Waldorf

An offbeat private school brings the teachings of Rudolf Steiner to Clackamas County

Meet the Waldorfs

Associate Editor David Stroup takes a tour of the sometimes-controversial Waldorf school system - and meets the passionate teachers who will soon call the Milwaukie Middle School building home

They're dedicated, they're different, and, most of all, they're coming: The Portland Waldorf School will start calling Milwaukie home this fall.

Despite a sometimes-bitter fight to keep them out of the soon-to-be-abandoned Milwaukie Middle School site downtown, Waldorf officials say they're anxious to introduce themselves to the community - and say they want to give their new neighbors a peek at the Waldorf way of doing things.

"The academic subjects are all woven together," explained Lauren Johnson, a Waldorf parent in the school's development office. (Many Waldorf staffers and administrators are also parents of students at the school.) "The arts and movement and handwork are all woven together to enhance the academic subjects."

The program has drawn fire from a small contingent of critics when the Waldorf Method has been mingled with public education - a mingling that won't be happening in Milwaukie (see sidebar, page A?). Critics elsewhere have accused Waldorf schools of everything from academic laxity to teaching an occult philosophy. The program fosters individual creativity and exploration, de-emphasizes electronic media, encourages students to work with their hands and embraces such offbeat concepts as the dance-like art of Eurythmy.

The center of the Waldorf education program - and the lightning rod for critics - is the system's founder, philosopher Rudolf Steiner. Teachers still draw inspiration from his philosophy, called "Anthroposophy" - an esoteric school of thought that seeks to tie man and nature and spirituality together into a whole. Adherents say Anthroposophy is a philosophy grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition, but it's not itself a religion.

In fact, concepts from world religions can be found throughout the private school's curriculum - something teachers and administrators aren't shy about. In one grade level, stories from the Old Testament are used; in others, the emphasis is on Norse mythology or other traditions. You're as likely to see the Pillars of Islam on a chalkboard as any Christian symbolism.

"The teaching of religion doesn't happen," Johnson said. "There are stories that are brought in - they're based on the Judeo-Christian aspect, on Hinduism and Buddhism ... all cultures. The goal at the end is to create children who recognize the context of what many, many people before them have done."

Tensions on the way to Milwaukie
The North Clackamas School District chose to sell the junior high to the Portland Waldorf School last fall, following a six-month "request for proposals" (RFP) process.

The city and community groups that wanted to turn the junior-high site into a community center were unable to come up with a satisfactory offer to buy the junior high. City offers were anywhere from $400,000 to $1 million shy of the Waldorf bid - and school-board members expressed doubts about the solidity of the city's funding sources.

Tensions didn't end there. A pair of Waldorf School volunteer parents who set up an information booth last year at the Milwaukie Farmer's Market were asked not to return - but no city officials would admit to opposing their presence. And at one point, Milwaukie Mayor Jim Bernard said he'd consider condemnation to keep Waldorf from buying the site. However, by the end of 2001, the mayor had expressed a change of heart: "We'd like to sit down with Waldorf and discuss some of the things they said they can do for the community," he said. Among those "things": the possible sharing of the site's coveted playing fields.

One of the main goals of the move to Milwaukie is to bring all of the Portland Waldorf School programs - from kindergarten through high school - together into one building. At present, the majority of the Waldorf kindergarten programs are a five-minute drive from the main school, which is located on Northeast 50th, just north of East Burnside; the Waldorf high school is currently located 10 minutes in the other direction.

A different way of teaching kindergarten
The first Waldorf School was founded in Germany in 1919 to provide an education for the children of factory workers. Rudolf Steiner had been asked to create a school based on the philosophy he espoused - Anthroposophy.

According to the Web page of the Anthroposophical Society in America, Steiner defined the philosophy as "awareness of one's humanity." Merriam-Webster Online defines it as "a 20th century religious system growing out of theosophy and centering on human development," although Waldorf administrators and volunteers insist it isn't religious.

Each of the Waldorf kindergarten classrooms looks a little different from the other. "Things that you'll notice are the softened colors," said Margarett Kale, leading a tour of the facilities. The coloring technique, she said, is called "lazuring," and it's one of the trademark artistic techniques of Steiner's progeny. Lazuring produces walls dabbed with color - painted with light; it's like stepping into a cocoon of soft radiance.

"With color on the wall, it really allows the light to come through," Kale said. "It's the same reason that the children in their art do a lot of watercolor - because watercolor allows the light to come through." Waldorf classrooms also have rounded corners wherever possible, and the decor embraces natural fibers and shapes; silk drapes over windows soften the light. Waldorf kindergarten, ideally, runs for two years, with the ages mixed. The teaching emphasis for that age group includes storytelling - usually conducted in a circle of little chairs, with a candle in the middle lit by the teacher. There are also gardening projects and "nature tables" - little shrines to the seasons - plus an annual nature festival. You won't find TVs, computers or plastic toys.

Waldorf kindergarten teacher Robin O'Brien said the private-school's techniques nurture the imagination. "Once you've seen a film, then you can't imagine a character differently when you read the book," she explained. At a Waldorf kindergarten, she said, students "can pick up a wooden block, and for one minute it can be a cell phone, and then in the next minute it's going to be their little loaf of bread. Instead of having little plastic loaves of bread and little cell phones, they can be anything."

An emphasis on art ‚ and less TV
The kindergartners play, garden and work with their hands, even making their own snacks. The all-pervasive emphasis on art will follow Waldorf students through the grade levels; still, Waldorf administrators argue that the program doesn't just produce artists.

The system's very particular style of artistic instruction at younger grades has drawn fire from some parents who left the program, complaining that their children weren't taught to draw lines or paint representationally. Instead, the Waldorf Method emphasizes "wet-on-wet" watercolors and drawing shapes.

During the tour, Kale showed off the art of Waldorf kindergartners - flowing color studies in wet-on-wet watercolor. "They're very pastel and soft, really without form," she said. "They don't begin to introduce form into their paintings until about third grade."

It's part of an overall philosophy of protecting the child at the younger grade levels - a philosophy that extends to encouraging Waldorf parents to keep their kids away from TV.

"We see the child as on its way to becoming the butterfly," Kale said, "so that what we have now perhaps is this caterpillar, but we have a clear picture of what the final product is ... and so everything that's being done to shelter and nurture the child's imagination is being done because we want to create this resourceful adult."

A slower approach to reading
The Waldorf grade-school years see a continuation of these basic themes - but the education slowly evolves into something more traditional. At the Waldorf School's main building in Portland, you'll still find "lazured" rooms bathed in light - but you'll also find more traditional classrooms, their walls plastered with the students' projects in African history or Greek mythology. However, you still won't find computers until the high-school level. Also, reading is introduced more slowly to students than in public schools - a major hot point for critics of the Waldorf method.

Johnson said the students do start early with letter-sounds, and Waldorf literature describes teaching at an early age how letters grew from pictographs as language itself evolved. "It's just taught differently," Johnson said. "Picking up a piece of paper and being able to read through it is de-emphasized until the second grade."

Johnson said that Waldorf teachers lay the "foundation of learning" through other methods - such as sound, movement and motor skills. "We'll understand something when we experience it first ... and then read about it," she said.

Grade-school teachers stick with classes, teaching 'blocks' of history, mythology
At the grade-school level, one major deviation distinguishes the Waldorf system from other schools: a single teacher follows each class through its eight years.

Each grade-school day starts with a two-hour main lesson with that teacher. That lesson may be part of a multi-week "block" exploring a single subject - and that block is part of a year-long program, all laid out with an eye to Steiner's philosophy. In the first grade, the emphasis is on fairy tales. Second-graders follow animal fables and the stories of heroes - including religious saints. In the third grade, students turn to more historical sources, plus stories from the Old Testament and other religious texts.

Fourth-graders follow Norse mythology - including tales of Odin, Thor and the other Asgardian gods and their battles against the giants forming a framework for the entire year. Fifth graders study ancient civilizations, including Greece and Mesopotamia. Sixth-graders focus on Africa, seventh-graders on the Age of Exploration. In the eighth grade, students learn about industrialization, the Age of Invention and the 20th century.

Waldorf teacher Nancy Peirce is currently leading her class through the fourth grade - the Norse year - on her second tour through the eight-year cycle.

"The gods in Norse myth are starting to come down to earth, but they're still gods," she explained. The myths conclude with the story of Ragnarok - the great final battle between the gods and the Jotuns, or giants, lead by Loki the evildoer. Unique among mythologies, the Norse gods - the good guys - lose. "The story goes that they won't come back until mankind is noble enough to support them," she said. "Without stating it to the 10-year-olds ... you're giving them the message that when they grow up, they'll have to be those noble people."

In addition to teaching the Norse material, Peirce said this year's "literature line" includes Native American material, plus stories of the pioneers and Lewis and Clark.

A program of 'handwork'
On the day of the tour, students around the school were gathered in circles, knitting - part of "knit-a-thon" fundraiser, with relatives pledging donations for each row completed When they're finished, the individual knit squares will be joined together to make blankets to give to shelters. It's all part of a Waldorf philosophy of "hand-work" that follows students through the grade levels.

At lower grade levels, students work with fibers; as they become more capable, they graduate to woodworking. "They start out making a mallet in sixth grade," explained handwork teacher Tom Meyers. One wall of his class is taken up with shelves holding both students' work and the tools they'd made for themselves - rows of smooth-worn mallets carved from natural logs.

According to Meyers, students start by making tops, then bowls and simple implements - and later create wooden machines and toys comprising carved gears and shafts turned on lathes. By 11th grade, students have learned blacksmithing, and make their own knives. Ninth-graders make bird-feeders (again as a fundraiser) and learn copperwork.

"It's to tie in the intellect and the will," Meyers explained. "We're losing a lot of tactile sensations, just because we don't come in contact with it a whole lot.... The mind is an extension of the brain, and we can teach the intellect through the hands."

Kale concurred: "Dexterity in your fingers equates to a kind of mental dexterity."

Student-made textbooks
Many "three Rs" basics are taught using distinctly Waldorfian methodology. Geometry, for example, might be taught during a block on ancient cultures; math and counting skills might be taught through knitting or weaving. In fact, you won't find textbooks at the lower grade levels - instead, students research subjects themselves, then compile their own texts, complete with notes, maps and art.

Waldorf teacher Kim Lebas explains: "[Students] do a three-week to four-week block on each subject - and from that comes their books. I tell the stories; they re-tell them, and they put them in their books."

Lebas displays one such portfolio - a well-ordered collection of notes, stories, hierarchies of Egyptian gods and the student's own artwork. According to Kale, "In the first grade, the teacher may put a sentence or two [into a student-made workbook] from a fairy tale. By the third grade, some of the students are able to write their own books, and may keep a journal." By fourth grade, she said, everything in a book is student-compiled.

"In fifth grade, we're looking at geometry," Lebas said. "We're looking at geometric shapes and how they fit into space - and out of that comes the concepts of geometry, through art."

'Language within movement'
At the Waldorf High School - 10 minutes away from the grade school, shoehorned into its third temporary home - a dance-like "Eurythmy" class is underway.

Under the direction of teacher Diana Gustafson, teens are moving through interlocking curves and geometric patterns of spirals. They glide through the room - an old converted gym, crowned with frosted skylights.

The students - moving, with the studied indifference of teens, through patterns that make them look a little like figures in some Bavarian town clock - seem to make up a fairly typical cross-section of Portland youth. There are bare midriffs. There are logo t-shirts. There's one disaffected Goth. They're moving, to piano music, through the patterns of Steiner's Eurythmy - an exercise that Waldorf literature describes as a "new art of movement experienced through poetry and music."

High-school teacher Jeffrey Levy explains, following the action on the floor: "The arm positions are related to the musical tones."

Other Waldorf teachers also offered explanations during the tour. "It balances thinking-feeling-willing," Gustafson said. "It brings rhythm into the body ... something that society has taken out of us."

"Eurythmy is language within movement," Kale said. "It's the consonants and vowel sounds in movement.... It's these fabulous abstract shapes, so in a way they learn geometry. To find ourselves in space ... is, I think, part of the human endeavor. To locate yourself, to find your center - to know where you are and where you're going."

Computers from the inside out
Other than the somewhat obscure tenets of Eurythmy, by high school the overall Waldorf lesson plan bears a much closer resemblance to a standard public school's. Students no longer follow a single teacher, and the day is broken up into classes on specialty subjects. And computers finally enter the curriculum.

Portland Waldorf students begin their computer education by taking the machines apart - working with a group called Free Geek that recycles used computers for charity.

"We'd like them to see [the computer] as a tool - a wonderful tool - but it isn't magic," Levy said.

Waldorf parent Kate McGill said she has no problem with the late introduction of computer skills - or with keeping the TV away from younger students. "Early experiences of over-stimulation by computers wire your brain differently," she said. "The kind of wiring with computers and TVs is more directly related to the emotions of the limbic system - and is contrary to the wiring you need for critical thinking and literate speech."

Praising the system
Levy said that even if computers and reading are introduced later in the Waldorf Method, by graduation the students have more than caught up with their public-school peers. He said he was a university teacher before joining the Waldorf system.

"I remember my Waldorf students," he said. "They stood out. At the university, you couldn't throw a Waldorf student a curve.... You could ask them to do anything and they could, and usually very well. In the university, you see the flower - the bloom - of the freedom to really look at things, to look at phenomena, at the arts."

The students generally praised the education they've been getting. "I just started here," said Julia DaRosa, who transferred from Gresham. "It's a lot more artistic, and they integrate art with the curriculum.... If you're into that, it's really good."

"I like the Waldorf curriculum," agreed student Simone Heuer, who's been with the program for three years. "It's more art blended into anything than any other school I've been to."

"It's ... okay. It's kind of different," said Leona Wilson, who said the program is working for her. "My mum's a teacher, so I had to go here - not really. I didn't want to go to public school."

Tobin Masterson-Miller said he's been with the Waldorf system from the start of his education. "It's a great school," he said, pulling himself away from an after-class pool game at a table that's also used to teach physics. "I haven't been anywhere else." He said it's prepared him for life - "more than a public school would."
Philosophy, not religion, say teachers
Waldorf teachers study Anthroposophy, and members say it guides the school's programs - including the more esoteric aspects such as the emphasis on light in painting and the practice of Eurythmy. But they deny that they're teaching religion to students.

"Anthroposophy is never taught in the school," said Johnson. According to McGill although God is referenced in the classroom, "there is no dogma in it.... There's the recognition of the spirit in each child."

Johnson emphasized that they don't swallow the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner whole. "The appropriate things are taken," she said, "but certainly not everything Rudolf Steiner said was appropriate to an educational context - or to the times we live in."

Levy said he's heard of the attacks of some Waldorf critics: "I would ask, 'What is their fear?'" He said as a teacher, it's nice "not to worry that somebody is going to be upset because you put a Madonna up in a classroom ... or teach Islam before it's fashionable to teach Islam."