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Waldorf News

From the Editor

January 13, 2025

Two Waldorf schools have seen their campuses lost to the fires in Los Angeles. In addition to losing their schools, many students, families and faculty have faced loss of their own homes and displacement.  The articles below are in each school's own words, which are far more eloquent and heartfelt than anything I could have written. -David More »

Kimberton Waldorf parents, students and staff grow, harvest and cook the school’s daily lunches

January 7, 2025

Every Monday around 9 a.m., Kimberton Waldorf School’s Food for Thought lunch program stocks up on Seven Stars Farm maple and vanilla yogurt. Located just across the street, the biodynamic farm is among the many local food producers and growers the school uses to source ingredients for their daily lunch menu. The agricultural hub of Kimberton, located in Southeastern Pennsylvania’s Chester County, makes the school’s location ideal for easy access to a range of seasonal produce that’s either organically or biodynamically grown. Current partners include Seven Stars Farm, Kimberton CSA, Sankanac CSA, and Lancaster Farm Fresh Co-op, among others. Right on Kimberton’s 430-acre campus, the school’s two-acre organic/ biodynamic garden provides opportunities for the kitchen to preserve their bounty to last through the upcoming school year. “I look forward to working closely with the planning of the garden to compliment a seasonal menu,” says Lianna Criniti, the school’s newly appointed kitchen manager and chef. Gardening is interwoven with the curriculum and children at KWS experience the school’s acclaimed garden program from the elementary years through high school, so they give a hand in helping to create Criniti’s wholesome meals. More »

New Directions in Literacy in Waldorf Kindergarten

December 10, 2024

One of the primary concerns parents have when enrolling a child in Waldorf kindergarten is reading. Waldorf schools have a tradition of not teaching the alphabet in kindergarten and asking parents to wait as well. Honolulu Waldorf School is pioneering a new approach in Waldorf kindergarten education: teaching the alphabet and other early literacy skills in a developmentally appropriate way. Doing so leads to greater success and aligns with Steiner’s indications.  Honolulu Waldorf School adopted The Roadmap to Literacy: A Guide to Teaching Language Arts in Waldorf Schools Grades 1 through 3 to teach reading. It uses the traditional Waldorf practice of teaching reading in first grade rather than kindergarten. It includes benchmarks (standards) that show the level at which students should be reading by the end of each grade.  The school had been administering diagnostic reading assessments for years to track their students’ progress. The data showed that year after year students were not reaching the reading benchmarks in The Roadmap to Literacy. Additionally, students’ self-esteem began to suffer by grade three if they were not reading fluently. More »

‘You have to find your own recipe’: Dutch suburb where residents must grow food on at least half of their property

December 2, 2024

When Marco de Kat starts planning his meals, he doesn’t need to travel far for fresh food. Right outside his house is an 800 square metre plot with all sorts of produce – apples, pears, peppers, basil, beets and cauliflower, to name a few. During the winter months, he and his wife can pretty much survive off the vegetables stored in their freezer. Even after living in Oosterwold for a number of years, it’s something that still excites him. “Yesterday, I forgot to think about what to eat,” he says. “You walk through your garden and you find something and that’s what you eat.” Oosterwold, where de Kat has lived since 2017, is a 4,300 hectare (10,625 acre) urban experiment located in the north-east of the Netherlands, in a suburb of the city of Almere, where de Kat works as a municipal councilor. First visualized about a decade ago by a local network, it was established by local government and Oosterwold planners as a way to challenge the rigidity of Dutch city planning, giving people more freedom – and responsibility – over the urban design process. The area, which has about 5,000 residents and a growing waiting list, is completely self-sufficient. Residents can build houses however they like, and must collaborate with others to figure out things such as street names, waste management, roads, and even schools. But the local government has included one extremely unusual requirement: about half of each plot must be devoted to urban agriculture. More »

Before Her First Kiss

November 19, 2024

Before her first kiss the seventh grader hears from her teacher that it’s up to her generation to save the world.  Before he’s able to find Orion the ninth grader writes an essay on carbon literacy in the Anthropocene. (“We must change or perish,” he concludes. “But if we don’t succeed in reducing emissions, the earth will be fine without us.”)  Before tasting wine, learning how to check oil in a car, before skinny dipping and singing around a fire, she watches a documentary during “study lab” on world-ending storms and drought. At the end of the film the narrator urges: “Don’t wait for graduation to solutioneer! Steer spaceship earth in another direction now!” If she cannot check oil in a car or make a batch of pancakes or tend a patch of corn, how can she and her friends be expected to “save the world”? Plus, why would she care to save the world in the first place? By the rivers of Babylon we ask the children to remember Zion. But many have never been to Zion, so have no interest in weeping over it or returning. Underneath the climate change and earth mutilation is, I might venture, an alienation from unknowing. More »

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