PSC

PSC Newsletter Autumn 2023

admin — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 07:47:31 +0000

pedagogical section newsletter

Autumn 2023

Dear Colleagues and Friends of the Pedagogical Section:

In this issue we bring you news from several fronts:
* Updates on members and activities of the Pedagogical Section Council
*A new series of online workshops for this year and next
*Visits to schools by members of the Pedagogical Section Council

Updates on members and activities of the Pedagogical Section Council

In normal years, the Pedagogical Section Council meets in person at least three times a year. But this has been no normal year.

In our last newsletter, we reported at some length on our winter term meeting in mid-January at the home of Betty Staley in Fair Oaks, CA, including our ongoing study of sleep and its importance for education. Instead of our usual spring term meeting, we resorted to several briefer online gatherings, partly out of financial considerations and partly to make it possible for at least some of us to attend the World Teachers Conference during Easter week at the Goetheanum. (Some informal vignettes of this conference are offered at the end of this newsletter.) Our fall meeting, which was to have taken place in the glories of a late October weekend in New England, got switched at the last moment to Fair Oaks for practical reasons.

And then came Saturday 7 October 2023.

On that day, as part of a surprise assault, Hamas forces swept at dawn from Gaza across the Israeli Negev Desert and surrounded the Supernova Sukkot music festival, killing or capturing several hundred participants as they tried to flee. Among them was the stepson of Elan Leibner, Chair of the PSC and convener of our meetings. Elan and his wife Michal Halev (who between them ordinarily write and produce this newsletter) managed during the following days to fly separately from the U.S. to their native Israel, where they received the terrible news that Michal’s 20-year-old son La’or––his name means “to the light”––had been murdered by Hamas.

In the weeks that followed, as she and her family absorbed the indescribable loss of her only son, Michal offered an eloquent and highly charged video, ending with a poignant appeal for peace in war-torn parts of the world including Ukraine and the Middle East. “War is not the answer, war is not how you fix things,” she said. “In my name, I want no vengeance.”
Michal’s pleas for peace: “No vengeance in my name”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERjkto7g4U4

During a subsequent interview in Israel with the CNN news anchor Erin Burnett, Michal expressed solace at the news that La’or had recently fallen in love. “We need to raise children on love,” she said. “Rage leads to more violence, and I cannot bear any more violence.”
https://vimeo.com/877695312/6bdaffe211

Words fail in any attempt to plumb a mother’s anguish at the loss of her child. However, in a silent gesture of support, PSC members joined an initiative––begun days before any of us received news from Elan about his family––to offer a “Hallelujah” in eurythmy twice a day in mindfulness of those who had died and those who had survived.

In the meantime, a GoFundMe account has been established by a circle of friends and colleagues to help Elan and Michal with expenses resulting from this tragedy and allow them time to grieve.

Contributions can be made here:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/one-tragedy-in-israel-begin-to-heal

Launching a new series of online workshops for this year and next

Starting in December 2023, members of the Pedagogical Section Council will inaugurate a new series of free online workshops. Each workshop––held on Saturdays from noon to 1:15 p.m. EST––will
address an issue of current urgency.

The first of this series will be offered in December, followed by further sessions in February, March, and April 2024. The series will then resume in the fall term of the next school year.

Here is the line-up of topics and workshop leaders for this year’s series:

Here is the line-up of topics and workshop leaders for this year’s series:

————-
Saturday 2 December 2023
Biography and the Challenge of Meeting the Adolescent
with Betty Staley
————-

High school teaching entails a two-way communication between teacher and student.
Although adolescents are not always consciously aware of their style and tone, they may lookback on it decades later and ask: Why did I say that? Did I express myself clearly and respectfully?

Teachers at the receiving end of these communications may respond in different
ways, depending on their biography. In turn, they too may reflect on how they responded:
Did I become defensive? Was I curious, aggressive, empathetic? So much depends on the teacher’s temperament and stage in life.

During this presentation, we will share ways in which our biography plays into the
ways we meet adolescents, and participants will contribute their thoughts.

————-
Saturday 3 February 2024
The Social Imperative of Authentic Conversation
with Holly Koteen-Soule
————-

In which way is face-to-face conversation an antidote to the challenging consequences of our culture and times?

————-
Saturday 2 March 2024
Positive Discipline
with Vernon Dewey
————-

All discipline and so-called classroom management begin with the inner life of the teacher. Remembering that “discipline” stems from “disciple”, how do we create a worthy path for the students to follow? When are we unconsciously keeping them in a behavioral rut, and how can we lead them out onto a path of becoming?

During this presentation we will explore how the fourth of Rudolf Steiner’s “Basic
Exercises” can help us develop an effective form of positivity in discipline and classroom behavior.

————-
Saturday 6 April 2024
Collaborate Leadership
with Michael Holdrege
————-

In his opening address on the evening before the first teachers’ course, Rudolf Steiner spoke of the Waldorf School as a cultural deed that must be governed collegially without external supervision through a school board (or executive) from above. In a time when polarization rather than collaboration appears to be a growing tendency and where top-down decision making still prevails in most organizations, reaching the goal outlined by Rudolf Steiner for Waldorf education is not easy.

In this seminar I will offer various perspectives—based on my own experience and
those of others I know—that support the realization of such a living social form, and hope that these will be enriched by contributions from other participants based on their own successes and failures in this direction.

Online Workshops for 2024/25

The following members of the PSC will offer workshops during the next school:
Liz Beaven
Douglas Gerwin
Laura Radefeld
Victoria Reyes-Cheng
Frances Vig
Linda Williams

For further information, contact Frances Vig at francesvig@gmail.com
To register for these free workshops:
https://www.cognitoforms.com/WaldorfTeacherInstitute1/PSCFreeOnlineWorkshops202324

Visits to schools by members of the Pedagogical Section Council

As previously announced, members of the Pedagogical Section Council are available once again to visit schools at their invitation. As Chair of the Council, Elan Leibner has visited Waldorf schools across the continent of North America, in part with the help of a grant from the Waldorf Educational Foundation (WEF). Over the years, other Council members have also made themselves available for these school visits.

Possible topics for previous visits have included:
* Meditation exercises in the context of faculty or College meetings
* Formation and functioning of a College of Teachers
* Responsible innovation in the Waldorf school curriculum
* Study of the PSC’s seven core principles of Waldorf education
* The Christ Impulse in Waldorf education
* Restorative practices (e.g., sleep, conversation, meditation)

The host school is asked to be responsible for transport and local hospitality. Consultation fee is $750/day, with limited funds available from the WEF grant.

Content and the logistics of each visit are determined by consultation between the host school and the visiting member of the PSC. Schools wishing to invite a Council member should contact
Douglas Gerwin: Douglasgerwin@gmail.com

Informal Snapshots from the World Teachers Conference

The newsletter originally included a report from the International Teachers’ Conference in Dornach, including several photographs. Technical difficulties arising from the fact that Michal and Elan are out of the country meant that we could not upload the photos. That report will be forthcoming as soon as we can overcome these technicalities.

PSC Newsletter Winter/Spring 2023

admin — Sun, 09 Apr 2023 23:03:31 +0000

pedagogical section newsletter

Winter / spring 2023

Dear Colleagues and Friends of the Pedagogical Section:

The Pedagogical Section Council (PSC) met in January at Betty Staley’s house in Fair Oaks, CA. This was initially billed as Betty’s farewell meeting. She was to host us one more time in her cozy home and then support our work from a distance as best she could. Luckily for us, she spent an evening in long conversation with Douglas Gerwin, the result of which was a new realization that she could remain an active participant in our study and discussions on the occasions when we met in Fair Oaks, and via Zoom at other times. While this means she will no longer travel to our meetings, her wealth of experience and active engagement with Waldorf practitioners will continue to benefit the Council’s (and hence the Section’s) work.

moon rising over lake mohave

The meeting itself focused intensively on a study of sleep from an anthroposophical perspective. Council members summarized fourteen different lectures by Rudolf Steiner dealing with this important topic, and we took turns presenting key elements of these lectures and doing artistic exercises related to themes raised in them. (Link to the fourteen summaries.) We hope they may more broadly support your own research and contemplation of this key element both of pedagogy and of inner life. The color images in this newsletter are samples of the visual exercises we did under the guidance of Frances Vig, a description of which follows below. We began each day with eurythmy, and Laura Radefeld describes the work thus:

During the Pedagogical Section Council study on sleep, we included as part of the study eurythmy exercises that serve to enliven and/or illuminate what Rudolf Steiner had to say about sleep. In the study material Rudolf Steiner spoke about the relationship of the human being in sleep and the movements of the planets and the world of the fixed stars.

We withdraw from the body for a period to draw strength from a region outside the body.

Focusing primarily on the planetary gestures and the corresponding vowel gestures, this article describes the path of experiences we had in eurythmy to enliven the study.

Rudolf Steiner described in vivid detail the phases of sleep where:
the movements of the planets and the world of the fixed stars enter our soul-spiritual organization during sleep.

In our study, we sought to lift our souls imaginatively to consciously experience the movement of the planetary world as we each do when we enter the world of sleep. After brief exercises to awaken our bodies, we created small vowel gestures, each of which blossomed from our hearts, the heart eye as RS described it in one of the lectures. We created small vowel gestures, each expressed as though sung by the heart. Entering the sounding of the planets, we imaginatively entered into the space where the vowels are the landscape and ocean that holds one’s soul-spiritual body in sleep. After each vowel sound, we paused and held a period of silence, listening to the sounding that emanates from each individual planetary realm. The pause between each eurythmy gesture created a deep listening space, appropriate to the deep listening required to enter a relationship with the movement of the planets.

During waking hours, we have two types of relationships with the surrounding world: conscious perceiving with the senses and thinking, on the one hand, and unconscious taking in of substances in highly dispersed states through breathing on the other. During sleep, we similarly take in the surrounding world, except that it is the spiritual world that enters into us. The movements of the planets and the world of the fixed stars enter our soul-spiritual organization during sleep. This relationship unfolds in phases.

The first sphere we enter upon falling asleep, and the last one we pass through before waking, is the planetary sphere. The movements of the planets are “seen” with the part of the astral body that permeates the heart during waking hours. The I and astral body leave the physical and ether body in bed, and then this heart eye sees the movements of the planets reflected to them by the (abandoned) etheric body as though the latter were a mirror. In the flexibility of the dreams that we have before waking there is a dim echo of the planetary movements we experienced during sleep. For example, if your karma is connected to a current relationship between Jupiter and Venus, this relationship might weave a dream out of memories from your distant past that, during life, had no connection with one another. The memories are woven together to “clothe” a cosmic event.

In order to enter into an experience of the planetary gestures we formed the gestures and listened
for the movement/sounding that rayed in towards us from out of the cosmos. For example, with
the Sun gesture, we sought to experience the gesture radiating back into us, directly into our
hearts. Focusing on my own heart and what it was receiving by shaping the gesture of Sun, as I
was living into the sea of vowel sounding was a strong inner experience.

This first sphere of experience after sleep often provokes anxiety in us. The soul feels
itself spread like a fine mist drifting in the cosmos, as though within a large cloud of
cosmic mist. Then, a second feeling arises: a yearning to rest in the bosom of the divine
as protection from dissolution into this mist. These two feelings must be carried into
waking life or else all the substances we take into our physical body during the day, in
metabolism for example, would cause disorder within the entire organism. At present,
these experiences and feelings are carried unconsciously into the day, because human

beings are not yet strong enough to do so consciously. The heart-eye continues to
perceive the planetary sphere even as the next phase of sleep unfolds.

Rudolf Steiner notes that human beings are not strong enough to enter experiences of the
planetary world in day consciousness. We can, through eurythmy, build the capacity needed to
carry these experiences from sleep into day consciousness. We are able to feel our soul-spirit
body “spread like a fine mist drifting in the cosmos” and also, through the planetary gestures,
feel, imaginatively what radiates back towards us from the movements of the planets.

While the Moon forces, on earth, are active in heredity and reproduction, those of Saturn
are the restorer of balance for all that happens on Earth and enter into human life
through all that lives in Karma, from life to life. The other planets, Jupiter, Mars and so
on, are mediators between the Moon forces and the Saturn forces, weaving their activity
between the extremes of the physical and the highest ethical. The working together of the
planets and their influence on us show how the human being is connected with the Earth
itself and with the universe beyond.

We focused some time in our eurythmy exploration with the gestures of Moon and Saturn, living
into the polarity described in the lecture referenced here.
That was the extent of our current exploration. In our continuing studies we will complete the
planetary gestures and begin a listening exploration into the gestures of the fixed stars.

We also approached the study theme through the visual arts. Frances Vig describes that aspect:
For a visual artist to work together with a eurythmist both deepens and broadens the soul’s experience,
engaging our research from yet another perspective. In this most recent gathering we painted using wet-
on-dry with tape-edged paper, inexpensive small palettes, and fine brushes. The theme chosen was the
polarity referred to (in the summarized text from GA 228) between the forces of heredity and
reproduction and the forces of memory and karmic balance as a polarity between the activities of the
Moon and Saturn. This was indeed a challenge and an unexpected polarity to explore.
The first step in the process was for Laura to work with us on the gestures of the Moon, Saturn and the
Sun in eurythmy. Then, each of us, independently, considered color choices that related to the forces
described and their placement on the paper. We began to paint, focusing on Saturn and the Moon. Part of
the assignment was to leave space between the two for the next step, adding the influence of the Sun. The
following day, after a period of sleep and further study, we began with eurythmy prior to painting,
focusing on the Sun gesture between the Moon and Saturn. Turning to our paintings we then brought our
own imagining of the Sun forces to play, working out from the open space and allowing the whole
situation to develop freely in color.

After removing the tape, we laid all the paintings together and, after taking the time to look quietly at everyone’s work, shared reflections on our experience.

These are explorations into a way of working that challenges our imagination and asks us to be with the content of our study through a heart sensing that can alert us to aspects that we might have otherwise missed. Every time we work together, I am deeply touched by the different ways we explore the themes and by seeing that what we have accomplished, modest as it might be, enriches our work.

A quick sidenote about PSC study: in the last newsletter, I reported on another one of our study themes, namely drumming. Since Victoria Reyes, our fearless leader on this topic, was unable to attend our latest meeting in person, we postponed pursuit of this theme until we pick it up again in October.

Linda Williams wrote an extensive report from the November meeting of the International Forum. Find it HERE

Finances:
The PSC is running very low on funds. In the past, The Anthroposophical Society in America, AWSNA, sales of PSC publications, gifts from schools, and private donations supported our work so we could meet three times per year and pay our chair a modest stipend. In recent years, these streams have either dwindled to a trickle or dried up altogether. We are now actively seeking foundation grant money that would support a new round of school visits and further set of webinars as a way of generating funds, but we also would ask all of you to help us find support for the kind of work that the PSC is so uniquely positioned to offer. There is no other pedagogical organization on this continent that is dedicated solely to gathering questions, researching, and disseminating results rooted in anthroposophy. We have no political responsibilities or allegiance to institutional constituents; our sole task is pedagogical. Other Waldorf organizations, which have their own legitimate tasks, also benefit from the work we do. Please See whether your school would consider supporting the PSC and let us know of other funding sources we might approach. Donation can be made via the PSC’s website here or, for those needing a tax deduction, through the Research Institute for Waldorf Education here.

With much gratitude for your work and dedication,
Elan Leibner
for the PSC

PSC Newsletter November 2022

admin — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 03:24:25 +0000

pedagogical section newsletter

november 2022

Dear Colleagues and Friends of the Pedagogical Section:

Like the changing seasons, the rhythms of life are never ending. One of them takes the form of comings and goings in the Pedagogical Section Council itself. We first want to say goodbye to two stalwarts who have spent many years volunteering their time on the Council and working tirelessly to share the depths of their knowledge with the rest of us.

Ina Jaehnig, a long-time teacher at the Denver Waldorf School, stepped down from the Council in January of this year. Ina is known to many of you through her offerings in regional and national conferences and her teaching at the Waldorf Teacher Education Eugene in Oregon. On the Council, she made lasting contributions to the study of the First Class Lessons and the accompanying mantras. With modesty that could not hide years of contemplative engagement with these lessons, Ina presented thoughtful discussions and depths of research each morning, and her offerings built sturdy foundations for everything that followed during the rest of our meetings. To work with her was to sense what Rudolf Steiner meant when he spoke of those who are able to bestow grace on their environment in their later years.

In January 2023, Betty Staley will host our next meeting at her home in Fair Oaks (Covid and the State of California permitting) as her final act of hospitality and collaboration on the Council. Betty, as most people know, is where the Energizer Bunny goes for pep talks when it runs out of juice. A tireless teacher, mentor, author, and lecturer, she has spent more than 50 years practicing and advocating for Waldorf education. Betty brought to the Council a remarkable ability to generate conversation. Ever attentive to what students, teachers, and the culture at large were asking of education, she never shied away from doing the necessary research and asking tough questions. Her books are beloved guides for teachers and parents alike, and she often brought a breadth of contemporary knowledge that greatly enhanced the Council’s conversations.

On behalf of everyone who cares about Waldorf education on this continent, I would like to thank Ina and Betty most warmly for their many years of service on the Council. We were greatly enriched for the presence among us.

With departures come opportunities for new members to join. The Council is pleased to announce two new members:

Linda Williams, known to many of you, has been active in Waldorf education since 1985, spending most of her years at the Detroit Waldorf School as a class teacher, but also teaching at the Milwaukee Urban Waldorf school and at the college level. Linda is currently the pedagogical mentor at the Detroit school, an AWSNA Board member, and one of the leading voices in the field of diversity in its different incarnations (multiculturalism, DEI, and recently with an emphasis on what she calls “a pedagogy of belonging”). We are thrilled that she has agreed to join our circle. Her first assignment on behalf of the Council was to help lead a team working to build a North American version of an online tool for curriculum design first developed in the UK.

Victoria Reyes joins us from the Austin Waldorf School, where she is a high school English and history teacher. Victoria took the lead in the start of the Council’s most recent research project. The daughter and granddaughter of Afro-indigenous Colombian drummers, she guided us through an experience of drumming (perhaps the most fun research activity we have ever undertaken) as a foundation for examining when, why, and how one might want to incorporate drumming into the Waldorf curriculum. (See Picture above). Drumming came up in conversations the PSC had with colleagues who are part of AWSNA’s BIPOC group, and we decided to take it up as a research question. We will continue this exploration and bring you thoughts in the future.

Both Linda and Victoria were present at the Council’s most recent meeting in late October – our first in-person meeting since January 2020. We gathered at the home of James Pewtherer and Jan Baudendistel in Western Massachusetts, and the experience of sitting in one room and sensing the space between us fill up with intention and focus was a profound reminder of what we had lost during the Covid years. A flat computer screen, while allowing an exchange of thoughts and images of one another, provides no living, breathing space. This is not a new thought, of course, but until one sits across from faces that have been visible only as pixels for almost three years, one can easily forget just how powerful an experience it is to be working with colleagues in the same physical space.

Back row from left: Linda Williams, Frances Vig, Douglas Gerwin, Vernon Dewey, Elan Leibner Front Row: Victoria Reyes, Laura Radefeld, Michael Holdrege, James Pewtherer Missing: Holly Koteen-Soulé, Betty Staley On leave: Jennifer Snyder.

As we heard from one another and from Susan Howard, who joined us on Zoom for a conversation about the Waldorf early childhood movement, a few themes are rising to the surface among Waldorf educators as a consequence of the pandemic:

• Children, especially those who were in early childhood programs and the initial years of grade school, show developmental delays and, in many cases, symptoms of trauma-like gaps in social, emotional, and cognitive development.

• Teacher burnout: the stress of the last few years is showing itself in symptoms of exhaustion and low morale. New demands and challenges have been added to all the stresses that always attend this profession, and many school leaders speak of a need for inspiration in the ranks.

• Related to the burnout issue: consciousness among teachers concerning the role of the night in education was felt to be weakened or missing altogether when Council members visited schools. When teachers do not involve the spiritual world in the rhythms of their lessons, feeling alone and without help becomes an almost inevitable consequence.

As a result of these observations, the Council is proposing that schools take up the twin themes of “the night” and “meditation” so that teachers can strengthen their connection with the wellsprings of inspiration and professional vitality. A few suggested practices are noted below. Each can be the topic of conversation and study:

Sleep:

• Planning lessons so there is always something sent into the night and then, on the following day, brought back from the night. In this way, the teacher invites the spiritual world to partake in the educational process.

• Sleep itself: physiological aspects and their anthroposophical perspectives.

• Preparation for sleep: reviewing the events of the day in reverse (Rückschau).

• Sending one’s pedagogical questions (regarding individual children, e.g.) into the night.

• Return from sleep: attending to insights that may come from the night.

• Conversations with parents about age-appropriate transitions into sleep.

Here are a few suggested lectures for studying sleep itself. All are available on www.rsarchive.org:

• “Experience of the Soul in Sleep” (in GA 215, September 10, 1922)

• “The Concealed Aspects of Human Existence and the Christ Impulse” (in GA 218, November 5, 1922). In the same lecture cycle: lecture of October 9, 1922.

• GA 227 (lectures of August 21, 22, 23, 26, 27, 1923)

• GA 226 (lecture of May 19, 1923)

Meditation:

Steiner based everything he did with the first Waldorf teachers on the assumption that they were practitioners of meditation. The imagination of the circle of teachers forming an organ of spiritual perception (often called The College Imagination, The Chalice Imagination, or The Angel Imagination) begins with the spiritual meeting of the individuals with their angel. Steiner gave the teachers not one but two professional meditations and mentioned specifically how taking his lectures into meditation could enhance their capacities as teachers (e.g., in lecture 3 of Balance in Teaching, GA 302a, September 21, 1920).

Faculties can discuss methods and challenges on the meditative path, using resources widely available in the anthroposophical literature. Ultimately, without meditative practice there is no Waldorf pedagogy. The essential task of education is to help incarnating children negotiate the obstacles on the path towards realizing their pre-birth intentions. Meditation is our tool for coming to what Steiner called “Waldorf Teacher’s Consciousness, which can only be developed when, in the field of education, we come to an actual experience of the spiritual.” (Lecture of October 16, 1923). He challenged us to develop what we may call “pedagogical clairvoyance” even if we do not yet have the capacity to see into the spiritual world otherwise.

The wonderful thing about embarking on a meditative practice is that everything that makes Waldorf education magical, in the best sense of that word, begins to find its way into our work. Subtly and imperceptibly, we become collaborators with benevolent spiritual beings, and the resolve to carry on in the face of the immense challenges that this work presents grows strong within us. Let us share our striving in this sphere with like-minded colleagues.

Also, a reminder that PSC publications can be ordered from Waldorf Publications (www.waldorfpublications.org). Sales of these books support the Council’s work.

And speaking of Waldorf Publications, it behooves us to send a huge shout-out to Patrice Maynard and her team. They have been handling both the sale of our books and our annual appeal for years now. Their selfless and unpaid help has been immensely significant in getting the word out and garnering support for the Council’s work. Thank you!

With warmest greetings on behalf of the Pedagogical Section Council,

Elan Leibner
Chair, PSC

PSC Newsletter March 2021

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 03:58:30 +0000

pedagogical section newsletter

march 2021

Dear Colleagues and Friends of the Pedagogical Section:

The past year has given all of us more food for thought than we ever bargained for. The country, indeed the world, has been gut-wrenchingly afflicted by Covid-19, social, and political upheavals. One often feels surrounded by, perhaps even occasionally swept up by currents of fear, despair, conspiratorial thinking, and binary modes of thought. Serenity, perseverance, contemplative perspective, and the courage to stand for the spiritual core of life can seem beyond our reach. The urgency of NOW demands action, whether or not one feels empowered by one’s own convictions and insights to take those actions. As members of the School for Spiritual Science, our challenge is to insist on ripening our thoughts and representing something deeper than what passes for wisdom in materialistic modes of thought.

Some of the PSC Members in Colorado 2019 from top left to right:
Michael Holdrege, Chicago WS, IL
Ina Jaehnig, Denver WS, CO
Jennifer Snyder, Sacramento, CA
Frances Vig, Chicago WS
Douglas Gerwin, Center for Anthroposophy, Amherst, MA
Elan Leibner, Chairman, Hopewell, NJ
James Pewtherer, Amherst, MA
Betty Staley, CA
Laura Radefeld, Green Meadow WS, Spring Valley, NY
Holly Koteen-Soule, Seattle, WA (not pictured)

The Section Council has been working to bring a spiritual perspective to at least one of those upheavals. During our last few meetings, all via Zoom, we have been studying the questions of racism and diversity, specifically in their relationship to anthroposophy and Waldorf education, and undertaken various aspects of further research.

We have held several conversations with colleagues and alums of color, as well as with the leadership of AWSNA, WECAN, and the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education. From these conversations, it is clear that our movement, like the country at large, is having to reckon with blind spots and unintended consequences of prejudices we weren’t necessarily aware we had. At the same time, we do not intend to get swept into condemnations of anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner, or Waldorf education. Anthroposophy is not a religion, and Steiner does not need to be defended as if the whole enterprise of anthroposophically-inspired work would crumble if something he said wasn’t acceptable in today’s society. Ultimately, a love-centered view of the human being and of the meaning of life is Steiner’s most lasting legacy, and the challenge of actuating that view in the field of education is the challenge of the Pedagogical Section. Love in its spiritual aspect knows no bounds of race, ethnicity, gender, or physical abilities. We have, and always will, fall short of actuating love fully. That should only spur us on to try all the more. Some of us have begun writing about these topics, and those musings will begin to appear during the coming months.

On a more heartening front, I am happy to announce two new members of the PSC:

Vernon Dewey is a class teacher at the Denver Waldorf School. He is currently teaching 8th grade and will transition into a pedagogical leadership role at his school next year. He has particular interest in the issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and has written thoughtfully about them during our internal deliberations.

Victoria Reyes is a high school humanities teacher at the Austin Waldorf School. Born in Colombia, she came to the U.S. at nineteen, and has also been active in the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion at her school. She brings both a true love of this country and a clear eyed view of its challenges.
Welcome to both of our new members!

Inner Work Workshops

The Pedagogical Section Council is hosting a series of online sessions in support of teachers’ inner, meditative work. Each session is led by two Council members and lasts about 90 minutes. In order to allow for a relaxed atmosphere, the sessions are held on Saturday mornings (12 Eastern). Advance registration is free, but required for entry.

Attendees may come to any of the sessions. No advance knowledge or practice are needed. The desire to meet and converse with others who are seeking to strengthen the dimension of inner meditative work is the only requirement.

PSC Publications

A reminder to our members and friends that all PSC publications are available via Waldorf Publications.
Those publications will soon include a re-printing of Towards the Deepening of Waldorf Education.

A Great Deal of Gratitude

The work of the Pedagogical Section Council has been generously supported by AWSNA, many of its member schools individually, and by many individuals who have made contributions large and small. The council is immensely grateful to all of you for making its work possible. Thank you!

A special note of gratitude to Patrice Maynard of the Waldorf Publications arm of The Research Institute for Waldorf Education. For the past two years, she has spearheaded our fundraising efforts and dedicated many hours to the many tasks associated with them. Thank you, Patrice!

Artistic Study led by Frances Vig:

Report from the International Forum

Douglas Gerwin & James Pewtherer

As with most Anthroposophical organizations worldwide, the International Forum/Hague Circle has had to cancel all of its in-person meetings over the last 11 months due to Covid-19 restrictions. The group has had a few virtual meetings on Zoom, which limited our scope of activities as meeting times tried to accommodate time zones that have stretched around the globe.

Going forward, the IF has re-scheduled its May 2020 Madrid meeting for May 2021 in Budapest, but current travel and meeting restrictions in Hungary make this meeting provisional at best. We have also re-scheduled our expanded November 2020 to November 2021 in Dornach, Switzerland. This meeting will include active younger colleagues as guests. It aims to provide an opportunity to host working groups on the inner and outer needs of Waldorf/Steiner education in the next decades. It will also review the work of the Hague Circle since its inception in 1970.

More generally, Waldorf schools from around the world have managed to continue to hold classes in spite of the pandemic. The conditions have ranged from no limits on operations (New Zealand) to strictly applied quarantine rules based on one’s frequently monitored health status via a phone app (China) to mixed in person and remote classes (many countries). As challenging as these times have been, our schools have forged ahead in spite of sometimes severe circumstances.

The next World Educators Conference at the Goetheanum has been moved a year later to Easter week of 2023. Discussions are underway on possible themes. Preliminary thoughts have been in the direction of more consciously using will activity to counter the over-intellectualism of our times in order to reach out and care for the world. Society’s focus on the head has led to rampant egoism and to a growing isolation of one person from another. Limb activity, conversely, centers the human ego into the world and can cultivate true brotherhood and solidarity.

3 March 2021 R
eport submitted by Douglas Gerwin & James Pewtherer,
members of the International Forum and the Pedagogical Section Council for North America

PSC Newsletter November 2019

admin — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 23:23:26 +0000

pedagogical section newsletter

november 2019

Dear Colleagues and Friends of the Pedagogical Section:

The Pedagogical Section Council (PSC) just completed its meeting in Fraser, Colorado, and mapped out plans for the year. We heard reports from the Waldorf 100 celebrations in Germany (see below) and collaborated once again with Adam Blanning MD on questions at the intersection of pedagogy and medicine. We also continued our study of Study of Man, working with Laura Radefeld on the middle lectures (6-9) using eurythmy as our means of exploration. Frances Vig had us painting the threefold human being once from the perspective of consciousness (wakeful in the thinking, asleep in the will, dreaming in feeling) and once from the perspective of the body (head most physical, limbs most saturated with spirit, ribcage in between). See images.

Before Sunrise in Fraser, Colorado

Moonrise in Colorado

Parallel with these lectures, we worked with Lesson 8 of the First Class under Ina Jaehnig’s guidance. I would again encourage all of you to seek the connections between our professional path (Study of Man and other pedagogical guidance including the PSC’s own publication Entry Points) and the purely esoteric guidance of
the Class Lessons. There is an incredibly rich potential in the confluence of these complementary paths.

We would like to suggest a few themes aspossible research questions for this year:

The first, which will also be the subject of our Section conference in Chicago in June 2020, is the pedagogical responses to screen addiction and the suppression of fever-inducing illnesses.

The reality of Waldorf schools in California and New York, and, in all likelihood, the reality that schools everywhere will face in the coming years, is that unvaccinated children will not be allowed to attend schools. While efforts to rescind or ameliorate the laws that have been enacted are ongoing, realistically we have to allow that those efforts are unlikely to turn the tide. This means that the beneficial fever processes, transformative and essential for overcoming the inherited body, will not be available to children.

What, then, can we do as pedagogical processes to replicate the transformational gesture of fever? The PSC worked with Dr. Adam Blanning to understand the specific gesture of each childhood illness, and we will continue to look at these and seek for practices that can support children who are prevented from having these experiences. In the form of a tweet-length call for action: seeking examples of pedagogical (in place of physiological) fever experiences.

In a similar vein, screen addiction is no longer a genie that we can hope to put back in the bottle. Parents, children, and even teachers are hooked to their devices and will not be unhooked in the foreseeable future. The completely one-sided stimulation of the sense of sight, at the near exclusion of most other senses, has serious and long-listing implications. What are the pedagogical consequences? How shall we bring to our students the necessary sensory development in order to compensate for what their iPad does not allow? Are there new programs awaiting development that will augment the already rich multi-sensory curriculum we have offered for 100 years in light of the specific plight of this moment in time?

A third thread came to us as a specific question from the leadership of AWSNA: Pedagogical Leadership. Schools across the continent have been experimenting with various models of governance and leadership, and often they turn to AWSNA for guidance on best practices. While administrative questions tend to be the focus
of their enquiries, pedagogical considerations have not been researched with sufficient clarity to date.

Dr. Adam Blanning meets with the PSC in Fraser, CO

We suggest a few guiding questions:

1. Leadership vs management: it is one thing to manage the day-to-day life of the school and respond to crises as they arise, quite another to give direction and intentionality to the school in the sense of attending to its relationship with the Third Hierarchy.

2. Mentoring vs evaluation: schools need to be clear which processes are evaluative and which are designed to support teachers. Inevitably there will be overlap, especially if a periodic evaluation is done as a matter of protocol rather than when an actual question arises as to the suitability of a teacher, but it is useful to be clear about the framework of a classroom visit: is the intention to help the teacher grow, or to reassure the school that the teacher is competent?

3. Individual vs collaborative leadership: which aspects of leadership are best given to an individual? To a small team? To a larger group? There is no set answer that can be applied in all situations, because answers must take account of the individuals present in each specific situation. Nevertheless, thesize of the body deliberating and/or deciding on questions has universal attributes that are best made conscious. This isn’t simply a matter o assigning responsibilities, but also of acknowledging the limitations of the chosen structure and agreeing to support the leadership and hold it accountable in light of the path that was chosen. Every
structure and every group has qualities that can serve the group and liabilities that may raise difficulties, and the whole group needs to “own” the situation.

I hope that these questions will feel enticing enough for each of you to take up one or more of them. The pictures that are given to us in the lessons of the Class can offer inspiration as we rise to meet the challenges of our time without fear, anger, or doubt. Powerful forces work to undermine our efforts, but greater forces still are ready to
support us.

Happy Thanksgiving, and warm wishes for a fruitful transition into the winter months and holidays.

Elan Leibner,
Chairperson for the PSC

Report fom the June 2019 Pedagogical Section Conference:

In the most recent Pedagogical Section conference we worked with the world of gesture. While we briefly discussed language, we chose to focus on gesture in movement choosing two of its expressions, eurythmy and clowning. Both forms of movement require us to centre ourselves as individuals while being able to work and move together in a group. They also require us to be focused, creative, forgiving, and willing to laugh at ourselves as we sometimes stumbled our way into creating something new out of the cooperative work of a group.

We divided ourselves into two groups and our each group experienced both forms of movement at different times. One group worked with Laura Radefeld on creating a group form for a poem in eurythmy, while the other was working on clowning with Angie Foster. While most of us had done eurythmy before it was challenging work to create a eurythmy form to the verse Laura gave us. In an hour and a half, after much trial, error and discussion with Laura, we developed a form that we could move harmoniously. Out of the sound of the poem came the movement, and out of the movement came the form.

PSC in April 2019 Clowning with Angie Foster

Clowning was new to most of us. When we entered the clowning space we saw such a wild variety of hats and scarves that we were already in the mood to dress up and become someone else. While some of us were daunted at the thought of making fools of ourselves, at least we knew we were doing it on purpose. Angie stressed the importance of the red nose, and that the placement of it needed to happen when your back was turned away from the audience. There really was something oddly freeing about this little sphere of red in the middle of the face as we capered our way through the variety of scenarios she gave us.

While our time together was short we did have time and the opportunity to share our experiences and deepen our understanding of the place these distinct experiences can have in our schools. ~Frances Vig

Artistic Study Inspired by the Threefold Human Being led by Frances Vig:

Frances Vig had us painting the threefold human being once from the perspective of consciousness (wakeful in the thinking, asleep in the will, dreaming in feeling) and once from the perspective of the body (head most physical, limbs most saturated with spirit, ribcage in between).