Navankur Academy - Steiner inspired Waldorf School

A child's inner, emotional life adds vibrancy and color to his or her experience of the world. When students bring heartfelt interest to their studies, knowledge comes alive. This conjunction of feeling and thinking makes students more receptive and perceptive and undoes their natural tendency toward self involvement. Students begin their education with their feelings melded with what they do. During their time in school, their feelings must merge with what they think.When feelings connect strongly with ideas, idealsim is born. Engendering thinking that is warm, vital, and creative is an important goal of a Waldorf education.

Children need to be responsible ans responsive, inwardly as well as outwardly.Students need good " soul" habits as well as good habits. In short, they need to be emotionally responsive, both to their classmates and teachers. They should not be allowed to erect a wall of disinterest and refuse to make emotional contact with what they study. I recently visisted a sixth grade class and saw a quartet of boys who refused to allow what they were being taught to engage them emotionally. They were studying geology, but all of their efforts went into acting "cool". They faced the side of the room rather than the teacher and continually exchanged glances with each other. There was no way they would show any whole hearted interest in the subject. This type of situation demands immediate attention, resolve, and creative teaching. Teachers must go out of their way to help students, particularly boys, to be emotionally responsible before they do something cruel and heartless.

Self-discipline is the ability " to do the right thing." A key element that enables self discipline to develop in a healthy way is the early formation of good habits, habits that become " second Nature." When children are young, it is possible to develop these habits by providing them good examples and consistent routines. This enables children to learn by doing and is preferable to the reminders and lectures that are often given to older children when these habits are not established early on. When a young child becomes accustomed to hanging his coat on a hook whatever he comes into school, it becomes a natural part of what is done for years. When children develop the habit of clearing their desk and putting things away before they go out, it is easier for them to do what is expected of them even when they are in a hurry. A child's capacity to do what he doesn't feel like doing will convey to homeowrk, music practice, family chores, and even to aspects of a job. The good practices that children establish at an early age through imitation and regular repetition pave the way for the development of maturity and self-descipline later.

Doing the Right Thing
Efforts to lead children to fullness must invariably be concerned with helping children develop the ability to seperate what they feel from what they do. Education should be based on the understanding that for young children their impulse for activity is intricately connected with their feelings. If a young child wants a toy, he often takes it regardless of whose toy it is. Similarly, if a young child doesn't feel like doing something, she will often just run away. Gradually through their education at home and at school, children learn that they can't do something ( just as hit another child) just because they feel like it. They also learn that there are times when they have to do something ( such as clean up their toys) even if they don't want to.
For better or for worse, this is an essential ingredient in maturity, a characteristic of responsibility. Most adults stopped asking themselves long ago whether they feel like going to work on Monday morning. Likewise, mothers and fathers don't ask themselves whether they feel like getting up to change a crying baby, or make lunches, or help with homework; they simply do it. If children are to grow up to be responsible adults, both in the workplace and in the home, schools and homes must assist this process by encouraging the development of self- discipline.

On the other hand, the thoughtful observant child needs to add a measure of impulsiveness and energy to his demeanor, something that makes life risky and exciting, and will eventually make him feel fulfilled. Even though most children won't choose to put themselves in situations that encourage this type of personal growth , it is what they will admire and appreciate in others. Waldorf schools serve as advocates for children by offering an educational program that promotes well- rounded development.

All children have predilections, areas of strength where they are more comfortable and interested. These interests are important and can become pronounced at an early age. Such interests generally reflect unique talents. They usually are the areas where students will excel during their years of schooling and later in the workplace and should never be ignored. And yet, on a personal level, these strengths need to be " rounded off " and expanded to bring fullness and completion to an individual student's development. The active child, the one who confidently feels the power of her own ability and is willing to lead, needs to add thoughtfulness and sensitivity to others to become an integral part of the group. In short, this student needs to add something less intrinsic to her nature , something controlled, measured, reserved, something less impulsive.

In a similar manner, the Waldorf curriculum exposes students to a wide variety of subjects, encouraging them to develop in a well-balanced way as it helps children to overcome gender stereotypes and, at the same time, expand their individual interests. Girls and boys take woodwork and learn to knit and sew, and evryone plays a musical instrument. The gifted math student is asked to leave the safe cofines of abstract thinking and to enter unfamiliar territory, finding emotional expression through painting and movement. At the same time, the artistically expressive student is asked to experience the clarity and predictability of trignometry and calculus. Athletes are encouraged to be artistic and artists are encouraged to be athletic.This effort to complement students' natural abilities begins at an early age and continues throughout their time at a Waldorf school. It is encouraged by the curriculum and supported by the fundamental understanding that a child's strength should not become their weakness because of onesided development.

Third-grade students have arrived at school early on a sunday morning. Their suitcases are being loaded onto a bus to take them on a five day trip to a working dairy farm in upstate New York. On the farm they will help bring in the cows, muck the barn, gather the eggs, and experience a different way of living. This is an important event for the children. For many of them, it is the first time that they will be away from their parents. The students have been preparing for this trip for a long time, knowing that all of the third graders at this school go on the farm trip. It is a rite of passage, something that fills the students with anticipation and with a certain amount of anxiety.
The teacher has also prepared them for this trip. Some of the most important instructions have focused on the meals that the children will eat at the farm. The children are told that they may be served foods that they may never have eaten before, and that they are expected (unless they have an allergic sensitivity) to try some of everything. This invariably means that many children must expand their culinary horizons. And they do. They will return home after their time at the farm and report to their parents that they have actually eaten lima beans or beets for the first time and "they were good," or that they ate the crust on the homemade whole wheat bread that they helped make - and liked it. Everyone is pleased - parents, teachers , and especially the children- when this occurs. The idea that children should broaden their horizons and "try some of everything" is an essential part of a Waldorf Education.

Everything in life is taken in deeply by the young child, to be transformed and expressed later in creative play. Providing the time and appropriate materials for this kind of play helps the child work his way into earthly life by imitating, through his play, everything that he experiences. Allowing this natural impulse of creative imagination to flourish is one of the greatest gifts parents can give their child between birth and first grade .

wonderful write up n an eye opener..plz read dear parents..

The Eurhythmy group from Dornach, Switzerland performed at The Heritage School on 24th Jan. Out of all the shows, the one I liked most was the movement performed by Ms. Dilnawaz bana, the great Eurhythmy teacher, on Gayetri Mantra and the depiction of the Four Temperament by the group.
I was fortunate to talk to Carole from Switzerland, the teacher on Curative Eurhythmy who explained that the child, between 0-7 years learns through the fingers and bones, not through the brain. Tell this to parents, specially to those parents who insist upon the school teachers to teach literacy to their children, when they are really not ready.

We can't go back to a milk~and-cookies mentality that denies the changes that have led to the present.However, we need to recognise that the world of the young child is critically endangered today,as more and more children are placed in child care begining in infancy and academics are pushed onto younger and younger children.It has become even more urgent that we understand that children are not little adults. They do not think, reason, feel or experience the world as an adult does. Instead, they are centered in their bodoes and in the will, which manifests in such powerful growth and the need for movement in the first seven years. They learn primarily and more appropriately through example and imitation. Repetition and rhythm are also vital elements in the healthy world of the young child and need to be emphasized by parents and others responsible for the care of young children.