Waldorf Matters … My Journey to Waldorf Teaching
Mrs Anne Barker is Subject Guardian for Mathematics at Elmfield, in addition to being our Class 4 Teacher. In our weekly blog series about key aspects of Steiner Waldorf education, Anne shares her personal journey of transition from main stream schooling to the Waldorf approach
“Our highest endeavor must be to develop free human beings who are able of themselves to impart purpose and direction to their lives” Rudolf Steiner
After twenty-eight years of teaching in mainstream education with a BEd (Hons) in Mathematics, I found myself with the opportunity to work at Elmfield Rudolf Steiner School: the role was to take on a Class 2.
At the end of my first year at Elmfield, having only ever taught up to Year 3 previously with a new class of children to get to know each year, I had now entered unknown territory. I was excited to embark on this new challenge and learn alongside the children.
This year, I am now teaching the same class for the third year and our wonderful journey continues on. In a Steiner Waldorf school, when you can stay with the same class for several years, a powerful relationship is built between teacher and pupils: I know the children and they know me.
At the age of 57, I headed off for a two-year training course in Waldorf Education. The course helped me further understand child development; to allow children to fully develop their bodies and learn through play first, and to leave formal education of reading and writing until the age of seven: a practice used in Finland and many other countries. In addition, I learned about the different temperaments of children, their traits and personalities, the power of the imagination, and how education and learning could be enhanced through an artistic approach.
One key aspect of this training was an understanding of the daily Main Lesson, unique to a Steiner Waldorf school, which lasts up to two hours and takes place every morning.
It consists of:
breathing in and breathing out activities. The breathing in and out activities are connected to the head, heart and hands. This can include: singing (heart); dance (heart and hands); playing the flute (heart); movement exercises (hands); dictation and math problems (head); and individual bookwork tasks (head).
There is a three-day rhythm to the Main Lesson which consists of 3 parts: new content, recall or review, and practice/bookwork.
During the Main Lesson in Classes 1 and 2, you teach mainly English and Maths, expanding this once you reach Class 3 to cover History, Geography and Science, in a holistic and implicit manner.
My task over the winter holidays was to plan the first of a four-week block on Norse Mythology.
My objectives for this block were mainly literacy based. So, I decided to use the Pie Corbett Talk for Writing: creating visual story maps matched with physical gestures, to enhance their oral storytelling skills and embed imaginative vocabulary. Alongside of this, I will be able to teach fronted adverbials, the four parts of speech, punctuation including speech marks, future, past and present tense of verbs, and at the end of the four weeks the class will have each written their own Norse Myth, which I intend to publish as a collection of short stories and poems. So, watch this space, the book should be available early March!
An example of our last Talk for Writing story map on Beowulf is below. It can be seen to say:
Beowulf stood holding the monster’s arm; he knew the monster would bleed to death. Grendel was defeated.
By the next morning the news of the great fight at Heorot had spread throughout the land. So that everyone should know that the tyrant was truly dead and their grief finally at an end, the hero hung high in the gables of Heorot, where all could see, that whole torn-off limb, shoulder, arm and hand, gruesome witness to the monster’s violent end.
As for my journey, if you’d have asked me if could, sing, draw, paint or play a musical instrument, I would have replied, “no!”
However, since joining Elmfield, I have started to learn to play the piano and flute, joined a choir and I feel I can paint and draw. I also orally tell stories more than I ever had before.
My life is richer and my class can see me growing along side them every day.