Final letter Class Two
Receive the child in reverence, educate in love and send forth in freedom Rudolf Steiner Dear Parents, December 2022 This letter and reflection on the year is for you. I have written a personal report for your child, which she/he can read (with your help, where needed). This reflection on the past year and a glimpse into next year and your responses may contribute to us playing our parts more consciously, thoughtfully and hopefully resonantly amongst ourselves. “It takes a village…” is no less true for our community. Take your time reading through it. Maybe over a cup of tea or coffee and some Christmas cake…. The wholeness of fairy tale world of Class 1 made way in Class 2 for something more earthly, complex and nuanced. The children ‘came down to earth’ and connected more and more to the physical world around them, from the paradisal wholeness to something more differentiated, with more questions, uncertainties, dualities and polarities. The children explored and became more aware of complexities of feeling and expression as they began to experience and grapple with the polarities in human nature and the different and difficult choices they must face as a result. This has been quite a threshold for them! The more grounded and human elements in the stories helped to mirror the feelings and struggles in their own lives and relationships, and through those vicarious experiences they begin to learn about their choices and the consequences. The Saints Stories and Animal Fables The Saint Stories and the Animal Fables brought a key polarity into focus. The stories of Saints (and their struggles) appealed to the children’s moral sense of the journey to discover what is right and good, while the Animal Fables provided an opportunity for them to reflect upon the human foibles and characteristics like greed, boasting, meanness and foolishness in contrast to the characteristics like loyalty, generosity, steadiness and wisdom. Reflected in Fables they could ponder and debate without judgment upon themselves. Through these powerful narratives, their imaginations were fed with rich archetypal images, allowing them to live in the feeling realm while experiencing waves of empathy and antipathy. Whilst they are becoming more conscious through conversation and debates about the stories, the route to that is still through feeling and experience. These are the roots that will enable concepts to form in deeper ways in future. When I think back on all the Animal Fables such as The Hermit and the Mouse, The Lion and the Mouse, The Jackal and the Klipspringer, The Crow and the Peacocks, etc., and then the wonderful Spider and the Fly which the children recited so wonderfully, I realise how far we’ve come from the dreamy world of Class 1. Through the Animal Fables much humour came into the class. The children were active in the discussions around the stories and could make clear connections and links to their own lives. The children looked at good and malevolent behaviours, to judge for themselves which action was fair or unjust, to place themselves in the shoes of the victim and the perpetrator/victor, and to learn how to show empathy. The flip side of the Animal Fables was represented in the Saint Stories. The saints were people who, through self-discipline and often strict training, overcame their own lower natures. They endured hardships, displayed immense courage and showed the highest forms of love and compassion. They showed the children that spiritual strength is different to a physical kind and has to be gained in a different way. We lived the story of Saint Jerome (and the Lion), patient and wise. Saint Odilia was born blind and cast out of her home but was still able to show great love and forgiveness. Saint Zita, the humble servant girl, through hard work and dedication brought friendship and light into the lives of others. Offero, who later became known as Saint Christopher, overcame the forces of darkness, finding his true self by helping others. Finally, we travelled the dusty Italian roads with Saint Francis who loved nature and animals and gave us his wonderful Canticle to Brother Sun. Thinking back on all these stories and life lessons learnt, I realise how rich and deep our year has been. I remember the emotional and moral challenges, which we all faced, and the deep feelings we experienced; feelings of joy, sadness, anger, hope, disappointment, happiness… and I feel a sense of achievement and pleasure. We got through it! And then we could end our year beautifully with our play - a testament to the hard work and beauty of the year. Number work When I look back into Number work, and the stories of The Troll and the Red Baron and The Sea People, I see that through the stories, the word sums made sense to the children, because they were linked to something ‘real’ - the children could work out of a context and the numbers and operations were meaningful. I often wondered if I was placing too much feeling into Number work - was it too ‘soft’? - but then I saw the ‘ah ha!’ moments, the enthusiasm to work through maths sums and the progression from simple to more complex work and I am confident that I have given them what they need. Next year will be a more practical year, with lots of ‘formal’ maths to do. Writing and Reading Waldorf education is narrative-based, and real as such because our lives are stories, best represented by stories. Without a sense of story, we are left with fragmented pieces of “facts” which can be twisted into anything, whereas stories bring sense, roots, cause and unfolding consequences. Stories beg to be re-told and remembered and through them we communicate our realities. One way to retain the stories, to make them visible, is to write them down. Through our writing activities, the children have produced their own books, which they can read over and over again and so remember the stories, written by their own hands. This anticipates and prepares for the practice of the children writing their own textbooks in following years, co-producing their own representations of the knowledge they have gathered. They will not need government-standard textbooks, although they will eagerly learn to research books in the libraries. Some of them are already writing quickly and are able to complete vast amounts of text, whereas others would rather spend their time on the drawings which accompany the text. Each child is on their own journey of discovery, and we must not get quickly anxious if they appear to be behind. Remember the slow and steady tortoise! Nothing must be forced as it will likely have the opposite effect. The key at this stage is not quick progress in this or that skill but the cultivation of a deep and life-long love of learning. Through the phonics work, the writing and reading of stories and the Tuesday morning paired reading with parents, the children have become more confident and competent with reading. They are keen and motivated to read and are directing and pushing themselves. In class we read the writing from the board as a class, in groups, in reverse, jumping from one word to another. And they love the game of it. The books written for them by you, are treasures for life! Next year you will see leaps and bounds in ‘cracking the reading code’! Form Drawing Form Drawing is an integral and important aspect of our curriculum. It does not just involve drawing beautiful patterns. It is through form drawing that we bring the child to a real feeling of form, to a feeling of harmony, for symmetry, for relationships. Through form drawing we can guide the child toward experiencing the harmonies that exist in the world around us and inside of us. We worked with the three essential aspects of form drawing. Firstly, the goal orientated, thinking straight line, then the softly swinging, breathing, feeling forms of the curved line and also the dynamic, will-filled spiral forms. We applied these forms in the symmetrical exercises, gestures, and movement of animals, plants and the elements. These ‘mirror images’ again reflect the duality and polarity that the year brought. It is hard to adequately express or prove but I have a strong sense that form drawing helps to wire the brain in generative ways. The intense focus and concentration that they display must be doing something positive. Rhythmical movement, repetition and learning verses We are rhythmic beings. Without rhythms in our lives, we can often lose balance. Rhythms help us to gather, hold and mobilise our energies and to connect with each other through more organically sensed timing, as opposed to hard, static structures. We can also learn much in rhythmic processes. The Eurythmy sessions brought wonderful opportunities for such rhythmic and social movement. We thank Teacher Janine for the beauty, care and warmth of it all. Class 2 is the time when children are able to easily learn reams of words which are written in a rhythmical way. We saw this in the poem of the Spider and the Fly and then again, the St Francis play. They could hear and pick up the words just through rhythmic repetition. In Waldorf schools, children in the younger classes are not given scripts to memorise but learn through listening and rhythmic repetition. This strengthens their memory and capacity for listening. The same goes for playing the recorder. They learn to play just by watching, listening and repeating, so that it permeates their bodies and fingers rather than through a more intellectual or abstract activity of reading the notes. There will be time for that later. In Class 3 they begin to learn music notation – also through a story! Music and Singing Music and singing form a strong and important part of every day. The singing in the morning helps to centre the class, bringing a sense of community and an opportunity to express our appreciation for the world and nature. It helps start the day with joy and lightness. Playing the recorder and learning to express ourselves through a musical instrument adds a whole dimension to the musical life of the class. The recorder is a simple instrument to learn and one which a whole class can learn to play together is therefore very vital to our day. We have been so privileged to have Fiona Burtt teach the class. Next year we will start a wonderful aspect of singing – in rounds! Looking into Class 3 As we go into Class 3 new challenges await us. There is a much starker move away from the ‘fantasy’ world of fairy tales and ‘talking animals’, to stories which are even more real and earth bound. This is done very consciously. As the children come into their ninth year, many questions come from them. They are beginning to see the world and everything in it, as outside of themselves, facing them, instead of being part of it, as the young child naturally does. Their outlook starts to include greater familiarity with, and confidence in, everyday ‘earthly’ things (though without losing touch with the world of fantasy and imagination). This nine-year old threshold is one of experiencing their separateness from others, which can lead to a more conscious awareness of other people in relationship to themselves. The reaching and crossing of the threshold towards a more individual, independent state is often a painful process. Old Testament stories In Class 3 the children are given many opportunities to help them over this feeling of ‘looking-on’, with the Old Testament stories, a theme for the year. Through these stories one can convey morals arising out of situations the children have entered with their feelings. The story of Adam and Eve thrust out of paradise into the physical world is something with which the children can inwardly identify. The wanderings of the Hebrews in the desert, their endless quarrels, fears, and uncertainties, strike an inner chord with their own state of development. From the vast imaginations of the Old Testament stories, one comes right down to brick and mortar of how to build a house, which really is a picture of themselves. These material details give the children a confidence and awareness of the world about them. It reassures them about the ability of human beings to cope. We use these stories as epic tales, not for religious instruction. The children are now ready to express more in their own words, activities and stories. Events and visits will be described with precise observation, looking out at the world. This will become an important element in our work, as the children go beyond learning through imitation to observation and even reflection (a process already begun through our recall processes and many conversations on the stories this year). Next year we will be moving towards free writing of news, poems, and group activities. This brings a buzz into the class, which is so enlivening. We will move from lower case writing to cursive writing. Grammar, Maths and other activities We start Grammar in Class 3 because of the need to develop more conscious language. The fact of recognising whether a word is a ‘doing word’, a ‘naming word’ or a ‘describing word’ helps them in their awareness. However, as in Class 1 where they first learnt the quality of the number before going into the mathematical operations, here too they will first experience the quality and feeling of the Parts of Speech – only using the more technical/abstract words of Verb, Noun and Adjective in Class 4. Also, the precision of measurement, time, weight and money help them to come to terms with their surroundings; both literally, crawling round the classroom with lengths of string or weighing or measuring each other; or more abstractly by realising that time as we see it on a clock face, is only part of a bigger time including sun, moon and seasons. Within the farming lessons we can do a lot to help children master their feeling of a world that is beginning to change. While the child is starting to experience their separate individuality, we balance this with more grounded co-operative activities. This is also then the main theme supporting the newly awakened faculty of observation. The Old Testament stories describe the co-operation between humanity and the divine; farming has to do with co-operation between the farmer and the world of nature; building has to do with the co-operation between different craftspeople. The challenge, which faces us in Class 3, is about balancing the inner/outer individuality. It is about living within the world, which is now so real and stark and still finding the moments of joy and laughter. It is through co-operation, developing a love for words and poetry, working with the hands, creating beauty, that the child in Class 3 can move into the next phase of development with confidence. Life Verse for Class 3 You child will again be given a Life Verse, also known as Report or Birthday verse. This is an individual verse written or chosen for each child by the teacher each year as inner guidance for the following year. The child learns the verse off by heart and recites it on their own once a week in front of the class, for the whole school year. The verse speaks to a certain part of the child, whether a strength or a challenge. The rest of the class listens quietly and soon everyone knows everyone else’s verse and the whole class benefits from the words spoken and felt. Your child can spend the holiday learning it but does not need to have perfected it by the start of school. I will work through the individual verses with each child. Thank you! I would like to thank all parents for supporting me and the class throughout this year. This happened in many ways; through phone calls, informal chats, notes and cards, flowers for the classroom, flowers for me, arriving for reading sessions, letting me know of various happenings in your child’s life which could impact on the school day, being on time, a friendly smile and many words of encouragement. I really appreciate each gesture. Thank you too for my lovely Earthy gift voucher, I will certainly enjoy using it. Doug and I would like to wish you and your family a very blessed time over this festive season. Please be safe and we look forward to continuing this journey with you next year. Warm wishes Teacher Beulah 14th December 2022
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorTeacher Beulah's 'Letter to the Parents' Archives
February 2023
Categories
All
|