On m daughter’s birthday,  I opened up the newspaper and there was an editorial entitled, “Why teens don’t read:  English teachers ruin it”  ( I think it was a little gift to me, little signs along the path that confirm things for me, LOL).

And part of this article really caught my eye and I want to share it with you all.

(The fast background to the writing below is the statement in the editorial that says,  “The percentage of 17 year olds who read nothing at all for pleasure has doubled in the past 20 years).  So glad our educational system is encouraging strong readers who love to read. 

This editorial, written by a high school AP English teacher, states:

“Every June, when I asked my students at a previous school to write about a favorite book of the year, they mostly gushed over two: J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” For years, “Catcher” was my successful icebreaker for my juniors. 

      So imagine my dismay when “Catcher” was demoted to the eighth or ninth grade.  Apparently it wasn’t sophisticated enough for 11^th-graders.  That many 17-year-olds identify powerfully with Salinger’s 17-year-old protagonist was a fact cast by the wayside.

      But here’s what a former student wrote about this book, “To my 12-year-old self, the book didn’t seem to move anywhere.  I didn’t understand why Holden couldn’t just try a little harder at school.  By tenth grade, I had been drunk for the first time.  I knew rebellion against my parents, the fakeness of social interaction.  As a reader in the eleventh grade, I grew close to Holden; he was a friend who understood me.”

       In adults’ determination to create sophisticated teen readers, we sever them from potential fictional soul mates.”

While I don’t necessarily agree with the adult experiences this tenth grader was having (!), I do understand the thought that books that come along after you have experienced life can make more sense.  Why we are trying to shove sophisticated literature down a child’s throat when they have had no experiences to even relate to it, they are not close to the age of the protagonist, is just beyond me and I feel is a symptom of our education process in which doing everything early is better.

To me, this was really a supportive editorial for Waldorf education, as Waldorf  looks at everything in relation to soul development of the child and what the child will be like as an adult.  A six year old is still a kindergartener.  A third grader going through the nine year change needs to build houses, a home for himself on Earth, and learn about the Old Testament laws as an example of authority relationships.  A fifth grader in symmetry needs to look at the symmetry in nature of plants and the Greeks…..It goes on and on.

I don’t understand why Waldorf education is not much more prevalent when it makes so much sense.

Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.

This post is for people who are planning for adventures in Waldorf Grades One through Eight with their children, children who are aged seven and older. If your child is under the age of seven, please do hit “rhythm” and those sorts of tags in the tag box on the right hand side of this page and start there.  There are also some separate posts on Waldorf Kindergarten on this blog that may be of interest to you.

Onward to the parents of grade-school children… Mel  over at http://lovey-land.blogspot.com/  and I were talking about the necessity of planning when you are a Waldorf homeschooling mother.  The Waldorf curriculum is very multi-layered, and very hands-on with skills that you will need to master ahead of time so you can show your child.  It seems that many people within the Waldorf community these days want a pre-planned, pre-done curriculum – you know, the open and go kind of thing.   I too, adore an open and go kind of thing!  The only thing I can share, however, is that my open and go curriculum is created by myself.  I believe this is a great privilege of homeschooling that I can create and use stories that will speak specifically to my child’s strengths and weaknesses and to our family’s values.   I do have many  different books, websites and Steiner’s lectures to draw on, and I start planning early so I have time to read everything I want and digest it and meditate on it and then create my own product.  In order to do this, I have to start early…I am reading second grade material now in order to be ready with a finished second grade curriculum by September 2009.

I first take a calendar and look at the 180 days we need in our state to fulfill homeschooling law.  I mark in when our vacations may be if I know that, and I also take note of each festival and count back anywhere from 1 to 3 weeks in order to start mapping out festival preparations.  I have a separate binder for festivals that has many recipes, plays, verses and craft ideas I have collected and have ordered by festival and date of the year.  This gives me a good jumping off point so I can plan what we will do each day leading up to a festival day.

Then I take a moment to dream, to really look at the big picture for the grade and what that grade means to me.  I go back to Steiner’s lectures and read about what he says for each grade and some of the indications he gives for teaching different subjects and try to get to the heart of the matter.  This is very important as many mothers who would like to homeschool using Waldorf methods have never actually read a lecture by Steiner. Please do, it will add such dimension and clarity to your understanding of the grades and your teaching.    I think about and create goals for my children based not only on all academic areas, but also in areas such as social, character development, religious/spiritual goals, practical life, music, handwork, art,  and foreign languages.  I write those down, and  I also create goals for myself of things I want to learn and work on, and write those down.

Then  I plan out the sequence of blocks and how that might flow best throughout the year – for example, I like to start with a month of form drawing so I usually start there but then I need to map out how many math blocks, how many language arts blocks, how many science blocks.  I decide on the blocks and on what main things I would like to bring to my child.  Remember, Steiner said in one of his lectures in the book “Soul Economy”, that “The aim of Waldorf education is to arrange all of the teaching so that within the shortest possible time the maximum amount of material can be presented to students by the simplest means possible.”  This means that you are choosing things for each block to light your child’s imagination and interest, you are choosing the events that best represent a historical time period, you are choosing the most important and wonderful things your child needs to know about this subject and presenting them in an active, no textbook kind of manner.

Then I take each individual block and start writing lesson plans for each day around our daily rhythm and the notion of Head, Heart, and Hands.  Head is  Circle and Main Lesson Work.  Heart is typically outside time, hiking, wet on wet watercolor painting, music, drawing, or when our tutors come for foreign language teaching.  Hands is typically our practical everyday work (baking, gardening, etc) and handwork.  I especially look for what is the ACTIVE part of each lesson, what is the piece I can pull out to really inspire my child and make her just be enthralled with this subject? 

I also look at the three day rhythm where Waldorf education uses the aid of sleep to really learn.  For example, if I tell a story in Grade One about one of the math gnomes, then we may sleep on it after the introduction.  The next day we will re-visit the story and then  paint, draw or model something from the story and play math games in a physical manner about whatever math process the story was about.  The third day we re-visit the same story again, and provide more practice with math and then draw problems in our main lesson book and a picture of the math sign (plus,  minus, times, division sign) – this is the academic piece that is always brought in on the third day.  You can fit in another three day rhythm for the week if you introduce a story after this work is done on the third day.

So I keep all that in mind and just write day by day until the month is done.

Once the yearly plan is in my computer by month, it is easy enough to adjust it if something comes up and we need to miss a day.  I try to schedule a reasonable amount of work for each day so there is plenty of time for play, dreaming and so if we do miss a day we can easily make it up.  I am still in the early grades and consider this to be very important that these early grades are the bridge to greater academic work and excellence later on..  I know this will shift about third grade or so.

At the start of every block during the school year, I review the plans and make sure I have all the materials I need and make sure it all still will speak to my child.  I have time to be able to tweak it as needed because I did it ahead of time.

I would love to hear how other folks plan, how far ahead you plan, what works best for you.

Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.

This letter was written by my wonderful husband for all the dads who are feeling rather undecided about the whole homeschooling thing.  Maybe it will help provide some thoughts for your family.

Dear Undecided Dad,

Carrie asked me to talk about this since I had many of the same concerns you have about when talking to colleagues about homeschooling.   Having worked as a Director of IT and now working as a Senior Consultant at ABC Company (a large, global company),  I understand the hidden pressure when talking with colleagues and clients and the subject of kids and school.  At first, I was very hesitant about the conversation, but as time went on, I found that people were very interested in the subject.  I never felt judged.  Usually, the conversation went like this

Friend: My kids are at XYZ academy, how about you?

Me: Actually, my wife and I homeschool our two girls.

Friend: Really? How does that work?

Me:  It actually works very well.  My wife deserves all the credit, though.  She has spent hours researching and preparing curriculum and teaching class.   One of the things we realized was that in a “typical” school, the teachers are spending time with those who are at the bottom of the class educationally and expect the others to just follow along with workbooks.   We found that by homeschooling, we can tailor the environment and get great results.  Heck, my daughter  is  reading well along with working on both German and Spanish languages and has lots of time to play outside.  Her childhood is still there while she is learning a lot!

Friend:  What about the social aspect?  Don’t you worry about your kids socially (or some variation on “is your child going to be socially stunted by homeschooling”)

Me: Interestingly enough, my wife gets out with the kids quite a bit.  Because with homeschooling, you have a lot of flexibility, my wife meets with other homeschooling mothers.  Of course, it helps that Carrie also assists a homeschooling support group in our area, but there are quite a lot of interactions.

Basically, people begin to understand that we’re not “weird” and with the noticeable wins by homeschooled kids in things like the National Spelling bees, it’s becoming more common.  I always stress how much work my wife does, and how well she does it.  I also stress that my wife and I felt that having a parent at home with the kids is important for both of us.   That can give some people a “hidden guilt” because they’ve given that up and both parents work.  We, who have chosen to have a parent stay home,  have smaller houses, older cars etc, but in the end, hopefully we have kids who enjoy learning and who are strongly connected to their siblings and to the family.. ..That’s the legacy I want!

I think, Undecided Dad, you would be surprised how many people homeschool that you don’t know about, and how interested people are when you do.

Sincerely,

Carrie’s Husband

Carrie Here:  Thanks to my husband for putting this together for the Undecided Dad! 

Just a few thoughts from our little corner of the world.