Earth Day - Why ‘Dirt Under The Fingernails’ Matters

Mother Nature gets a boost

The Wizard of Spring was having difficulty getting everything going this year. Things are wonky, and he needs your help! His walking staff had not yet sprung to life! The Wizard calls on the groups to go look for the Four Elements (as well as his birdsong Conductor, where did he get to?) to help him herald in Spring!

Waldorf Academy’s interactive Earth Day Celebration this past week is an example of experiential education on a grand scale. Read our recent Director’s note on how it all wove together.

Director's Note 23 April -

Experiential Education is a buzz phrase that appears in the marketing of many schools. For some it is a way to say, “we don’t sit at our desks all day!”. If avoiding atrophy is worthy of an advertising campaign then the bar for modern education has dipped below the horizon. Experiential education at its best connects academic theory to real world application. In simple terms, learning by doing. In more complex terms, students engage in an authentic activity to develop skills. This is the doing part. The learning part comes after, when students process the experience and make sense of it at a deep personal level. As John Dewey wrote, "We do not learn from experience ... we learn from reflecting on experience".  

Experiential education requires the learner to be involved in authentic hands-on tasks, where they take initiative, make decisions and are accountable for the results. When the learner reflects on their personal experience of that task they connect prior knowledge to future application. This is when the learning happens, when the student understands and can articulate their experience. 

Waldorf Academy’s interactive Earth Day Celebration this past week is an example of experiential education on a grand scale.

Grade 7&8 students led their team of Grade 1 to 6 students through the Nordheimer Ravine, Roycroft Park and Sir Winston Churchill Park.

The Wizard of Spring was having difficulty getting things started this year and needed their help! The groups were given a quest to gather the wisdom of the four Elementals: Fire, Water, Air and Earth. The groups adventured independently to find the clues and actively engage in tasks along the way (clean up, making cordage from natural materials, building a fire, identifying and measuring trees, counting birds, and imitating birdsong with acorn caps). Only if all clues were found, which required collaboration and risk, would the students bring the Wizard of Spring the tools and knowledge needed to bring forward Spring.

Spring is re-united with the Elements

Students were actively involved, participated in authentic hands-on tasks, the groups made their own decisions and were accountable for the results, and on reflection made personal and general connections between past learning and future applications. It was experiential learning at its finest. Our Waldorf Academy pedagogy engages students head, heart, and hands. We’ve been doing this long before anyone called it experiential learning. We call it good teaching and our students encounter it every day.

Thank you to Mr Ishai Buchbinder and Ms. Grainger for your vision and leadership in creating the Earth Day Celebration experience. Thank you to ALL our teachers and administrators and parents for your commitment. Your costumes took things to a new level.