I’m switching to Substack.

I’ll go into all of the reasons why in a minute, but here’s the quick and dirty of what it means for you. (Or enter your email above to get all the details.)

What’s happening at Substack?

• Inspirational, practical weekly posts
• Premium content (downloads, coupon codes, etc.)
• Community participation
• Delivered right to your inbox

All for a $10/month subscription fee.

(Or join the free version for a monthly post. But keep reading to understand why you should passionately pay to support your favorite creators.)

Why the change? A few reasons.

A Community of Support

Back in 2010, A Waldorf Journey started as my sweet little corner of the internet where I could write about my teaching, reflect on those experiences and grow from them. I’m a writer at heart and composing those posts was cathartic as it helped me process what I learned in those early days.

But A Waldorf Journey has GROWN. And I’m not complaining. This growth has been oh-so-lovely. I’ve learned so much from this community and I’m filled with gratitude for the courageous, striving teachers, homeschoolers and parents I have met through this blog.

But it’s grown so much that I’ve become cautious about what I post. I don’t share (as much) about my challenges, failures, struggles and questions. I’m even more cautious about sharing the strivings of my students.

And though I hardly ever encounter unfriendly followers, these days I want to surround myself with a community of active supporters. I want the people who consume my work to be just as invested in the growth and development of this community and its members as I am.

I love the idea that by making that little $10/month contribution subscribers are saying, “I’m in. Let’s help each other grow.”

But there are some other aspects of this new platform that appeal to my writer-heart.

Focus on Content, Not Tech or Design

Back in those early days WordPress was NOT an easy platform. But I LOVED the challenge of figuring it out, and I loved expanding my skillset and working on creating beautiful web design. (I was so inspired by this work I actually went back to school in 2015 and got a degree in web design!)

A few things have changed since then.

• WordPress has become easier to use, but also a lot more complex. You should see the back-end of my website! It’s still fairly easy to write a blog post, but there are a lot of moving parts that keep everything looking pretty. Substack, on the other hand, is beautifully simple. Choices are limited, but sometimes limitation inspires the most creativity.
• I’m less interested in spending time to figure everything out. I’m still wooed by lovely design, but these days I just want to focus on the content. I keep coming back to the words I write and the messages they convey. I’m convinced that they’re what really count. Substack isn’t fancy, but it’s a place where words matter. It makes me WANT to sit down and write.
• I’m tired of thinking about internet-y things like SEO, page views, Facebook ads and beating algorithms. These are the tricks of the trade for making a living on the internet, but I’m completely disenchanted with it all. I want to connect with the people behind the metrics, not the metrics themselves.
• I want to write without thinking AT ALL about sales. Though I have the good fortune to write about something I love, the traditional online business game has me constantly figuring out how to weave sales messages and monetization into that content. Substack turns all that on its ear by allowing me to charge for the content itself. No more creepy sales messages finding their way in.

What it all boils down to is that I want to write about what I believe in. And I know there are lots of people out there, like me, who believe in it too. And I’m willing to bet they’re willing to put their money where their heart is.

Compensating Creators

The last reason for this switch is because I want to stand more fully in support of the creative world. There is so much out there — art, films, poetry, essays, photographs, memoirs, music — that make our world a richer place. Much of this content just doesn’t get picked up by publishers and producers. Substack disrupts this traditional model and allows creators to publish (and get paid for) content themselves. Being seen by the world is no longer decided by the powers that be.

If there’s one thing the past year has taught us, it’s that we need to notice and appreciate the gifts that touch our lives. And not just stop, notice and move on, but stand up for, sponsor and celebrate what matters to us. When people are free to write what they believe in and create from the heart, the world becomes a more beautiful place.

I hope you’ll join me in standing up for the creation of something you love and more actively supporting the growth of the other humans who love it too.

Meredith

The post Why I’m Switching to Substack appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

Me: My faculty and I are talking about how we could teach Waldorf remotely.
Calvin (24): That’s actually hilarious.
Me: I know. Waldorf via Skype?
My sister: Oh, Skype is the worst!
Calvin: Well, with it being Waldorf, I’m surprised they’re not using AOL chat.
Me: Smoke signals?
Alice (21): Morse code?
Calvin: No! CARRIER PIGEONS! That’s what Waldorf should use. You know, because it’s animals and nature-y.

We had quite a chuckle. Oh, those were the days.

3 weeks ago. Back when distance learning was a theoretical conversation. Little did we know how quickly we would be thrust into a real-world consideration of how we could teach our students from a distance.

My school is currently on our 2-week spring break. We had just one-week of home lessons before the break and now we’re all grateful to have some time to figure out how to proceed. The timing actually worked out perfectly. We had a week of experimentation — a chance to try some things — and now we get to solidify our approach.

What I’m Doing

I have heard from so many of you — teachers who are figuring this out with me, parents who are suddenly home with your children. The questions I’ve received have been wide-ranging, and they’ve all contained a bit of desperation.

• What did your take-home packet include?
• What supplies did you send home with your students?
• Are you using Zoom with your students?
• How are you delivering new content?
• Can I use your take-home packet for my child?
• What digital tools are you using?
• What are you doing about families who don’t have access? Or what about parents who still have to work?
• Can I pay you to create lessons for my 3rd grader?
• Why don’t you have any 3rd grade curriculum guides on your site? That’s what I need!

We’re all trying to adjust to this new normal and it’s all a bit unsettling.

So, here are some answers to those questions.

What I Sent Home

Here’s a basic list of things that families took with them when they left school on Friday, March 13.

• Crayons
• Flute
• Pencils
• Main lesson book
• a reader
• a handwriting packet
• a “challenge” math packet
• a parent packet including a letter and an answer key to the math problems
• a daily lesson packet with our daily rhythm in checklist form and a times table practice page and a daily math practice page
• a reader (and instructions to read 20 minutes per day)

Technology I’m Using

Google Classroom

My plan was to send daily lesson plans to my families (to fill in the blanks on the “review” and “new content” portions of the daily rhythm checklist I sent them home with on Friday.) I knew that in a pinch I could just send it out via email, but a couple of our teachers already use Google Classroom, so I decided to check it out.

Ultimately, I thought that it was a good way to go for a couple of reasons.

• Assignments would be right there and ready for parents to access whenever they were ready, without needing to scroll back through their saved emails.
• The interface allows me to upload images and documents very easily and connect them with a specific day’s assignment.
• Parents can ask questions and “turn in” student work (including a picture, which I love!). Parents can even answer each other’s questions and connect with each other over the work.

So, though it was a big push, I set it up over the weekend and got almost everyone to sign-up by Monday. I sent assignments for Monday and Tuesday out via email as well, just to make sure everyone had what they needed.

Parents have been raving about the experience. They find the lessons to be laid out clearly and they know exactly what to do to guide their child to complete the work. Big win!

Recorded Audio

I was a little on the fence about this, but at the last minute, I decided to record myself narrating the new content for Monday’s lesson. I found that I enjoyed the process far more than I thought I would.

Our content for the week was about silk (we were in our fibers block), so though there was a true story, there was also some factual information to relay. Because of this, I didn’t just read a story. I reminded them about the other fibers we had studied, talked about how silk was the same and different, and then told a story about the discovery of silk.

Because the story took this format, it was much more conversational. I imagined my students as I talked about it and I felt like I was really talking to them. I threw in little things like, “I miss you,” and “I hope you’re being helpful at home.” Many parents shared that listening to my voice telling the story was comforting and reassuring for the whole family.

Just thinking about it brings a tear to my eye. I sure miss those kids!

Photographs

I did sample pages for all main lesson book content — including compositions and dictations, which are such habit by now that I don’t generally need to guide my students through the process. I figured that having sample pages would give a measure of security and confidence to their work.

Video

I have not yet recorded any video myself. I did, however, in my silk research, find a video of a silkworm spinning a cocoon. Ordinarily I would describe this process to them myself (which I did in the audio) but I would not share the video in class. But at the last minute, when I was putting the lesson together in Google Classroom, I decided to throw it in and let parents decide if they wanted to watch it with their children. I talked about it in my audio and tried to add a little bit of feeling to it. “If you want to watch a cute little silkworm building his cocoon, I sent your parents a video.”

I have been thinking a lot about recording video for the delivery of new content. I follow a fellow teacher friend on Instagram and she has been posting desktop videos of herself simplifying fractions. Finding a way to deliver brand new content is one of my biggest questions — especially when it comes to math — and I think that these desktop videos might be the best solution. I still have to teach long division before the end of the school year.

I sent her a message asking her to send me a picture of her set-up. This is it below. I ordered the tripod and ring light and I’m planning on figuring out how I might use them next week.

Zoom

This is a big topic of conversation at the moment at my school. We have been using Zoom to hold all of our usual meetings. Between my regular faculty, grades, section and board meetings, I’ve participated in a virtual meeting almost every day. These meetings have had varied levels of success, mostly depending on the number of participants.

My small section meeting felt good. I connected with all of those colleagues and everyone got a chance to talk. In our faculty meeting, which had over 25 participants, I just listened and didn’t contribute to the conversation at all. It also felt difficult to manage (background noise, the mute button, etc.) and did not give me the feeling that I was genuinely connecting with those colleagues.

The best meeting of the week was the Thursday night parent social that I set up. Though most parents said they didn’t really feel the need to meet and were doing just fine, when we got into the meeting, I could tell that they really craved companionship. It was actually quite sweet to see so many moms and dads, sitting side by side on the couch with glasses of wine in their hands. They’d had a hard week and deserved that relaxing social night. It was so much fun, we decided to make it a regular weekly event.

So, with all of these experiences in mind, I’ve been contemplating the role that Zoom will play in my instruction. In the end, it feels problematic.

1. With a large class, the only way to make sure instruction is effective is to limit participation. This means managing students with the mute button, which doesn’t feel great to me. Also, if you take away the participation aspect, you’re removing the primary benefit of Zoom. I might as well just record video.
2. Quite a few of my students are shy about using the phone — let alone this video platform. I know that those students would not access lessons delivered in this way.
3. Some families are very careful about screen exposure — even in this social context. I know that there are some families who would not access it for this reason.
4. Zoom is distracting. When you’re on a Zoom call, you spend a good amount of time looking at yourself. I think the self-awareness that this activity brings is not age-appropriate for 3rd graders. They would also be so distracted by looking at themselves (or each other) that they would have trouble paying attention to the content of the lesson.

As of right now, I don’t imagine Zoom being a regular part of how I will deliver content to my students. I’m pondering having a brief Zoom social time with them, but I need to give it more thought before deciding.

A couple of notes:

1. AWSNA (the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America) has been hosting Zoom calls for teachers, parents and administrators who are figuring all of this out. I attended a call dedicated to grades 1-3 and none of the attendees were planning on using Zoom for instruction. It felt good to know that I wasn’t alone in my apprehension.
2. I am feeling this way because of observation and intuition about how my students will learn best. I am not avoiding Zoom because of a dogmatic belief that all screen-time is bad. If I believed that my students would learn best with regular Zoom content, I would be on it in a heartbeat. As with all of my teaching decisions, my students’ learning is at the center. This is not about some “thou shalt not consume media” belief.

What Can I Share?

I have been hearing the call, loud and clear, to share with you some of the material I’m putting together. Unfortunately, as you might be able to tell from my description above, most of what I’m creating is highly specific to my students. So I can’t simply send it out to others.

But, I do have lots of curriculum guides on my website. I encourage you to take a look through the offerings and see what might work. You might consider adjusting your block rotation so your students can take advantage of the home environment.

• Astronomy — Stay up late and observe the stars.
• Botany — Plant a garden (thank goodness it’s spring!)
• Geography — Create an itinerary for a trip to South America (next summer). Write letters to tourism departments in other states. Take a culinary tour of Asia.

Spring is a good time for those outward-facing blocks, and though your students can’t actually go anywhere, there’s plenty they can do around home.

When we return from the break, we’ll be heading into our Farming block. We’ll study the grains, do some cooking and hopefully some growing too.

And it’s true, I do not have any 3rd grade materials on my site. My rhythm is that at the end of the school year I sit down with my lesson books and re-digest the content and generalize it so it is accessible to a wider audience.

But, I’m going to do my best to put our last block — Fibers — together in a curriculum guide for you. I know that many 3rd grade teachers study fibers after spring break, and I think it is a good block for home learning, so it works out nicely that we happened to go through it before spring break. I’ll try to put all of it together asap.

Other than the actual content, my strongest recommendation is to develop a very familiar and comfortable routine. At this point in the school year, my students are at ease with our weekly and daily rhythms. They know that on Tuesday it’s likely that they are going to write a composition and that every day they are going to have a dictation. I have never been more grateful to have such a regular rhythm (I can thank my phlegmatic temperament for that one!)

Questions I Have

There is so much left to figure out about this situation. We’re being told to prepare for distance learning through the end of the school year. If this ends up being the case, there are some pretty big problems we’ll need to solve.

Accountability and Assessment

So far, all of the messages I’ve been sending parents about my lessons have been about taking it easy. I suggest that they find a good routine, but also to not stress out over it. If their child is balking about doing home lessons, let things go. Read a little, draw a little, get outside and enjoy each other. Some families appreciate clearly formed lessons with steps that their children check off as they go, but others find that stressful.

And I totally get it. In many ways, this whole situation is an opportunity to slow down and enjoy the lives that we’ve created. But, if this is going to go on until June, I feel nervous about my students not participating at all in the lessons. What is the right balance of supporting parents who never signed up to be their child’s teacher, but still making sure that skills progress?

And when the end of the school year comes around, how do I assess my students’ skill levels and write end of year reports?

Accessibility

Though all of my families are signed up for Google Classroom, they do not all have the resources to devote to completing the lessons. Many of them appreciate Waldorf’s low-tech approach and they just don’t engage much with the digital world themselves. Others are single parents or continuing to work or have older children who require more of their attention. There are a wide array of reasons why some of my students would not be able to access my lessons.

How do I support those kids? Especially the ones who were getting one-on-one support to make big strides in the home stretch of 3rd grade?

Continued Enrollment and Financial Hardship

My class is an amazingly strong community. I know that my families rely on the students and parents that have come together in this group. Parents, students and siblings are friends, companions and confidantes. Many of my families consider our school their primary social network.

For this reason, I know it would be a dire set of circumstances that would cause any of them to consider leaving the school. But, unfortunately, I have no doubt that those dire circumstances are bound to come to pass.

I’m grateful that our school is strong and we are committed to making sure that families who are experiencing hardship can continue to attend our school. I am determined that every child who left my classroom on March 13, returns, even if it’s not until September 2.

(I know that there are many causes out there worthy of our support right now, but I can’t resist inserting a link, in case anyone wants to support families who are facing hardship but wish to remain at our school.)

How are you faring through these uncertain days? After spending a few days laying low, and feeling even lower, I’ve remembered that the antidote to despair is action. I’m determined to spring into action to help however I can.

How can I help you? Reach out and let me know.

The post Remote Learning, Waldorf-Style appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

I worried that we would run out of material, the kids would get bored and chaos would ensue. I ended up spending HOURS preparing every lesson, just to make sure I filled every minute.

What’s worse is back in those days I planned EVERY minute of that 2 hour lesson anew every day! I hadn’t learned the value of rhythm, which is an absolutely ESSENTIAL part of my teaching these days.

Well, it didn’t take long for me to realize that this mysterious main lesson — that full 2 hour stretch — can be broken down into four different parts. And you DON’T need to plan each one of them anew every day.

So, this post is all about taking the mystery out of main lesson and putting together a plan that works for you and your students.

If you read this and you’re interested in learning more, you might consider signing up for my free workshop The 3 Classroom Management Strategies that Every Waldorf Teacher Needs to Know. At the end of that workshop I’ll be presenting a special offer to help take even more of the mystery out of that Waldorf magic.

But on to main lesson . . .

How does it break down? These are the parts of main lesson, as I (and many other Waldorf teachers) see it.

• Warm-Up
• Review
• Bookwork
• New Content

I’ll go through each of these and share a few thoughts about how much time it should take and what you should think about when planning.

Warm-Up

For me, the whole idea about the warm-up is that it helps the children arrive at school. They are transitioning from being at home, where their individual needs, wants and interests exist fairly unhindered, to being at school where they are part of a group. This requires a huge shift and our students do it every day!

In addition to making that shift from home to school, the warm-up is to help the students awaken their thinking, feeling and willing. This is an important part of making sure they are ready to make the most of the lessons to come.

There are a lot of things that can happen to provide this warm-up experience, but throughout all of this time, my guiding thought is about these two experiences.

• transitioning from home to school
• awakening head, heart and hands

So, usually, my morning warm-up includes the following experiences. I’ve marked the purpose beside each one.

• Greeting (transition)
• Jump rope
• Singing (heart)
• Folk dance (heart and hands)
• Playing flute (heart)
• Movement exercises (hands)
• Dictation and math problems (head)

When it’s all said and done, this part of my lesson lasts 45 minutes to an hour. I know that many teachers and mentors say that you should never warm up for more than 30 minutes. But I have found that my students just need that time to settle in. Also, many of the things we do in our warm-up pertain to our lesson, so there is quite a bit of overlap between the warm-up and review.

Review

In this part of the lesson, you are reviewing the content from the day before, in preparation for working with it in some way. I usually do the review at this point in the lesson, though I am well-aware that it can sometimes feel like a bit of a let-down to start talking about yesterday’s news.

I try to remember that students feel like they come to school to learn the new content and it can be frustrating to have to wait too long to get it.

To alleviate this, I often bring some little nugget of new content in the midst of the review. As we are remembering together (usually in a verbal retelling) yesterday’s story or idea, I’ll mention something new and I always notice that my students sit up a little straighter and pay more attention.

Also, I should note that we don’t always do a verbal review together. It’s always a good idea to mix it up, so it doesn’t get dry. Sometimes we retell the story together. Other times students will act it out. Other times they’ll dive right into a composition about the story.

However we review the content, the next step is to work with it in some way. Usually this is with a drawing, writing assignment or some other exercise.

This is a part of the lesson that does require daily thought and preparation, though I try to map out ahead of time the different review activities. For example, I know that I have an assistant teacher in the room on Tuesdays, so I usually choose that day for independent activities that need a lot of one-on-one or small group support. I like to do guided drawings on Wednesdays and in the upper grades on Mondays I liked to give the students a reading passage to read and respond to.

It doesn’t always work out this way because I can’t always flex the content to make it work. For example, if I really want to do a guided drawing of Moses parting the Red Sea, but that story comes on a Thursday, I’ll probably change my usual schedule and do the drawing anyway.

My daily preparation became so much easier when I realized it was smart to map out the activities according to the day of the week in this way. Usually the recall and work takes 20-30 minutes.

Bookwork or Practice

Moving from the recall into the bookwork or practice time is so natural and easy. Sometimes the bookwork is an intrinsic part of the review process (like in the case of a guided drawing.) Other times, students are working at their own pace through the review content and they can move into bookwork whenever they are finished.

Often the bookwork involves transferring a completed, corrected composition into their main lesson books in finished form. Other times they are entering the review of a science demonstration. Other times they are writing step-by-step instructions to a math process. Almost always, the bookwork is the final, complete work and comes out of a draft that the students have written and I’ve corrected. It is rare that I have students turn straight to a page in their main lesson books without some sort of preparation.

One thing to note: I know that it used to be regular practice for teachers to write class compositions on the board that students would simply copy. They would write the composition together, so it was a group effort, but everyone wrote the same composition in their books.

My feeling is that this practice doesn’t give the students enough experience with writing. Often only a few students (the natural writers in the group) are involved with the process, and others are simply copying from the board. I find this to be of minimal educational value, so beginning as early as 2nd grade I started having my students write their own compositions. Now they’re old hands at it! And it really helped them listen to the sounds and do their best to spell.

If you’d like to read more about how I handled compositions in 3rd grade and “kid writing” in 2nd grade, click through and read those posts.

New Content

In the lower grades, I tend to end the lesson with new content, while in the upper grades, I bring the new material earlier in the lesson (sometimes even before the review) and end with bookwork.

In the lower grades, though, I like the feeling of bringing everyone to rest with a story at the end of the lesson. It feels like a little gift from teacher to student.

It was particularly important in 1st grade, when I think my students would have fallen apart without that daily story. These days, sometimes the work of our review goes long and I save the story for another day, but I do my best to manage my time so I can tell a story.

And one thing to note: I can’t tell you how many classrooms I have visited where the teachers did NOT tell a story or present new content in the lesson. It is definitely true that this is the aspect of our lesson planning that requires the most preparation, but it should not be skipped! It is absolutely essential that students learn something new every single day.

So, on those days when my story needs to wait until the next day, it’s usually because our review was juicy enough that it satisfied the need for new content and took up more time.

So, what does the timeline look like?

• Warm-Up — 60 minutes
• Review — 20 minutes
• Bookwork — 15 minutes
• Story — 20 minutes

So, what does that add up to? Hmmm, 115 minutes? It should all fit. So why is it that I run out of time every day?!

What do your main lessons look like? Which part of the lesson do you struggle with the most? Drop a note in the comments and let’s chat.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Main Lesson appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

Okay, on to the topic.

Record-keeping is another one of those topics that wasn’t fully addressed in my Waldorf teacher training.

I mean, yes, there was a lot to cover. And I got a FULL dose of the importance of imagination and activating the feeling life of my students. And truly, this is the MOST important aspect of my work. So thank you Nettie and Betsy!

But, beyond this, I firmly believe that what Waldorf teachers need to do to become more appreciated and respected in the mainstream world is to provide more documentation and feedback.

All it took for me to be convinced of this idea was my first IEP meeting collaborating with the local public school. They asked which “research-based” curriculum I had tried and what records I had regarding the student, indicating more evidence was necessary before they would consider him eligible for services.

Yikes. Clearly my insight and intuitive connection with the student wasn’t enough to convince them he needed extra help.

So, based on experiences like these, here are the top 4 documents I think every Waldorf teacher should be maintaining to track student progress.

Main Lesson Book Tracking

Are your students completing their main lesson pages? In the upper grades you should collect them and give feedback. At this age students themselves need feedback to encourage them to improve. If you’re curious about what this feedback might look like, take a look at my Record-Keeping and Feedback Guide.

In the lower grades, you probably won’t share your observations with students, but you should definitely have a sense for who is completing pages and who needs extra time. This will go a long way towards preparing them for middle school.

Developmental Movement Tracker

In the early grades, I tracked my students’ movement skills with an eye towards how I could help them along.

I created a chart with every student’s name listed and all the skills I was watching for. If you put your email address below you’ll get the chart I used for first grade, but it’s easily adjusted for your grade level.

Student Observations

However it works best for you, make sure you develop a system for tracking your student observations.

I can’t tell you how many times I wish I’d written down thoughts I’d had about a student. Even those insights that seem inconsequential at the time, can be really important when you’re meeting with parents and wanting to impress the importance of providing extra support at home.

Come up with a system that works for you and start keeping those records, even if you’re in first grade.

Extra Support Log

We all have those students who we suspect will need extra support to fully realize their potential. Often, we give them the support they need without really recognizing it.

Do you have a student who you ALWAYS give extra support right after an instruction is given?

Is there a child you KNOW would not succeed without a little extra encouragement from classmates and teachers?

Document this. At the end of every lesson, write down the students you worked with individually. Later, go back and look through your notes for trends. Are there students who wouldn’t have been successful without your support?

Ultimately, this is fine. Providing extra support is part of our work. But make sure you communicate with parents about it. You don’t want them thinking their child is a self-directed, independent learner, when they actually rely on you for a lot of support.

If you’re interested in finding ways you can support your students in the classroom, I am offering a free workshop all about the 3 classroom management strategies every Waldorf teacher needs to have. Registration for the workshop is open now and it will go live on September 10. Make sure you register so you don’t miss it.

I’m all about giving Waldorf teachers the tools they need to give their students all that they can, and this workshop will really help. I hope you’ll sign up.

The post 4 Record-Keeping Documents Every Waldorf Teacher Should Have in Their Binder appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

Every year I’m amazed by how, no matter how much I plan ahead, the spring is SUCH a busy time of year!

Maybe it’s because our spring break is such a nice, long, rejuvenating break from the every day that I get a little lost in that luxury.

Maybe it’s because the end of the year feels so close I can almost taste it.

But this year is different. For the past week I have been planning our last (10!) weeks of school and getting SUPER clear on what I need to focus on. I’m feeling so ready to jump into productivity mode this spring and get everything done.

So, what am I focusing on?

Waldorf Spring Curriculum Planning

Well, first of all, I’ve spent the last week planning curriculum for the rest of the school year. I don’t know about you, but usually my summer planning runs out sometime around February. From that point on I really depend on the breaks to figure everything out. I mean, I have a general idea of what we’re doing, but I still need to read stories, plan lessons and work through the details. That’s what I’ve been doing during the second half of spring break.

This year, we’re heading back after the break with a math block. (Once again, I’ve been using my favorite math resource.) We’re going to give some solid attention to times tables, division, addition and subtraction facts and I’ll end the block with an introduction to regrouping. I promise to write another curriculum-focused blog post — with more info about 2nd grade math — soon.

With this work done, my lessons will move forward in their usual one-foot-in-front-of-the-other way and I can give my attention to all of the little extras.

What are those little extras, you ask? That’s what this blog post is about. Here’s my brief list.

• Summer Professional Development
• Student Assessment
• Working Through Individualized Learning Plans
• Spring Parent-Teacher Conferences
• Writing Reports
• Planning the Summer

Professional Development

I recently wrote a blog post all about the various professional development options that are available to Waldorf teachers in the summer. I strongly recommend checking out that post.

But beyond going out there and seeing what is available, I like to begin the process of choosing professional development with a pretty thorough look inward. I think it’s really important to take an honest look at your teaching — your strengths and strivings — before deciding what training to attend.

Many Waldorf teachers just automatically sign up for the next year’s “Art of Teaching” course. And don’t get me wrong, those courses are great — and pretty essential if you’re teaching a grade you haven’t taught before. But I know that there are plenty of teachers out there who would realize that there are other aspects of their teaching that would benefit from some training.

If you’re the kind of person who really loves curriculum development, odds are you don’t need an Art of Teaching course. Maybe take a look at classroom management, working with learning differences or getting a specialized training in a particular focus area.

For me, with the big projects of the 3rd grade curriculum looming large, I plan on giving some good attention to classroom management and maybe even a course on the domestic arts!

Student Assessment

My first few years of teaching I was so overwhelmed with everything that was going on during the spring that I told myself I would just wait until school got out to write my end of year reports. I completely put the task on the back burner, didn’t think about it at all, and immersed myself in the teaching.

The problem was that when it finally came time to think about those reports, I didn’t have the data I needed to be able to effectively write them. I mean, I had my notes about my students and my own informal observations, but if I had thought about it, I would have created a formalized process for assessing their skills BEFORE school got out.

Luckily, I realized it about a week before school got out and I quickly notified all of the parents that I was going to keep their students’ work for a few weeks into the summer. After the reports were done I sent out word that reports and student work was available for pick-up in the classroom.

Thankfully my class parents were supportive, but it’s far better to collect the data ahead of time!

Last year I put together a form that I used to check in on my students’ progress. This form then became a rubric chart in the end-of-year report. If you’re interested in using the chart I made, I’ll send it to you if you put your email address in the box on this page.

Working through Individualized Learning Plans

One of the best things about being a Waldorf teacher is that you know almost exactly the students you’ll see in your classroom on the first day of school. This means that we have a huge advantage over those teachers who have to wait until September to respond to the group and make plans for supporting student learning.

I realized a few years ago that doing the work of assessing my students in the spring leads SO naturally into putting together support plans for students who need them. I often meet with the parents of those students at regular intervals throughout the school year, and it’s good to meet in the spring, have a plan to move forward with in the fall, so you can really hit the ground running when the school year begins.

Now, I’m always open to the growth that can happen over the summer, so those plans need to be checked in with and possibly adjusted in the fall, but to do the work now will make a huge difference. It’s hard to write a support plan for a student you haven’t seen in three months. Use the informed perspective you have now and put together a plan

Spring Parent-Teacher Conferences

I’ve actually never understood why almost every Waldorf school I’ve encountered holds parent teacher conferences in the week before Thanksgiving — in November. That’s always felt far too early in the year to really be effective.

Though the spring may not be the ideal time to meet when you’re looking to make some real progress in skill-development, it is the best time to reconnect with families and make sure you’re all on the same page when it comes to supporting student growth.

A wise teacher told me years ago that you should never say anything in the end-of-year report that you haven’t already said to the parents. Nothing in that report should be news. It should instead be a formal document that simply documents the common understanding that you and parents have.

It’s tough to fit them all on the calendar, but it’s totally worth it. Having those conferences on the calendar will ensure that you do the work leading up to it, which will make writing those reports a breeze. Speaking of writing reports . . .

Writing Reports

I know many teachers who absolutely commit to having their end-of-year reports completed by the last day of school. Though I’ve never managed to do it myself — I just haven’t made it a priority — I sure admire those teachers who do!

But even if you’re not going to have your reports completed by the last day of school, there’s plenty of preliminary work to do. I usually like to settle on a format for the report and I do the work of gathering information ahead of time.

I recently put together a little one-video mini-course all about How to Write an End of Year Report Your Class Parents Will Love. I think it’s really helpful and you’ll get a lot out of it. Just put your email address below and I’ll send you the link.

Planning the Summer

Finally, spring is the time to make your summer plans. I’ve found that unless I go into the summer with a clear plan, it’s far too easy for those endless summer days to fritter away. I’ve been sitting down with my calendar, blocking out time for trainings, vacations and school prep days.

You know you’re a busy Waldorf teacher when you have to schedule your down time.

If you’re interested in getting a little guidance with all of these topics and walking through them, step-by-step, with me and a small cohort of Waldorf teachers, check out my Spring Productivity Course.

This 6-week course goes through all of the topics above and shares resources and guiding ideas for giving each one of them your attention. We’ve got a great group already forming and this format works really well for busy teachers. You can find more information about the program here. I hope you’ll join us.

The post 6 Things Every Waldorf Teacher Should Be Thinking About This Spring appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

Every year, I find myself needing to remind myself why we do a class play. Truly, the purpose of the class play is not to have an amazing performance that impresses the grandparents. (Often it does, but that’s not what it’s all about.) As the pace of life speeds up and the world becomes smaller, I’ve found that it is more and more difficult to remember that putting together a great show is not what the Waldorf class play is all about.

It’s taken me awhile to remember this and in my early years of teaching I felt a lot of pressure to put on a great show. But these days I use the class play as a chance to really contemplate the developmental stage of the grade I’m teaching and to craft the play to really give them what they need.

For example, last year we performed The King’s Son Who Feared Nothing (I’ve put it together in a pdf you can find here) and I looked for every opportunity to provide my students with experiences they craved and furthered their development. The play was performed in a circle (just opening the circle at times to allow the audience to see the acting that was happening in the center) and there were opportunities for my very physical class to fall on top of each other and roll around on the floor together. It was great.

This year, I’ve put together a selection of fables for our play and I’ve approached it with the same thoughts in mind. This year my students are seeking out opportunities to tangle with each other and there are constant “us vs. them” games happening on the playground. This is completely typical 2nd grade behavior and experiencing that opposition helps them come into their own when they go through the 9-year-change next year.

So, rather than fight that dynamic and try to force them to get along with each other, I’m embracing it. The fables in our 2nd grade play are all about the animals opposing each other in one way or another. In each of the three stories (and one of the dances that comes between them) the class is split into two opposing groups. We’ve got the cats vs. the foxes, the rabbits vs. the elephants and the birds vs. the beasts.

We’ve just started working on it and we’re already having a great time and I can’t wait to perform it.

If you’re looking for a 2nd grade play, I’ve put this one together in pdf format, as well, and I’ve included some of the songs we’re performing, as well. I hope you enjoy performing it as much as I have enjoyed putting it together. And if you do perform it, please reach out! I’d love to hear how it went! Leave a comment below or send me an email meredith@awaldorfjourney.com.

The post The Waldorf Class Play appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.