Photo 1: Grade 1 Teacher: Ms.Colby
Photo 2: Next Year’s Grade 5 Teacher, Mr.SIngh
What is a Waldorf Teacher?
Excerpt from: The Waldorf Teacher: Someone You Can Steal Horses With by Dorit Winter
“I’m a computer programmer,” says your neighbor on a cross country flight. “You?”
“I’m a …uh… I teach.”
“Teach what?”
“Teach teachers how to teach.”
“Oh?”
Sigh:” I teach teachers how to be Waldorf teachers.”
“Oh, yeah, Waldorf, I’ve heard of that. That’s for (pick one or more):
a) kids with dyslexia b) kids with musical abilities c) little kids d)kids who need art e) rich kids
And now I have to explain Waldorf Education to a well-intentioned inquirer, unacquainted with its assumptions, methods, and goals. How can I do this? And how do I then explain what it is to train a Waldorf teacher? This is a moment on which much depends.
I have to give the same explanations—of Waldorf Education itself and of the essence of the Waldorf teacher training—to my adult students. Many of them, at the outset at least, are also well-intentioned inquirers. What I say has to be almost individual and has to evolve, because it depends on the inquirer. The more nuanced the capacity for discernment in the inquirer, the more nuanced the answer can be. Even after the more or less 1140 hours of class time in our teacher training, the students and I are still working with the questions “What is Waldorf?” and “What exactly are we doing in a Waldorf teacher training?”
In a lecture to the first Waldorf teachers, Rudolf Steiner said: “We must find our way more and more toward our task, which is to make human beings truly human. It sounds simple. But grand and complex questions are raised by this statement. What exactly is “truly human?” Herein lies the key to preparing Waldorf teachers. Their humanity is what has to be developed. Read More of this inspiring article on Waldorf Teachers in Waldorf Today.
Photo 3:Grade 4 Teacher, Mr.Husseni
Photo 4: Childcare Teacher: Kate Meehan
