Dec 13 2009
silent and white
The first snow of the year has begun to fall. It doesn’t look like it will stick around for very long, but it is so beautiful to watch fall. The photo is my deck at the beginning of the snowfall. Don’t you just love the leftover gardening supplies still out on the table and covered with the white stuff.
I’m still teaching away from home, for one more week. I’m enjoying it but I’m finding that it is bringing up so many thoughts about the future that I’m having a hard time staying in the moment. The time away from my children is probably making that worse. Children are such a great reminder of the importance of now. My adult version of now, though, is plagued with thoughts and concerns — work, money, the holidays, the list goes on.
The actual teaching that I’m doing is a lovely bright spot, though. The girls I’m working with are just wonderful. They are enthusiastic and hard-working. With such a small class we are able to do so much! We have molded bones out of clay, played many bone-labelling games and we’re reading Frankenstein, on top of all of the regular Anatomy block material. I’m having a blast, and they are too! I feel like I’ve made some lovely connections at the school and truly enjoy the company of some of the other teachers.
The experience has made me think about how wonderful it is that we approach a subject from so many different directions at the Waldorf school. It’s true that engaging with a subject using stories, drawing, movement, writing, and other creative activities, in addition to the more thinking activities of observation and memorization helps to ensure that all of the many different learning styles in the room are met, but this diverse approach goes much further. All children benefit from engaging with a subject in these different ways. Their experience of the material becomes well-rounded, rich and alive. All of these activities help to create a warm feeling towards a subject that the students will experience as a happy fondness when they return to the subject later in life. In this way, it is not the knowledge gained or the skills acquired that matter so much in the grade school, but the living warmth that will last their entire lives.
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