My friend Robert tells me, “How we raise and educate our children is a key element in whether or not we survive! That’s why your book is so important! Because civilization is, in Victor Frankl’s term, “running on the wire.” “But,” I counter, “my teaching memoir is simply life in a Waldorf classroom, moments, conversations, little kids becoming big kids,…
I worry that as time goes on and, as schools increasingly focus on the “thing” that is the curriculum and the “thing” that is the test, we will forget what is missing at school. So, I want to invite you into my classroom in a school where teachers and their students are free to learn together without the interference of…
They sit in front of a screen for five hours a day, hundreds of people at desks moving through the programs, step by step. Once a week they meet with a person for fifteen minutes. Occasionally they join a group listening briefly to a speaker. But mostly they interact with a screen, reading and giving answers.They try to keep on…
According to studies and parents themselves, parenting can make you tired, overwhelmed and anxious. And no wonder. The parent zone includes marinara drizzled onto your new beige carpet, more hours in the car than in your bed and entire mountain ranges of laundry. Plus you are responsible for the health and well being of someone who means more to you…
“In an era where “high-stakes testing” and other so-called standards and measurements has taken over our public schools, this look into the life of a Waldorf school feels like a refreshing oasis in the desert!” “As an Early Childhood Waldorf parent of two with one just entering the grades, I was glued to the book A Gift of Wonder…
by Kim Allsup Growing Children October, 2018 I have a scar on my lower lip because I was a child before cars had seat belts and forgiving interiors. The driver braked hard and I flew into the sharp edge of a metal strip. Many new technologies are not inherently safe and the automobile is still in the not-quite-fully-safe category. After…
Writing in The Atlantic, Paul Barnwell says that students today have a “broken moral compass” because “The pressures of national academic standards have pushed character education out of the classroom.” (link below) One of the reasons I wrote A Gift of Wonder was to share a picture in which character education is integrated with academics. I discovered that this approach…
At the start of the school year teachers and homeschoolers plan out their year, listing fun math projects, great sweeps of history to share, music to sing and stories to tell. As we look ahead to the fall we anticipate the dimming of the light, perhaps an autumn gale or two and weather growing ever colder. This turning of the…
