The end-of-year festival is done, the children have collected their books, paintings and craft items and taken them home. The classroom is a bit of a mess, desks still open, chairs higgledy-piggledy. The bin is overflowing with things the class did not want that were left in their desks. The walls are bare, the blackboard still has old work partially rubbed off where children drew on the board, wishing me and the other children a great summer. The dust begins to settle. It is quiet and still.

Months of activity and hard work all come to a dead stop. Me, ever ready with lessons and dealing with difficulties, suddenly still. The tough meetings with parents, colleagues and College are all silent now. I begin to just stop, knowing my reports are written (I always try to finish them before the end of term) and all I have left to do is collect what I need and head home.

I often take a few minutes to savour this moment, a year complete, filled with work, song, play, reading, crafting and so much more. All complete. A moment to just let go of the year for now.

I take a deep breath and go home.

After a few days or weeks, my perception of the year begins to change. Everything that seemed so important at the end of term feels further away and, with that distance, not as pressing as I had thought. Those last few days of term are filled with so much: writing reports, finalising school admin, sorting out costumes for an end-of-year play, arranging an end-of-term activity with the class, getting children to finish work before the last day and a myriad of other things. From here, they just don’t feel as huge. The year takes on a different quality as I begin to look back on it; everything seems less disastrous and pressing now. The year becomes a tableau in my mind that I look on with new eyes. Big events seem smaller and things I hardly noticed start to be seen in a different light. I start to slowly see the year more holistically: how each block was connected to the next, how the children changed from term to term and how not only the children but I evolved and changed over the year.

These summer days away from the class remind me that while we are teaching, we are often too close, too involved to always see the bigger picture of the year.

June and July slip away as I busy myself with things that are not school related: gardening, holidays, reading or some artistic activity. However, my school and my class always sit just there in the back of my mind. Like most teachers I know, the gathering of material never stops: an article in a magazine, something on a website, books, craft materials. I do try to really leave school and the class behind until August, but the collecting never stops. Preparing the classroom is never done at the same time, as it depends on what I am doing over the summer, but I have covered all that in the last post.

Inwardly, preparation begins slowly and I consciously try not to rush it, to let it bubble up in me as necessary. This preparation is not as active as planning the main lesson block and content, but it is a preparation of what has passed. I return to that tableau that has been forming slowly and quietly in me. I need to allow myself time to go through the last year and let it settle in me, to inform me. It is not a process of analysing or nit-picking or list-making. It is seeing the year as a whole.

The distance created during June and July gives me a clearer perspective on the things that need addressing. The noise of the year fades and I start seeing the essential things, the things that have remained ingrained in me.

These obviously vary from year to year, but they include things like a conversation with a child that has stuck with me. A lesson that came alive far more wonderfully than I had planned. A difficulty with the class, a child, a colleague or a meeting that has left an imprint on me. A situation that I see differently now and wish I had handled differently, knowing in retrospect what I could have done better. Moments when I was not only proud of what I had achieved, but of the class as a whole or something a child had done that filled me with pride.

These things are often things that I had not clearly identified at the time, things that while I was in the thick of it did not stand out as clearly as they should have.

These recollections are laying the groundwork for how and what I prepare for the new year.

For paid subscribers, I continue by looking at what becomes clearer once we have some distance from the year — our successes, our failures and the essential things we need to carry forward.

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Sarah and I continue to explore how parents and teachers can support children’s moral capacities. They discuss how stories, imagination, festivals, and meaningful experiences contribute to a child’s moral development, and they reflect on how children learn through living pictures rather than lectures, how adolescence calls for empowerment, and the steady presence of the parent and teachers as worthy of imitation.

Here is the link

Wonderfully Human Podcast

How Can I Support My Child in Becoming a Good Person (Part 2)

In Part 2, Sarah Barrett and Donovan Gay continue to explore how parents and teachers can support children’s moral capacities. They discuss how stories, imagination, festivals, and meaningful experiences contribute to a child’s moral development, and they reflect on how children learn through living pictures rather than lectures, how adolescence calls f…

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6 days ago · Wonderfully Human Podcast

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In this week’s post I wrote about the difference between a beautiful classroom and one that is simply decorated. Steiner’s words help to show why this matters. The classroom itself is part of the children’s education. The beauty, order and care we bring into the room work upon them, even if they never put it into words.

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I march out into the summer sun, arms laden with metres of wet, freshly dyed muslin. I take the time to hang each piece so it can dry in the warm breeze. I watch the fabric drying and make sure the colour is what I wanted for the year: a warm radiant orange or a soft welcoming pink. Each year has a colour and I try to build this into all I do in preparing the classroom.

And then there are the noisier, messier tasks, like being outside in the sun with a sander, dust everywhere and the sun burning my neck as I start on yet another desk. Once they are all sanded, I dust them off and carry them back into the classroom, ready for a coat of varnish to protect them for another year.

Like so many of my summers over the years, I have spent many hours, days and weeks preparing for September. Some of these jobs are wonderful and enjoyable, some more practical, but all need doing and all have their place in my preparation for the coming year. These practical tasks need doing just as much as the lesson preparation. August is a very busy month.

Getting the classroom, the actual physical space, ready is as important as preparing the lessons. The classroom will hold the class for the year and needs to be ready to receive them, to hold them, to nurture them quietly and to be a safe and calming space.

This summertime task of preparing the classroom has been there for me right from the start. I took my time preparing my very first classroom so many years ago, learning how to do things like change the colour of the paper ball light fittings by bleaching them in the sun and then gently dabbing on watercolour with a sea sponge, building up subtle layers of colour.

These things have always been important to me because I have always known that it is not just the lessons I teach that matter, but also the classroom the children inhabit for the year. It must have an atmosphere that is suitable for learning. Children notice everything, although they do not always acknowledge it in words. They know when a teacher cares for the room, when things have been thought through and placed carefully. There is a different quality in a space when the teacher is orderly, not necessarily fastidious, compared with a classroom that feels neglected and uncared for. Over the years, I have noticed the difference when I enter a classroom that is cared for and one that is not, and there is definitely a subtle effect on the children and their learning. The classroom is as much a part of the children’s education as the lessons they receive.

Creating beauty in the classroom is a skill I have learned over many years and I have seen that there is a huge difference between a beautiful classroom and a decorated classroom. A classroom may contain all the “standard” Waldorf things, like wooden desks, a nature table and Waldorf prints, and yet still have an emptiness about it. With the plethora of monetised Waldorf things now available, I have seen classrooms filled with stuff that still lack the warmth and presence I strive for each year. I have realised that outward appearance alone does not create the beauty I am looking for. There is a vast difference between a classroom that copies the familiar Waldorf aesthetic and one where the teacher has invested time and effort into preparing the room the children will enter in September.

For me, the purpose is not simply to make the classroom look Waldorf. It is a deeper objective, one I carry inwardly as I consider everything I do: does the classroom support the life of the class and what I plan to do this year? It is not about filling the room with things because they are Waldorf or beautiful, or overworking everything to achieve some perfect idea. It is about doing what you know the class needs to be surrounded by, both practically and aesthetically.

So how do we create beauty in the classroom? What is it that actually creates the environment we need?

Well, I’d say first and most importantly that it is not about perfection. It is about trying to get it right and accepting that a little rough is okay. It is also not about expense. I have never really had a budget for preparing my classroom each year, so much of what I have done has come from my own pocket. Being thrifty and clever about how I achieve things has therefore been a great advantage. How do I get as close as I can to what I want within the constraints? This has also been a blessing in disguise, as I think that if I had had a large budget, I might easily have ended up with overkill.

There are many things that, although time-consuming, can make the greatest difference. I always begin with a fresh coat of paint. For me, this lifts the space and gives it a sense of something new, a fresh start. Colour on the walls has always been important to me and if I am not moving to a different classroom, I have to recolour the room. I have followed the colour suggestions at the back of the Stockmeyer Curriculum book. They are suggestions rather than rules, but I have a strong connection to them and they have always been my starting point.

A new colour has always meant painting the walls white first and then applying the colour. I have had no training in lazure painting and have simply muddled through over the years, gradually becoming better at adding colour to the walls. Some colours, such as red, are much easier to apply evenly, while blue requires patience and dedication. From there, I look at the window coverings, taking the muslin curtains down, bleaching them and redyeing them at home in the washing machine.

Then there are all the practical things: the classroom layout and the arrangement of supplies such as main lesson books, paints and paper. It is important to think all these small things through carefully. Does the blackboard need sanding and repainting? Where will the nature table be this year and how large or small should it be for the age of the children? Is there a class sign on the door? Does it need redoing or is there already one that can be used? What images are appropriate for the walls, depending on the class and the age of the children? Do I want to add something whimsical for the year?

One year, I dragged in a large dried branch, wired it to the ceiling and hung it over the centre of the classroom. I then spent many hours cutting leaves from coffee filters, painting each one and glueing on a piece of wire so they could be attached to the branch. There were autumn leaves, spring leaves and blossom and summer leaves. It was a great deal of work, but I did it happily and willingly.

I don’t attempt large things like this very often, but every now and then an idea comes into my mind and I follow it.

The classroom should be a usable, practical space that enables learning and adapts to your needs for the year. Remember that, first and foremost, it is a classroom, a place for learning. It is not a display to impress children, parents or colleagues. It is your space and it needs to work for you and your class for educational purposes.

Then the artistic element comes in. I can’t say this strongly enough: no teacher needs to be an artist. When we do our blackboard drawings, it is not a competition or a comparison. It is you doing your work and striving to achieve your best, and that is more important for the children to see than a perfect drawing on the board. So do your board to the best of your ability and in a way that suits you, rather than trying to copy something you saw on the internet.

Your artistic presence is throughout the room: in the wall painting, the layout of the classroom, the choice of images and the arrangement of the seasonal table. Each of these reflects something of you and that has importance in the classroom. The children see it and although they may not say anything, it works upon them.

Never underestimate the importance of your class seeing you strive or even fail a little. Take the blackboard, for example. I have done some great drawings that I am very proud of and others that have been a total flop, and that is okay. I have done drawings and the children have let me know that they were not my best. But they see me strive, sometimes rub something out and try again, learning from my mistakes. Sometimes I am not happy with a drawing, but they are. So have the courage to draw in front of them. Chalkboard drawings do not have to be perfect things completed away from the children. Our artistic endeavours carry something of our relationship with the children, the subject we are teaching and ourselves, so be open and free in the classroom.

I have heard of teachers spending days perfecting a drawing on the board outside class, teachers who get others to do their drawings and some who simply buy posters or images to hang up for the class. For me, all of these approaches fail to recognise something essential about the purpose of chalkboard drawing.

Preparing a beautiful classroom is not merely an exercise in making it pretty. It goes much deeper. It is about putting yourself into the classroom. Every brushstroke, every placement of furniture, every curtain and every candle represents your active involvement in preparing the space. Most importantly, it is not for you. It is for the children.

For me, it shows as much respect for the children as preparing a good lesson. It is not about how many hours you have put into the work or having your contribution acknowledged. It is about really connecting with the space on behalf of the children so that they are surrounded by what they need and, hopefully, by something beautiful.

The children may never know how much time or effort you put into creating their environment, how many layers of watercolour are on the walls or how many times you had to redye the curtains to get the shade right. But what they do know when they walk into that classroom is that it is for them, filled with care, compassion and love. They walk in and live into the atmosphere you have created for them. And without saying it, they appreciate it.

When it is all done, on the night before they return, the walls are coloured, the curtains hung, the floors clean, the desks placed with name tags and fresh flowers on the seasonal table and my desk. It is peaceful and ready. It is a new room, full of potential. It is not even empty because the children have been the driving force behind all of this, so they are already there in spirit. The classroom is ready, the children are ready and I am ready.

Beauty in a classroom is not an added extra; it is part of the fabric of the classroom. It is one of the many ways in which we tell the children that both they and the year they are about to share with us are worthy of care.

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Hello and welcome to Waldorf Ways, I created this page for those who may need a reading list to get them started.Hello and welcome to Waldorf Ways. I created this page for those who may need a reading list to get them started.

I have been writing about Waldorf education in various forms for several years now and this Substack has become my platform for sharing that writing. My written work is based on my years of experience and dedication to Waldorf education in our constantly changing world. I cover all aspects from inner work to practical classroom questions and the philosophy that stands behind all we do as Waldorf teachers.

There are now more than 200 posts in my archive, which is a lot to ask anyone to work their way through, so I have chosen ten here that I think give a good sense of Waldorf Ways and the different things I tend to write about.

Understanding Waldorf Education

Education Versus Information

The Curriculum and the Developing Human Being

The Inner Work of the Teacher

Teaching Is Not a Performance

What Are We Really Preparing For?

Children and Child Development

The Death of the Inner Picture

The Rush to Independent Thinking

Classroom Practice

Why Recall Matters More Than Coverage

A Beautiful Classroom Is Not a Decorated Classroom

Anthroposophy and the Foundations of Waldorf

It Looks Like Waldorf, But Something Is Missing

Children Need Authority

There are a lot more posts in the archive, of course, but I hope these ten posts are a good place for you to start.

I hope some of these catch your interest.

Donovan

In this episode of Wonderfully Human, Sarah and I explore whether goodness is something we can simply teach or whether it needs the right conditions in which to grow from within the child.

We talk about the importance of quiet, rhythm and artistic experience in childhood, as well as the hidden cost of hurry and over scheduling.

Here is the link

Wonderfully Human Podcast

How Can I Support My Child in Becoming a Good Person?

In this episode, Donovan Gay and Sarah Barrett explore how children develop character through stories, meaningful experiences, and an education that nurtures the whole human being. Together, they discuss the original vision of Waldorf education, the transformative power of storytelling, and how parents and teachers can help children grow into compassion…

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11 days ago · 1 like · Wonderfully Human Podcast

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This week’s article grew out of a question that has followed me for years: when are we working from a real educational principle and when are we simply repeating what has become familiar? Steiner’s words here are a useful reminder that teachers were never meant simply to copy what others had already done.

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I wanted to share something new that has quietly been taking shape over the past few weeks.

Sarah and I have started a podcast together called Wonderfully Human. It grew out of the many conversations we have about childhood, parenting and becoming, and what it means to accompany a child as they grow.

Those conversations often begin with a simple question and then lead us somewhere deeper. The podcast gives us space to explore them properly, without trying to arrive too quickly at a neat answer.

The first three episodes are now available. We begin by introducing ourselves and sharing something of the paths that brought us to this work, before moving into questions about education, childhood and what children really need from the adults around them.

Many of the questions Sarah and I explore are ones I have also written about here over the years, but conversation allows them to unfold in a different way. I hope you will enjoy listening.

You can listen here:

https://substack.com/@wonderfullyhumanpodcast

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“That’s how we do it here!”

That comment really ruffled my feathers as a new teacher, but it is one I have had to endure for many years. Being young, filled with new ideas and wanting to change things, I felt cast aside and that no further discussion was possible. At almost every school I began working in, someone said that line to me before long and I was effectively silenced.

The other version, which I find equally dismissive and have heard from my teacher-training days right up to this past week, is:

“That’s a Waldorf tradition!”

One has so often been used to prevent change, while the other is now used just as readily to sweep a practice aside.

Over the years I have evolved and developed as a Waldorf teacher, and those two responses have continued to trouble me and bring questions to mind that I feel need looking at more carefully. This feels particularly important as, in recent years, some individuals and schools have seemed increasingly ready to remove traditions before fully understanding what they carry. Through my years of working within the framework of Waldorf education and returning again and again to Steiner as my source, I have found myself moving into a different position.

Before I remove, alter or defend a Waldorf practice or tradition, I ask myself honestly: Do I understand where it came from? What was its purpose? Does it still live meaningfully within the school community?

This matters because a school tradition does not belong to one individual. Its meaning is carried by the community and any decision to alter or remove it should grow from shared understanding rather than from the preference of the person currently responsible for it.

Tradition and Principle Are Not the Same Thing

Some Waldorf practices and traditions came directly from Steiner, who introduced them to the first teachers in the first school and gave clear indications of the educational purpose they were intended to serve. Others have developed over time within schools, where teachers and communities have created practices that may still carry real purpose.

The real difficulty, I have found, comes when these different origins become confused over time, so that a custom developed later in one school spreads to others and gradually comes to be treated as a Steiner principle, or when an original practice from Steiner is changed without sufficient understanding, sometimes dramatically and sometimes little by little over many years. The third situation is where the outward form of a practice or tradition is preserved, but its meaning and the understanding behind it are gradually lost.

My task in this article is neither to defend every tradition or practice nor to advocate change for its own sake. It is about asking the right questions and undertaking the necessary research so that we can adapt and change consciously, with understanding and from a position of strength.

When Later Customs Become Waldorf Rules

I would like to explore two customs that developed later and have now become Waldorf traditions.

The first is one I have grappled with myself over the years and explored from both sides: the now-standard idea that every single letter of the alphabet must have its own image. Yet this was not what Steiner indicated or taught. Steiner was very clear in his lectures and discussions with teachers that images for the letters were to be created artistically by the teacher on the chalkboard. Most importantly, teachers were not expected to create an image for every letter because there would not be enough time and the method was not intended to be applied mechanically to every single letter.

“In sentences the children will notice shapes, for example, the f they are familiar with in fish. They will notice other shapes as well that cannot be addressed individually, because there will not be enough time.”

— Rudolf Steiner, Practical Advice to Teachers, GA 294, 21 August 1919

Instead, he spoke about developing several letters through imaginative images on the board with the children and then later introducing the remaining letters by writing whole words and sentences on the board and exploring the sounds of the new letters within them. At times, this could be as simple as saying that a particular shape carries a particular sound. Put simply, he did not indicate that every letter needed its own image. He spoke about analysing whole words, introducing remaining letters analytically and accepting the practical compromises required by time.

I have worked in both ways, following Steiner’s method and also creating an image for every letter, and I can say from my own experience that it is not necessary to create an image for each one once the children understand that a written shape carries meaning and sound.

The idea that every letter and its image should then be displayed on the classroom wall throughout the year is also a later adaptation that does not come from the source. More importantly, Steiner explicitly told teachers to find their own images rather than rely on what others had already created.

“One must find such things, these pictures for example, for oneself. Don’t rely on what other people have already done. Put your own free, but controlled, imagination to work, and have faith in what you find for yourselves.”

— Rudolf Steiner, Discussions with Teachers, GA 295, 22 August 1919

This is very different from buying a ready-made pack of alphabet cards from the internet.

The second example of a later practice that has become a tradition is the use of beeswax for modelling in the lower classes. A modelling wax was introduced by Hans Stockmar in 1939 and then developed further during the 1940s in collaboration with teachers, educators and parents into the kind of product with which we are familiar today.

Steiner was not as focused on the particular material in which the children modelled as we often are today. He was keenly interested in children developing a sense of form through artistic activity and movement, helping to develop not only the will but also an inner experience of form. Steiner mentions modelling in wax particularly for older children when working with the forms of human organs. For younger children, he suggested clay and plasticine and even mud from the road if nothing else was available.

“We continue this by moving on to three-dimensional forms, using plasticine if it’s available, and whatever else you can get if it isn’t—even if it’s mud from the street, it doesn’t matter! The point is to develop the ability to see and sense forms.”

— Rudolf Steiner, Discussions with Teachers, GA 295, 6 September 1919

Years ago, I moved from beeswax to plasticine because beeswax in a cold climate is not at all practical. The cold makes it as hard as stone, whereas plasticine softens more quickly and allows the children to shape it with greater ease and confidence. I had to make a presentation to the College to justify changing from beeswax to plasticine because it was seen as though I were breaking a golden rule.

These two examples show clearly how later practices can become ingrained as Waldorf traditions and then be held onto with great enthusiasm, even when they did not originate as principles given by Steiner.

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This sentence sits at the heart of this week's post. We prepare deeply during the summer, not so that every lesson is fixed in advance, but so that we are ready to create the art of teaching when the children stand before us.

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Six weeks off. That is how the summer holidays are often imagined for teachers, but the reality is that the next school year begins long before we walk back into the classroom. Preparation follows us through the summer, into the books piling up beside the bed, the thoughts that arrive while we are driving and the ideas for blocks that begin taking shape when we are supposed to be doing something else.

For a Waldorf teacher, though, even all of this is only part of the preparation.

Books are being collected and placed on desks and bedside tables, blocks are taking shape in our thoughts, stories are being gathered and materials explored and ordered. There is never really a moment when thoughts of the coming year are not present.

If you are fastidious like me and have strong ideas about how your classroom needs to be for the new year, a good deal of time is also spent at school. For me, this has often meant two weeks or more of painting and sanding, cleaning, dyeing and organising during the summer.

It’s an exciting time, filled with possibilities that are swirling around and slowly beginning to take shape as the year ahead starts to form in my mind. But what are we actually preparing, and who are we preparing it for? This question has grown in me over the years as a strong guide.

Preparation is a mix of things you can see and things you cannot, and both are essential for a Waldorf teacher. Our summer preparation often involves a huge amount of work that is not always visible to those around us.

First and foremost is the curriculum. We need to know it inside and out and let it live in us. It is not the book you bought off the internet with all the Class 6 blocks broken down and planned for you. That is not Waldorf education.

It means rereading what Steiner spoke about for the age group you are teaching in the coming year, exploring different ideas about what might be covered and keeping your mind open. I use The Tasks and Content of the Steiner-Waldorf Curriculum because it is not prescriptive and allows you to move around within the themes for the year. It forces you to actively engage with the curriculum, to think and make choices about what you believe will best suit your class and the children you teach, while remaining firmly grounded in the developmental picture and the principles behind the curriculum.

Each block needs to have an overview plan. The details can come a little later, but you need to know where you are going. A good deal of time also needs to be spent thinking about the skills you are teaching through each block. Some are more obvious when teaching maths, while others can be harder to pinpoint in something like history. The skills you are developing are not the same as the content you are covering.

These blocks need stories and content that are appropriate for the age, so there is a constant process of reading and sourcing material. Above all else, we need to educate ourselves in the material we plan to teach, not simply learning the content we intend to bring to the children, but understanding the much bigger picture so that we really know the subject ourselves.

This is already a very large amount of work.

The danger is that once we have produced all the things we can see, the block plans, the lesson plans, the skills profiles, the organised and prepared classroom and all the collected material, we can begin to think the preparation is complete. These things are vital, but they are still only the visible part of our preparation.

Then come the unseen elements, the deeper work of the teacher that gives life to everything we have prepared. Without it, we may have all the outward forms in place, but something essential is missing.

I need to have a good understanding of the developmental picture of the children I will teach in the new year. I need to understand the nuances of their development, how these may manifest in the class as a whole and in the individual children and how the curriculum is there to support this development.

All of this must live in me as I prepare for the year ahead, but I must also remember that I am not teaching an abstract idea of, say, Class 6. I am teaching a real group of children whom I know well and whose needs I also have to meet.

The developmental picture and the curriculum that supports it are vital, but they must become a reality in terms of the children I actually teach, and this will shape many things in my preparation. When you buy a curriculum off the shelf, it was created by another teacher for another group of children. You are not that teacher and your class is not that group of children. You have to shape your preparation around the class that is actually yours.

The developing human being becomes our guiding light and the curriculum is there to support that development, but we have to make it all come alive for the specific group of children we teach. For me, this means that our preparation is guided by three pillars:

The development of the child.

The curriculum that supports that development.

The actual group of children in our class.

None can stand alone.

“In the practice of teaching there will awaken in us, out of this knowledge of human nature, the art of education in a quite individual form. In reality the teacher must invent this art every moment.”

— Rudolf Steiner, Balance in Teaching, GA 302a, 21 September 1920.

Then we have to prepare for the one thing we cannot know: change. When we left our classes in June, we knew the children well and they lived strongly in every lesson we prepared. But now we are removed from them, and we have to remain mindful that the children who return in September may have changed from the children we said goodbye to in June.

We prepare with the children we know in mind, but we also have to be courageous enough not to fix our preparation too firmly around who they were. The children who walk into our classrooms in September may be different from those we remember. Our preparation has to remain open enough to accept that change. If we fix everything down before they return, we can quickly run into trouble when the year begins.

“The teacher must be able to cast a comprehensive eye upon the class at the beginning of the school year... At the end of the school year or of another period, the teacher must again review and notice the changes that have occurred.”

— Rudolf Steiner, The Foundations of Human Experience, GA 293, 2 September 1919.

This is a huge undertaking. This preparation is also part of the deeper work of the teacher, the work that lies at the heart of being a Waldorf teacher. We study child development, return to Steiner and revisit the lectures and chapters that are relevant to the year ahead.

With these larger thoughts held firmly in our consciousness, we then bring the actual class into our preparation. What were their strengths last year? Where were the difficulties? What were my strengths as their teacher and what were my weaknesses? Holding the previous year consciously while looking ahead to the new one is a vital part of this preparation.

Working from lived observations, while trying to look ahead without allowing our personal biases to get in the way, gives us the insight we need to build a framework for the year ahead. Not a rigid plan, but an open framework that allows the children to grow into the new curriculum freely and naturally.

This is part of our anthroposophical path as Waldorf teachers.

Then, when we arrive on the first day, we do so with a clear sense of purpose, but also with keen observation and an openness to whatever the children bring. They will surprise us and we will surprise ourselves. This is when we discover where our planning really stands. Something does not work, so we adjust it. Something does work, so we pay attention to what we have touched upon. Keep your thinking and observations open to change and the lessons will follow suit.

So no, teachers do not simply have an easy six weeks off. It is a busy time, although much of the work is not always visible to those around us. I know for myself that preparation is never far from my thoughts throughout the summer.

After nearly thirty years of teaching, I still prepare carefully and begin anew. I never lift an old lesson and simply repeat it, and I would never buy a lesson and simply use it. I am always reinventing, renewing and revitalising my own understanding and finding the path for the children I meet anew each September, while keeping consciously in mind that the children I remember may not be the same children who return for the new year.

Perhaps I am not preparing the year the children will have, but rather preparing myself well enough to recognise where I need to go when the year begins.

The photograph is of one of my own classrooms, during the summer preparations for a new school year.

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This week’s post was about the education of the teacher. Not simply what we know or what we do in the classroom, but who we are becoming as human beings and how this lives in our teaching.

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All teachers across the world are expected to continue their professional development by attending courses, conferences and subject specific workshops. Often we are issued with certificates that can be logged in the school office to show we are continuing to develop our skills and knowledge.

Waldorf asks something different.

Yes, we still collect the certificates, but we are also called to do more than that. We are challenged not only to develop what we know as teachers, but to work deeply on who we are becoming as teachers.

This is a very different way of looking at teacher development.

What follows is one of the most distinctive and, perhaps, most misunderstood aspects of Waldorf education.

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In this week’s post I was asking what children lose when the world no longer asks much of their hands. Steiner goes much further. He says that real practical work changes the child’s soul.

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As teachers and parents, we all know the skill and confidence with which a child can do things on a phone or iPad. Frankly, it puts most of us to shame. Yet these same children can hesitate or need support to tie a knot, hold a ruler or thread a needle.

For many of us, these were skills we learnt early on. Now they are less necessary. Children have shoes without laces. They copy and paste material on a screen. So much arrives ready-made.

Children are less often exposed to the fine-motor skills that many of us developed when we were young. They may not be asked to cut out a shape accurately, measure something carefully with a ruler or learn to knit or sew.

This is not a case for every child to become “crafty”. It is a deeper question about what children are now bypassing because of the changing world they live in. When they are presented with these tasks, many have little confidence and, in some cases, not yet the fine-motor control to complete them.

But something bigger is at stake. Children are also building a relationship with difficulty and with the process of learning a skill. All too often, the task is abandoned because it is too difficult or boring. There is no accomplishment because there has been no time to work through the difficulty.

The obvious concern is fine-motor development, including handwriting. Many teachers are noticing that children now arrive with less confidence and control in these areas than they once did.

But the bigger picture is the process that is being lost alongside the skill itself. When we measure a line incorrectly, cannot tie a knot, drop a stitch while knitting or find that wood does not behave as we expected when carving, we learn something. We first have to identify what we have done incorrectly. Then we adjust our approach and try again.

This process may have to be repeated many times before a skill is mastered. Alongside the practical skill, the child is learning patience, care, sequence, accuracy and practical judgement.

Together, these develop something more. They develop confidence, which is a very important quality in learning. Confidence is not simply the feeling that a child can perform a task. It is also the confidence that, if something is not working, they can acquire the skill with patience.

Children have become accustomed to a modern world where everything is on demand. Entertainment, information, images and products are ready and waiting at the click of a button. They become comfortable scrolling, watching and consuming.

I am not suggesting that we turn back time to an era without technology. But I do think we need to address this with earnestness. The greatest loss is the loss of experience. Many children are spending more of their lives with screens and engaging less with the material world around them.

They need slower learning and more engagement with the world. They need to develop skills as simple as tying a knot. They need to learn that things can be repaired, not deleted. These experiences may seem small, but they are vital to the healthy development of the human being and to bringing children into a relationship with the world.

This is made worse in many schools, where every child has a tablet. Handwriting, drawing and practical skills can become optional extras in the curriculum. Worksheets, documents and information received through a tablet can begin to take the place of work that asks children to use their hands.

But education is not information.

Education asks the child to go through experiences where they engage and learn from what they do, often repeating the same thing several times until they get it right. It involves much more than information.

We are under the impression that a good education is measured by what a child knows. It is not. It is also about the skills, qualities and information they accumulate and can put to use through action and judgement. It is about what they can preserve in their memory so that this accumulation gives them intentions and possibilities.

Children need their hands in order to learn. They need to be engaged in their will. Learning is not all in the head. It must be practical.

Steiner put this very directly:

“...if we know that someone who moves their fingers in a clumsy way also has a clumsy intellect, has inflexible ideas and thoughts, and those who know how to properly move their fingers also have flexible thoughts and ideas and can enter into the real nature of things, then we will not underestimate the importance of developing external capabilities.”

The Renewal of Education [GA 301], 11 May 1920.

This is why Waldorf education includes handwork, form drawing, singing, music, games, festivals and more. These are not part of the curriculum simply to be different from mainstream education or to offer a lovely alternative. They are part of the curriculum because they are core to the education.

People too easily see the lovely things and do not see the way they are integrated into a coherent plan to help the child develop physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Knitting is not Waldorf. It is knitting. But Waldorf schools use knitting to develop children’s fine-motor skills while they are learning to write their first letters and numbers. It is not a lovely add-on. It is part of the core work.

Each of the “lovely” activities has a place in the curriculum, not because it is a nice thing to do with children, but because it offers capacities and skills that other things cannot. Waldorf has a deep understanding of child development and bringing the right content and activities to best support the evolving child.

Some examples from my own experience may help to clarify this.

In Class 3, children are taught to crochet. The handwork since Class 1 has sought to develop fine-motor control in the hands. Crochet is tricky for children to pick up because there are many elements they need to master. They must hold the yarn, maintain a steady tension, use one hand to hold the work and yarn, while the other hand makes skilful rhythmic movements to form each stitch.

It can take some weeks for some children to get all of this right and simply begin a chain of stitches. Here we are faced with a deeper level of education. We are working with persistence, observation, understanding what is required and knowing why a stitch is wrong or, equally, why it is right.

I have had several children over the years who have truly struggled to make all these things come together. I remember one particular boy, many years ago, who was trying very hard to get the hang of crochet. You could see every cell in his body engaged in trying to get it right.

I had to show him time and time again. He would lose patience and become upset and frustrated. But with gentle encouragement, he got it.

He did not make a big announcement. He just went quiet. I turned and saw him totally absorbed in his work. By the next morning, he brought in several things he had crocheted at home, full of pride and confidence, and showed me first thing in the morning.

This is what practical work can give a child. Not simply a finished piece of crochet, but the experience of staying with something difficult until it begins to make sense.

Steiner spoke about this in relation to real practical work:

“It is a fact that a child who has cut grass with a sickle or mown it with a scythe, a child who has made a furrow with a little plough, will turn into a different person from one who has not done these things. Quite simply, the soul element is changed. Abstract lessons in manual skills are not really a substitute.”

Practical Advice to Teachers [GA 294], 3 September 1919.

I have similar accounts of children working diligently to master form drawing, letters and recorder. Each needs the gentle and firm encouragement of the teacher so that the learning process can take place.

When things fail and children become frustrated or angry, I do not let them off the hook simply because it is difficult. I distract them with a small task and bring them back to the work with constant support. Some hate the work, but they still learn. It is important.

They need to learn these practical skills not because they will need to crochet or do form drawing later in life, but because these practical activities and skills are part of the larger developmental picture of the child. Without them, things are lost.

The hands belong to the world of the child and the hands belong to the world of humanity. Through them we have transformed our world and our lives. But they have to be practical, because the practical develops the finer qualities of thinking and understanding.

Children need these elements in the curriculum. They need to learn not only the things I have mentioned, but also how to mend something, how to repair a wooden toy, a tear in an apron or a hole in a sock.

Yes, in our world we simply replace things. We are a throwaway society. But the task of repairing something with their hands develops and grows children more than any learning app on a tablet can.

Waldorf has kept these things at the heart of the curriculum because they are there to support the development of the human being.

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This week’s post was about authority. Not the kind that is enforced, but the kind a child can naturally recognise in the teacher.

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As a teacher, if I were to mention authority in a room full of parents or teachers, I would probably make everyone uncomfortable almost immediately. This word carries so much baggage that we rarely stop to ask whether we all mean the same thing by it.

The instant association is with control, coercion, indoctrination and even abuse. And this is definitely one of the meanings of authority, one that most of us have some relationship with in our own lives. It immediately places us on guard.

However, in the past it carried a different meaning, one that is particularly important to education and helps us understand why Steiner repeatedly places it at the centre of the years between the change of teeth and puberty.

People are now so fearful of authority that they often cannot even listen to the benefits it has within a Waldorf education, based on this older understanding of the word. Instead, teachers and parents rush to fill this space with intellectual explanations and choices, trying to bypass what Steiner saw as a genuine developmental need.

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This is the sentence sitting behind this week's article. Not because judgement is unimportant, but because real judgement needs foundations.

Historical quotations are reproduced in their original published English translation.

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Few ideas are more sacred today than the child’s right to choose.

We live in an environment where choice is seen as one of the most important parts of educating a child. It lives strongly in modern parenting and is becoming increasingly prevalent amongst the teachers coming into Waldorf schools.

I remember clearly my first obvious experience of this many years ago when I first started teaching in the 1990s. I was teaching a combined Class 1 and 2 in an idyllic small rural school in Wales. Every morning I’d greet the parents and children as they came into school, but often one of the children did not come to class even though I could see their mother out in the car park.

When I eventually managed to get the parent in for a meeting to ask about the situation, the mother told me with absolute confidence and conviction that the child got to choose each day whether they were going to school or not.

I was, honestly, absolutely floored.

Being as diplomatic as possible, and respecting the parent as much as I could, I eventually convinced her that the child should be in school every day.

Looking back, I realise that what shocked me was not simply that the child was missing school. It was the assumption underneath it.

The assumption was that the child should decide.

The adult’s role was not to lead but to facilitate the child’s choice.

Over the years I have watched this same impulse appear in different forms. Student voice, choice based learning, independent thinking and critical thinking. The language changes, but the assumption often remains the same.

When you cast an eye across the educational environment, this idea is encapsulated in the need to develop critical thinking. Children must have a voice in the school and in their education. It is considered paramount that they develop questioning, individual thinking and independence.

In essence these are all noble and desirable outcomes. These are good things.

However, the reality is that they are increasingly being imposed on young children and integrated into the curriculum long before anyone asks a more important question.

What comes before critical thinking?

How does critical thinking develop?

How do we support the evolving child in the development of this capacity?

What Steiner offered us was a different way to understand and work with this. He did not begin with the question, “How do we develop critical thinking?” Rather, he looked at how a human being develops.

He did not start with a desired outcome and work backwards. He started with the reality of what is presented to us through the development of the child and how those stages of development eventually lead to critical thinking.

Anthroposophy gave Steiner a picture of the human being, and from that picture came a picture of child development.

The child does not simply begin by practising judgement. The child goes through a process of development, and each step of that development is essential.

From birth the child is, in many ways, a large sense organ taking in the world around them. They quite literally participate in the world and absorb all they can from the impressions they receive.

This then changes into assimilating gestures and mimicking the world around them. From this they build the capacity for imitation.

Through these stages of development the young child builds a relationship with the world which they learn to trust. The world is experienced as meaningful, reliable and worthy of imitation.

Once this is established the child grows to accept authority, a natural willingness to receive guidance from those in their world who know more than they do.

With the attainment of trust and authority a new capacity is born in the child, namely imagination.

The child begins to form living mental pictures that nourish and prepare the ground for the development of concepts. This world of images gradually transforms into understanding, which is distinct from the earlier instinctive way of experiencing the world.

Thinking then begins to grow and become more independent. Ideas are grasped consciously and the child begins to compare and explore them.

Only once this stage of development has been attained can true judgement become possible. It becomes a real experience in the child rather than an imitation of those around them.

Steiner gives us a clearly identifiable path of development that can be observed in the child from birth through the lower and middle school years.

What he is suggesting, and what can be confirmed through observation, is that children develop a relationship to the world and the people around them before the inner awakening of thinking begins.

From this relationship to impressions and images they develop thinking and eventually judgement.

There is a relationship with the world long before analysis can play a part.

This is contrary to what is valued in our modern environment, which prizes the ability to stand apart from something and evaluate it, criticise it.

It forms the basis of a vast number of conversations at home and in the classroom.

“What do you think?”

“Do you agree?”

“What is your opinion?”

To answer these questions the child needs to distance themselves from the experience itself and stand apart from it.

This is contrary to what Steiner teaches us about child development.

What he suggests can be clearly observed in younger children. They enter an experience. They do not separate themselves from it.

Any parent or teacher in kindergarten or the lower classes can give multiple examples of how young children participate in things with their whole being.

Let’s take a simple example of young children listening to a fairy tale.

Instinctively the young child delves right into the imagination. They become part of the story that is being told.

You can see this on their faces and in their body movements. They are entirely absorbed.

They are, in a way, transfixed by the telling of the story and the only way this can happen is if they give themselves over to the experience and live into the imaginations being presented.

They do not stop the storyteller and ask questions that remove them from the story such as, “Is this realistic?”

They simply live into the story.

The same thing can be seen in play. The game begins and they live into the imagination of the game and take part accordingly.

They do not question the game.

They take part.

That said, I can hear people saying, “Well my child does do that. He or she asks questions and wants to know more.”

Some children certainly do.

Often they have learned to question things through imitating the adults around them. Yet underneath this, the child still wants to immerse themselves in the imaginative experience of the story or play.

In a society that values distance and criticism, adults continuously model this kind of behaviour and the child naturally imitates it.

They are, in essence, modelling scepticism.

This is not the primary way a young child meets the world. They live into each experience until they gradually grow older and begin to stand apart from things and see the world in a new light.

For the child to arrive at the capacity for judgement, a great deal needs to happen. You cannot start at judgement and work backwards, because judgement needs firm ground from which to arise.

Judgement is sophisticated because it requires so much to be in place beforehand. It does not stand alone.

For judgement to happen in a true living way, the child must first have experienced the world, learned to trust, accepted loving authority, lived wholeheartedly into imagination and embraced thinking.

Imagine asking a builder to begin with the roof. We would immediately recognise the absurdity. Before the roof come the foundations, walls, doors and windows. The roof depends upon everything that came before it.

Yet when it comes to judgement, we often behave as though it can be developed directly.

We ask children what they think, what their opinion is and whether they agree, without first asking what capacities must be developed before judgement becomes possible.

When a five year old says they do not like a story, that is not necessarily judgement. It is more akin to preference.

Judgement comes with understanding, experience and consideration.

It is not where development begins. It is where development arrives.

If you remove these foundations, what sounds like judgement is often only opinion.

The great misconception in our modern educational landscape is that judgement is seen as a starting point, a place to begin engaging children, but it is not.

Look at lesson plans on the web or lesson ideas on videos and reels. They are filled with questions designed to engage the child, yet they are often asking the child to judge before the foundations have been laid.

But this does not happen only in schools.

Children are constantly asked questions based on the premise that they have already developed judgement, when often they have simply modelled the behaviour of parents and other adults.

Parents, teachers and society generally prize the idea that if a child can answer these questions they are expressing their individuality.

“What do you think?”

“What is your opinion?”

When we ask these questions, the answers can create the appearance of judgement without the child necessarily exercising judgement.

The child answers, sounds independent and may even appear critical in their thinking, but often they are drawing upon attitudes, viewpoints and patterns of thought absorbed from parents, teachers and the culture around them.

What appears to be judgement may in fact still be imitation.

As parents and educators we have to make sure that children receive all they need for the foundations of thinking to develop.

If we do not give children enough in the years beforehand, we risk creating the appearance of judgement without the reality of it.

A child who is encouraged to have a view on everything before they have had enough experience becomes accustomed to expressing opinions without first receiving, observing and understanding.

This habit of opinion, very much prevalent in our world, develops more quickly than the capacity for judgement.

Instead of entering deeply into stories, activities, relationships and experiences, children are encouraged to stand outside them, evaluate them and criticise them.

They become observers before they have truly become participants.

Yet it is participation that provides the experiences from which later judgement can grow.

Children are routinely given choices that they are not yet developmentally prepared to make.

Choice is not automatically beneficial. Given too early it can place demands upon the child that development has not yet prepared them to meet.

Responsibility should gradually accompany increasing freedom, otherwise choice becomes preference rather than judgement.

In our modern society we celebrate signs of independence in children and sing their praises.

Yet true independence is not simply doing what you want or having your own opinion.

It is the capacity to think, judge and act from an inner understanding.

Maturity must gradually develop before genuine independence becomes possible.

The hope is that by asking children to think critically earlier, they will become better thinkers.

Steiner’s developmental picture suggests the opposite may be true.

Judgement cannot be strengthened by skirting the capacities upon which it depends.

When participation, trust, authority, imagination and understanding are weakened, judgement loses its foundations.

The child may appear thoughtful, articulate and independent, yet underneath there may be little more than borrowed opinions, preferences and reactions.

What looks like judgement may not yet be judgement at all.

The goal is not to get children to obediently follow the teaching, nor is it to instil conformity or blindly accept authority from the teacher.

The goal is to lay the foundations in the right way so that the child is, over time, able to reach the point in their development where they can genuinely make independent judgements.

Not a mimicked behaviour.

Not the expression of someone else’s opinion.

But the ability to judge something freely from within themselves.

This is the goal in my teaching as a Waldorf teacher, to develop the capacities of the evolving human being presented to me in the classroom.

Genuine independent judgement is not where development begins.

It is where development arrives.

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