Waldorf News

Staying Centered in the Whirlwind of Today’s Adolescents

By David Barham

Adolescence is and always has been an extraordinarily complicated period of life. Even in the simplest of times, working with adolescents to help them find themselves and the meaning they so desperately seek is deeply challenging.

And these are anything but the simplest of times. Though we may desire to move on from the endless ruins of the recent past, we cannot outrun the physical and psychic wounds and obstacles we have all experienced together and have not yet fully processed.

While we in the Waldorf world strive for the equanimity to keep these forces of chaos and dissolution at bay, we know we must meet the needs of adolescents––our vulnerable canaries in the coal mine––in new ways. We cannot simply move on from the recent past. We must come to understand how it has changed us, adolescents, and the classrooms and communities where we serve the future. The world is not the same as it was, and we cannot continue educating our students as if nothing has changed.

Educating the next generation of Waldorf high school teachers continues to build on the deep wellsprings of wisdom we were given by Rudolf Steiner and on more than a century of pedagogical research in Waldorf classrooms all over the world. With that powerful history as a foundation, the real work is to look to the questions coming at us at lightning speed and needing responses if Waldorf education is to fulfill its true mission.

What do adolescents need today to face their future with courage? Which classroom practices build the capacities and skills needed to face an ever-changing present and unknowable future? Which aspects of our current Waldorf high school curriculum still speak to the essential human qualities we all share? What can be drawn from new sources that speak a language that can be understood at the cellular level by modern adolescents?

Through our series of “Starlight Rays in Darkened Times: Seminars on Contemporary Topics for Waldorf High School Teachers,” we are attempting to tackle the enormous questions of the world. Essentially, every speaker we bring in to engage with our participants is asking some version of the archetypal Parzival question, “What ails thee?” And equally importantly, “How can I help?”

We have completed the second cycle of this series, during which time we have explored questions of

• helping adolescents cope with climate change without growing cynical or shutting down
• meeting neurodiverse learners in the classroom
• re-examining the Waldorf high school literature curriculum
• supporting students through anxiety, depression, and addiction
• determining the rightful place of technology in the Waldorf high school

We have given free rein to our guest presenters without claiming to endorse or agree with all that they have said. Rather our intention has been to open up topics in a gesture of open discourse. It has been so rich and rewarding to work on these enormous topics with participants equally devoted to the fragile world of high school students.

We are on the cusp of beginning our third round of “Starlight Rays” seminars. We will revisit a number of the themes listed above, while also

• exploring how drama, eurythmy, and the arts and crafts nurture adolescents
• guiding students to independent thinking through mathematics
• mentoring teens without playing therapist, parent, or friend
• understanding the role of African-American literature in the high school curriculum
• learning how Waldorf high school education is unfolding in public charter schools

We hope all will join us for this high-quality professional development opportunity.

Our three-year Waldorf High School Teacher Education Program (WHiSTEP), which resumed meeting live and in person last summer on the gorgeous campus of High Mowing School in Wilton, NH, as well as through virtual sessions, internships, and independent study, is ever- evolving to meet both the moment and the eternal.

We are eager to launch new cohorts in the humanities and the arts––and especially in the science and math, given the acute shortage of trained Waldorf teachers in these disciplines.

In this context, we are excited to be welcoming new instructors into this program. We are incredibly grateful to those faculty members who have carried this program for so many decades and to those colleagues who are now stepping up to carry it forward.

Its combination of self-transformation through the arts, deep study of the anthroposophical underpinnings of Waldorf education and human development, and subject seminars that give teachers the tools to teach their discipline in profound ways, is powerful. In this way, becoming a Waldorf high school teacher is both a vocational path and a way to find meaning in the madness.

We are steadfastly keeping our eyes on the prize: providing true, human care to meet the deepest needs of our students, families, and communities, as well as our own battered selves.

Click here to learn about the Starlight Rays in Darkened Times Seminars:
centerforanthroposophy.org/starlight/

Learn more about the High School teacher training program here:
centerforanthroposophy.org/programs/
waldorf-high-school-teacher-education/

David Barnham is Director of CfA’s Waldorf High School Teacher Education Program (WHiSTEP) as of 2022, David has worked in four North American Waldorf schools, including one in Mexico, both as class and high school teacher. Before joining CfA, he taught humanities at the Maine Coast Waldorf School in Freeport, ME, for more than a decade. In the fall of 2021, he was appointed to AWSNA’s Leadership Council as Leader for the Northeast/Quebec region.