.
You start talking nonsense, a sign of regression in normal people, but not you; you’re a graduate student. You believe you know what you mean when you type something like, “hermeneutic contemplation and theoretical misgivings in the Weltanschauung of the Zeitgeist.” I gave my wife a few pages to edit. She said, “I don’t understand a word of this.” “Good,” I said, “my education is working.”
You’ve never interviewed anyone in your life, but you do it. You draw up a list of questions, make an appointment, and, before you know it, you’ve completed an interview of an hour and a quarter. Interviews are easier after this, although why do people insist on talking about what they want to talk about instead of what you want to know about?
Or you write a questionnaire and mail it out. A few people even send it back. But instead of filling in the ovals you’ve provided, they’ve written comments in the margins. Or circled two answers where you asked for one. You are learning to collect and interpret data.
Things take shape. When ninety percent is complete, you’re halfway there. You track down those missing references. You try to write a conclusion that’s not just a re-statement of your introduction. Despite the demands of job and family, you make progress. Wallace Shawn, the actor and playwright, when asked about his life between performances said, “You know, I have a second career running errands.
You get emails from the college with forms A through H attached. These supersede the old forms A through H you got last semester, and they have no relation to the handbook you got when you started this work.
You stay up until four one morning, putting on the finishing touches. You email a draft to your advisor and then wait weeks… and weeks. You’ve taken years to do this, but you want a response immediately.
You finally get your paper back, and then you get to comb through to remove the passive voice, rewrite the introduction, cut unsupported statements, trim and groom your baby.
The great day arrives when your thesis is approved. You feel like you lost fifty pounds, like an astronaut on the moon, like a childhood dream of flying. And then you eat half a pound of pepperoni from the little zip-loc baggie, inhale a pint of Chunkie Monkey, and take a nap.
What did you learn? You learned a lot, but I’m not talking about your topic.
Here are some of the things you learned:
To think clearly and contemplatively.
To speak meaningfully.
To write well.
To read with interest and intelligence.
To have a sense of scale and proportion.
To appreciate objectivity as a goal, if not as an absolute.
To adapt to changing circumstances.
To synthesize disparate and unanticipated results and points of view.
To interpret.
To judge.
To persevere.
To compromise.
To find and create a community of support in which to accomplish all this.
These are qualities I would like to see in all teachers.
And, you’ll notice, I haven’t even mentioned the thesis topic. From this point of view, the topic, the form, the content, the results are all beside the point. No one else will ever read your thesis. Your husband and your second reader and your advisor read it because they love you. And because they had to. These things are not mutually exclusive.
The point is the capacities that you have to exercise and develop in order to complete a degree. Yes, some of it is inherited from the Middle Ages, the caps, the gowns, the inquisition. And perhaps those parts are what people object to when they say you don’t need a master’s degree to teach in a Waldorf school.
I don’t mean to minimize the research that goes into this work. But to be a researcher does not always mean to write formal papers, although these are an accepted medium for such work.
To conduct research is to be alive to possibility, to believe that there’s truth beyond simply the truth that I know today, and this is one of the highest qualities that we can ask for in a teacher, a quality that makes teaching so creative and so difficult and so humbling.
Teachers are researchers. They conduct action-research and longitudinal studies as participant-observers with sample sizes of a couple of dozen over years. They discuss findings with colleagues and fellow-researchers from next door and down the hall. (What they often fail to do is synthesize and interpret their results.) And the better prepared they are to conduct their research, the better for our children.
The common wisdom, however, that, at the university level, professors with advanced degrees are so distracted by research that they don’t or can’t really teach, is false. Research by Robert McCaughey, chair of the history department at Barnard College, across a number of universities shows the strong correlations among research, advanced degrees, recognition from colleagues, and great teaching. The best teachers in universities, as ranked by their unforgiving students, are those who have contributed to their fields, obtained the highest degrees, and kept open and alive their commitments to research and to teaching—these are, at a high level, one and the same.
I believe the same could apply to high school, elementary school, and even early childhood teachers.
Let me examine briefly what it takes to get a master’s degree.
You start with some ideas about graduate school and a fear of formal writing. You haven’t been in school in years, maybe decades. You don’t know how to cite a reference according to the Style Manual of the American Psychological Association or the Modern Language Association. Until now, you have had better things to do.
You want to write a thesis that will change the wacky Waldorf world, bite off a big piece of research and chew it well. Colleagues will read your work and recognize your expertise. Journals will seek you out. Young children with wide eyes will ask for your autograph. You also want to graduate on time.
Your advisor and your cohort help you find and hone some topic in which you’re interested, something not too large or too small. About 45 pages worth, give or take. You talk through topic, questions, methods, literature with your advisor. You badger your spouse and colleagues. You can’t sleep. You pile books on a table or nightstand. Good job. As my wife says, if you buy the fabric, you’ve made the quilt.
You type the title page, including the statement at the bottom, “Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements…” You feel like you’re halfway there.
You write a sentence, a paragraph. You type quotations into a laptop or, like me, you stick an army of post-its into your books. Progress.
Gradually, you steal hours here and there. Your husband take the kids to his parents for the weekend and, after watching five hours of television, folding all the laundry, and cleaning the kitchen, you start to write. As David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, says, “everyone knows it takes eight hours to write for two hours.”
In Milan, a monk complained that Leonardo da Vinci, who was supposed to be painting “The Last Supper,” spent too much time sitting in front of the painting doing nothing. Who knew? Leonardo wasn’t just a painter and an original thinker. He was a graduate student. Really, of course, like you, he was deep in contemplation.
Gradually, your work takes shape. You fill it in like a puzzle: A bit of chapter three, some more in chapter two. It hurts, but you throw away whole paragraphs that no longer fit. If you’re like me, you cut these but you can’t stand to see them go. I paste them, in order, at the end of the paper. Sometimes what I end up with is shorter than the unused paragraphs stuck at the end, waiting in vain for their moment. I wrote them. They must mean something.
You start talking nonsense, a sign of regression in normal people, but not you; you’re a graduate student. You believe you know what you mean when you type something like, “hermeneutic contemplation and theoretical misgivings in the Weltanschauung of the Zeitgeist.” I gave my wife a few pages to edit. She said, “I don’t understand a word of this.” “Good,” I said, “my education is working.”
You’ve never interviewed anyone in your life, but you do it. You draw up a list of questions, make an appointment, and, before you know it, you’ve completed an interview of an hour and a quarter. Interviews are easier after this, although why do people insist on talking about what they want to talk about instead of what you want to know about?
Or you write a questionnaire and mail it out. A few people even send it back. But instead of filling in the ovals you’ve provided, they’ve written comments in the margins. Or circled two answers where you asked for one. You are learning to collect and interpret data.
Things take shape. When ninety percent is complete, you’re halfway there. You track down those missing references. You try to write a conclusion that’s not just a re-statement of your introduction. Despite the demands of job and family, you make progress. Wallace Shawn, the actor and playwright, when asked about his life between performances said, “You know, I have a second career running errands.
You get emails from the college with forms A through H attached. These supersede the old forms A through H you got last semester, and they have no relation to the handbook you got when you started this work.
You stay up until four one morning, putting on the finishing touches. You email a draft to your advisor and then wait weeks… and weeks. You’ve taken years to do this, but you want a response immediately.
You finally get your paper back, and then you get to comb through to remove the passive voice, rewrite the introduction, cut unsupported statements, trim and groom your baby.
The great day arrives when your thesis is approved. You feel like you lost fifty pounds, like an astronaut on the moon, like a childhood dream of flying. And then you eat half a pound of pepperoni from the little zip-loc baggie, inhale a pint of Chunkie Monkey, and take a nap.
What did you learn? You learned a lot, but I’m not talking about your topic.
Here are some of the things you learned:
To think clearly and contemplatively.
To speak meaningfully.
To write well.
To read with interest and intelligence.
To have a sense of scale and proportion.
To appreciate objectivity as a goal, if not as an absolute.
To adapt to changing circumstances.
To synthesize disparate and unanticipated results and points of view.
To interpret.
To judge.
To persevere.
To compromise.
To find and create a community of support in which to accomplish all this.
These are qualities I would like to see in all teachers.
And, you’ll notice, I haven’t even mentioned the thesis topic. From this point of view, the topic, the form, the content, the results are all beside the point. No one else will ever read your thesis. Your husband and your second reader and your advisor read it because they love you. And because they had to. These things are not mutually exclusive.
The point is the capacities that you have to exercise and develop in order to complete a degree. Yes, some of it is inherited from the Middle Ages, the caps, the gowns, the inquisition. And perhaps those parts are what people object to when they say you don’t need a master’s degree to teach in a Waldorf school.
I don’t mean to minimize the research that goes into this work. But to be a researcher does not always mean to write formal papers, although these are an accepted medium for such work.
To conduct research is to be alive to possibility, to believe that there’s truth beyond simply the truth that I know today, and this is one of the highest qualities that we can ask for in a teacher, a quality that makes teaching so creative and so difficult and so humbling.
Teachers are researchers. They conduct action-research and longitudinal studies as participant-observers with sample sizes of a couple of dozen over years. They discuss findings with colleagues and fellow-researchers from next door and down the hall. (What they often fail to do is synthesize and interpret their results.) And the better prepared they are to conduct their research, the better for our children.
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