Unique Aspects

The Arts

Drama, painting, music, drawing, modeling, etc. are integrated into the academic curriculum, including mathematics and the sciences. The Waldorf method of education through the arts awakens imagination and creative powers, bringing vitality and wholeness to learning. No other educational movement gives such a central role to the arts as does Waldorf education.

The Class Teacher

The Class Teacher stays with the same class of children through eight years of elementary school (grades 1-8), teaching all the main subjects. For the teacher, this means time to really know the children and help them unfold their gifts, as well as the enormous challenge of working with a new curriculum each year. The child finds stability and continuing guidance in working with the same class teacher and being with the same students.

Textbooks

Textbooks are not used in the elementary grades. Instead, the teacher creates the presentation and the children make individual books for each subject taught, recording and illustrating the substance of their lessons. These books, often artistic and beautiful, are an important way in which art is integrated into every subject; they have been the focus of Waldorf exhibitions at American and European museums. Under the title "Education as Art", the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibited student work from the Rudolf Steiner School in New York in 1979, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art showed work from Highland Hall Waldorf School in 1981. In 1979, within a period of six weeks, over 50,000 visitors attended a similar exhibit at Stockholm's Lilljevachs Exhibition Hall.

Foreign Languages

Two foreign languages are taught beginning in the first grade, giving the children insights into and facility with other cultures. The languages vary according to the location of the schools. Here at the Hawthorne Valley School, we currently offer French and German and we offer a third language choice, Spanish, in high school.

The Sciences

The sciences are taught experientially - that is, the teacher sets up an experiment, calls upon the children to observe carefully, ponders, discusses, and then allows them to discover the conclusion - the law, formula, etc. Throughout this process rigorous, independent thinking and sound judgment are trained.

An Extraordinary Humanities Curriculum

The humanities curriculum begins in second and third grade with mythology and legends, and takes the children through the full spectrum of their cultural heritage. The Old Testament in grade three, Norse mythology in grade four, the ancient cultures of India, Egypt, Persia, Mesopotamia, and Greece in grade five, all provide the background for the study of history and are presented through excerpts from original texts. By living into these cultures through their legends and literature, the children gain flexibility and an appreciation for the diversity of mankind. By the close of eighth grade, the students have journeyed from Greece and Rome to medieval history, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Age of Exploration, up to the present day.

Letters Are Learned

The letters are learned in the same way they originated in the course of human history. Men perceived, then pictured, and out of the pictures created abstract signs and symbols. First graders hear stories, draw pictures, and discover the letters in the gestures of the pictures. This process is accompanied by much phonetic work in songs, poems, and games that help to establish a joyful and living experience of language. Through the grades, texts taken from the rich humanities curriculum - Genesis, "The Bhagivad Gita", "The Kalevala", etc. - provide material for reading practice.

The "Main Lesson"

The morning Main Lesson is a two-hour period in the morning, in which the main substance of the day is presented. The subject - it can be algebra, Greek history, botany, or acoustics - is taught for a three or four week block, then dropped, often to be continued later in the term. This approach allows for freshness and enthusiasm, a concentrated, in-depth experience, and gives the children time to "digest" what has been learned.

Music

Music permeates and harmonizes life in a Waldorf school through a curriculum designed to develop innate musicality that every child is born with. In the first and second grades children sing and learn to play the recorder, a simple wooden flute, and the lyre; these activities are practiced daily through the elementary school years. In the third grade, string instruments like the violin, cello or viola are introduced, while the fifth graders have the challenge of joining a class "orchestra", including wind instruments. Music is taught in a Waldorf school not only for its own sake and the joy it engenders, but also because it brings a strong harmonizing and humanizing force into the student's life, strengthening the will and capacities for the future.

Pratical Work

Practical work, like crafts and handwork, are an integral part of the required curriculum from kindergarten through high school. The boys and girls learn to knit in first grade and crochet in second, creating many functional and colorful objects like cases for their recorders, pencil boxes, potholders, puppets, etc. Decades before brain research could confirm it, Rudolf Steiner recognized that brain function was founded on body function. Learning to knit and crochet in the early grades leads to motor skills which metamorphose into lively thinking and enhance intellectual development later on. Coordination, patience, perserverance, and imagination are also schooled through practical work. Activities like woodwork, housebuilding, gardening, and shoemaking, included in the elementary school curriculum, give the children an understanding of how things come into being and a respect for the creations of others.