By The Waldorf School of Lexington

Our first and second graders have been working on knit cats in their recent distance learning Handwork lesson. View the tutorial that some of our youngest knitters are using to create their handmade cat. https://bit.ly/36MWRf2

The Guest House 
This being human is a guest house.
​Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
Because each has been sent, as a guide from beyond. 
— Jellaludin Rumi, --- (translated by Coleman Barks) 

Who would have imagined an unexpected visitor, in the form of a virus, could sweep through our lives so swift and radically impact us physically, socially, emotionally, financially and spiritually, creating a global crisis. There were talks that it could happen and it has happened in the past. However, we were not prepared for such a visitor on our doorstep, nor could we think about meeting this one at the door, laughing. While we distanced so the uninvited guest would not violently sweep through our homes, it turned out there is still upheaval and many of the vulnerable are still experiencing great loss and sorrow. 

Emerging from this crisis requires personal and collective transformation physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, in order to prepare us to create order out of the chaos created by the effects of a global pandemic. The consolation of a new normal may not apply, since crossing the barriers of distancing to meet face to face again; we will encounter new awareness to our responses of socially connecting and engaging since pre-corona times. And one of the dark thoughts we may encounter when we open the door to meet the world again, is Fear. 

Now as we begin to navigate our way across the bridge to meet one another in our school environments, working with the Twelve Senses can help prepare ourselves and support the children’s need for healing.. 

Waldorf Early Childhood Education emphasizes working with young children on the four foundational senses, touch, life or well-being, movement and balance. In preparation to engage with the children, we may want to re-evaluate our responses, for instance, regarding the sense of touch. It is important when we encounter the children in our environments we cultivate gestures of love and warmth as opposed ‘to fear of contracting a virus.’ Developing the sense of touch, the children, as sense organ beings, will touch everything, taste, smell, and even put things in their mouths. Therefore interacting with inner calmness, we reinforce their sense of trust that the world is good. As for their sense of life or well being, daily checks of temperatures, hand washing and sanitizing, may become part of our meaningful work to ensure the safety and well being of everyone. Their sense of movement may be rigorous to compensate for disruption to the children’s daily routines and rhythms of indoor/ outdoor play and being in Nature, essential to regenerate their life forces. Our sensitive observation could be a key practice for daily visual checks supporting the children’s inner and outer sense of balance to reorient them in the world as a safe and healthy place. 

As teachers, in preparation to return to school, we could make daily personal assessment of body, mind and spirit, journal, continue our meditation practices to deepen our inner work and remember to seek help as needed. With regard to our own foundational sense, our sense of movement and gestures could be slower and conscious to meet the needs of children who could be over or under stimulated. It may be necessary to strengthen our life forces with nourishment, remedies and self care. Our sense of well being will demand our strong ego presence and for the sense of touch, as in the approach used by Mother Teresa, we practice the use of loving care over fear. It is essential we involve parents and draw parameters where collaboration on the health and well being of the children, parents and teachers are high priority to ensure everyone’s sense of balance is re-enforced once more. 

In these times of disruption, we have engaged with deep vulnerability to connect and communicate, employing the use of media to cross thresholds of distancing into the lives and homes of our parents, children and colleagues. We are a testimony to the creative abilities we share as a Waldorf community using social art and media to consciously stay connected. As we emerge from our homes and step into the world again, may we be grateful and befriend fear at the door instead of making it an unexpected guest in our house. Using new eyes to envision a hopeful future, new ears to listen to the stories of the other and new minds to conceive a sustainable earth, may we help to restore the world as good, beautiful and truthful for our children and community. 

By Rihana Mustapha-Rutledge 

Announcing a Midsummer Festival of Puppetry Arts -- A Collaborative Showcase -- Saturday July 25th 2020

We welcome you to join us, from the comfort of your own location, for a virtual celebration of the gifts of storytelling and puppetry arts. In lieu of our East Coast conference because of pandemic restrictions, this year we invite artists, educators, and therapists who are working out of Waldorf inspiration to share their essential work with others!  Our event will open at 1pm (EST) on July 25th with an exploration of the theme, “Imaginal Forces and the Power of Healing”, to be followed by short video clips of puppet story presentations and a reflection from their creators.

Donations to this event will support the formation of an association for threefold storytelling and puppetry arts. More ...

Every May, the Waldorf school in Santa Fe, New Mexico, brings their eighth grade students on a class trip—a trip that the kids have all worked toward, by raising the money selling burritos and pizzas.

But when they were denied their reward this spring because of the pandemic, students decided to show compassion to those in need by donating $2,800 worth of supplies to the Navajo Nation, which is suffering from one of the highest per-capita COVID-19 infection and death rates in the US. On Tuesday, May 26, Jessica Falkenhagen rented a van so she could drive with her older daughter, 11th grader Indie Russell, to Window Rock, Arizona. The van was stuffed with food, toiletries, paper products, school and cleaning supplies, pet food, thermometers, handmade masks and 60 gallons of drinking water—all purchased with the class trip money. Also included was a large bag of face masks homemade by Indie.

Students helped with pre-trip shopping and loading the van. “They were great helpers trying to fit everything in as efficiently as possible,” says Falkenhagen. A cultural anthropologist with a background in indigenous rights, Falkenhagen suggested the idea to the school after tracking the growing crisis in the Navajo Nation. “I could see how lit up the kids were about that idea,” teacher Daisy Barnard said, after she put the idea to the class. “None of them complained about using the money for something other than a trip.”

“We’ve been anxiously following developments on the Navajo Nation over the past couple months and this money ended up being a real windfall at just the right time,” said Barnard. The class trip that had been planned would have been a real adventure, too—a multi-day rafting voyage on the San Juan River in Utah. Eighth grader Daisy Blue Russell is glad things worked out the way they did. “It felt good to use our trip money to help others who needed it.” - from goodnewsnetwork

Educating through "Head, Heart and Hands" has been a hallmark of Waldorf educators for decades. The idea behind the phrase is that learning should involve the whole human being and be based on relevant and multi-sensory experiences that engage and inspire each student.

With classrooms shuttered worldwide and most students now learning at home, how are Waldorf schools continuing to engage the whole child? What does experiential learning look like outside of the classroom? 

Waldorf teachers are rising to the challenging task before them, adapting and working creatively to not just deliver curriculum but to make sure students continue to feel safe, welcome, supported, and a part of a greater learning community. While distance learning may be more suited towards delivering short-term memory learning such as facts, vocabulary lists, or math worksheets, Waldorf educators continue to focus on applying and linking learning concepts to wider experiences. Maintaining this hallmark of Waldorf curriculum is where creativity with distance learning really comes into play. 

Take for example how seventh-grade history students at several Waldorf schools are learning about the Age of Exploration and are receiving assignments to choose and research an explorer online. The remainder of the lesson is an experiential offline assignment, including a written and illustrated biography to be placed in main lesson books, and at the Portland Waldorf School, students are involved in the creation of a board game both outlining and gamifying the journeys made by their explorer of choice.

Language arts lessons at the Aurora Waldorf School include pandemic journals for class 7 and 8 students, to be designed with the understanding of what such a journal would require to be one day used as historical primary source material. Math times tables can still be tied to jumping rope; fractions and units of measure to cooking; geometry to hand-drawn geometric forms; and platonic solids to 3D modeling all with simple materials sent to or found in students' homes. While care in curriculum addresses the head and hands, the heart is still an equal priority and Waldorf schools and teachers have found new ways to focus on community and connection. Resources for parents are an integral part of the community support offered by schools and often include supportive instructions, songs, crafts, and other online resources parents may need to enhance both learning time and unstructured playtime at home. Experiential education is, at its heart, about adaptation and innovation around students' unique learning strengths and needs. As such, it is no surprise that Waldorf educators have taken distance learning in stride and that examples of innovative curriculum delivery and community building carry on and expand in our communities as school closures continue.  More ...

Dear Friends, Why do we celebrate Whitsun and what is its meaning?

Rudolf Steiner calls Whitsun the festival of the free Individuality. He writes in The Festivals and Their Meaning, "And then there comes before us the mighty picture, with a force that works like a force present in the soul itself. Then do we feel the future, as the first understanders felt it under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, if only we are willing to make alive in our souls that which knows nothing of the boundaries separating the different parts of humanity and speaks a language which all souls, all the world over, can understand. We feel the thought of peace, of love, of harmony, which lies in the Whitsun thought. And we feel this Whitsun thought enlivening our Whitsun festival." Join us May 31, Whitsun Sunday, from 7:30-9:00 pm ET for Five Good Words: An ASA Online Community Exploration of Whitsun with Orland Bishop. Together we will explore the meaning of this festival during a time when many things are unknown. Orland writes in his book The Seventh Shrine, "What is awakened in the human being in a time of difficulty is the predisposition to make contact with the spiritual world, the invisible guidance within one's destiny."

This gathering will open with 12 people each sharing five good words which are resounding in their hearts in contemplating this festival. We will also invite you to speak your own five good words "which all souls, all the world over, can understand." 


When: Sunday, May 31 7:30-9:00 ET. Can't join us live? No problem. All Zoom registrants will receive an emailed recording of the event within 24 hours of the live session.
Where: Online with Zoom meetings. Suggested Donation: $5-10
How: Register here! All levels of experience with the festival welcome.  


Looking forward to seeing you online! Warmly, Laura Scappaticci / Artwork generously shared by Iris Sullivan

Now Accepting Pre-Orders for Our Upcoming New Edition of The Ultimate Meeting Notebook and Calendar/Planner for 2020/2021. The Ultimate Meeting Notebook ™ and Calendar / Planner is a publication by Sophia Institute. The calendar / planner pages are large format month by month with lots of space for entering important dates and appointments. The calendar section includes monthly calendars for July 2020 through December 2021. Holidays and the dates of festivals are also included. The notebook pages feature  generous sections for taking notes and recording other essential data during meetings including: name of meeting, attendance list, absentee list, date, to-do-list/action items section and date of next meeting. The Virtues of the Month are included with each month in the calendar section of this publication. The Virtues of the Month were given by Rudolf Steiner as meditations in the publication “Guidance in Esoteric Training.”

Copyright by Sophia Institute (Standard Copyright License). Publisher: Sophia Institute. New edition published May/June 2020. Language: English. Pages: 212. Binding: Coil. Interior Ink: Black & white. Dimensions (inches): 8.5 wide x 11 tall.

 Regular ​$29.95 (USD)

Pre-Order Deal: $25 (USD) and free shipping within the United States. International shipping/at cost. More ...

The Art of Teaching Waldorf Grades Program
3 - 7 credits per unit. Duration: 2 - 6 months.
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The Sophia Institute online Waldorf Certificate Programs concern themselves with basic and underlying principles of Waldorf Education, curriculum suggestions and practice, and Waldorf methods. The knowledge and understanding of the basic principles is essential for anyone embarking on or deepening their study - and ultimately the practical application - of this teaching method.

The online Art of Teaching Waldorf Preschool/Kindergarten or Art of Teaching Waldorf Grades 1 - 8 are Waldorf Teacher Preparation Courses for practicing teachers and have been designed for teachers who want to study these courses for renewal or professional development.

The online Waldorf Teacher Preparation Courses assume that students enrolling in these courses have a basic familiarity with the principles of Waldorf Education and its underlying philosophy, Anthroposophy. The courses are designed for Waldorf teachers preparing themselves for teaching preschool/kindergarten or one of the grades. The courses for preschool/kindergarten include 7 credit courses, while the courses for Waldorf teaching grades  1 - 8 each include 12 lessons and access to an online mentor for the duration of the course with up to 10 hours of live video call/conference mentoring. The lessons include reading material, online presentations (videos, other sources) and research tasks. We assign a mentor to each student. The assigned mentor works with the student for the duration of the program, giving feedback, evaluating assignments, suggesting additional work, etc. Duration: 6 months (7 credits) for the preschool/kindergarten program, and 2 months (3 credits) each for the Waldorf grades teaching preparation.

​Please find a listing and description of the Waldorf Teacher Training/Art of Teaching Waldorf courses below. These courses are of particular interest to teachers wanting to prepare for specific grades, for instance grade 4, or for teaching in a preschool/kindergarten. Each course has a focus on preschool/kindergarten or one of the grades, and includes lessons from the Sophia Institute Waldorf Curriculum Courses 1 and 2, the Waldorf Methods/Reading and Math Courses 1, 2 and 3, the Waldorf Methods/Sciences Courses 1, 2 and 3, The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy 1 and 2, The Four Temperaments, The Wisdom of Fairy Tales, The First Three Years, and Early Childhood Education. The Art of Teaching Waldorf Grades include up to 10 hours of additional mentoring via video call/conference. More ...

This was a very special interview for me to conduct. I made up my mind quite a while ago that I wanted to feature an episode on eurythmy. It was an extra special treat to get to have my mother-in-law Carol Renwick as my guest. Carol met Anthroposophy and eurythmy in her twenties when she was a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Toronto. Eurythmy spoke to her soul and held out a promise of supporting her to become a whole, integrated person, not just a walking head and dancer with little connection between the two.  She decided to commit to the 4 year training and then also studied eurythmy pedagogy.  She taught in various Waldorf schools, both to children and parents, while also raising two children. She has also taught residents and coworkers in communities for people with developmental challenges. Her path also took her into energy healing which she sees and experiences as very related, both helping her to develop herself, and deepen her understanding of our spiritual, mental, emotional and physical being. She has subsequently taught eurythmy in Mexico as well as the USA and enjoyed the challenge of working in Spanish. This has helped her to understand the special character and genius of both Spanish and English. 

In this episode Carol and I discuss how she discovered eurythmy, and then what eurythmy is. To define it simply, eurythmy is a style of movement. Similar to dance, but not quite the same. One of the most distinct qualities about it, as Carol points out is how it can be used with spoken words like poetry. She gives examples of exactly how the phonetics of words can be illustrated through eurythmy. We also discussed the intended uses of eurythmy and why it's taught in Waldorf schools.

More ...

During this time of greater external boundaries, we can come together online to explore a deeper understanding of the way our personal, spiritual and physical boundaries meet the world. Join us this May for a new webinar series, An Exploration of the Twelve Senses. It has been eighty years since the founding of the first Camphill community in Aberdeen, Scotland, founded by Karl König. His work laid the foundation for using the twelve senses as a diagnostic tool and has continued to inform those working in this field. These topics will be explored in depth at "Pathways to a Human Future: The Twelve Senses", an in-person conference hosted by the Threefold Education Foundation in Spring Valley, NY, slated for 2021. Join your anthroposophical community to learn more about the 12 Senses with Harlan Gilbert, Joan Sleigh, and Jane Swain. Read more about our wonderful presenters here! 

May 13, 20, 27 (Can't join us live? No problem. A recording of each webinar will be emailed to registrants within 24 hours of each live gathering.) 
May 13: 7:30-8:30 pm ET - Portals to Three Worlds: Sensing The Worlds Around, Within, and Between Us. An Overview of the 12 Senses with Harlan Gilbert 
May 20: Joan 1:00-2:00 pm ET - The Social Senses with Joan Sleigh (Please note different presentation time due to Joan's time zone and location.) 
May 27: Jane 7:30-8:30 pm ET - How the Senses Develop in the Early Years of Life with Jane Swain 

Online with Zoom webinars. Click here to register.  Cost: $40 suggested donation - Hope to see you online! - Warmly, Laura Scappaticci

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