A day in the life of the Rudolph Steiner School - arts-based alternative school

Instructor, Nov-Dec, 1999 by Jennifer O. Prescott

At this arts-based alternative school, students are learning there is nothing they can't do. Just what's going on here?

The first thing one notices upon entering a fifth-grade classroom at the Rudolf Steiner School, in New York City, is how remarkably polite the children are. They step up with firm handshakes, looking me directly in the eye and enunciating, "How do you do, Mrs. Prescott?" They greet their teacher, Dale Bennett, M.A., in the same fashion, shaking her hand and saying, "Good morning." A young boy inquires as to how I prefer my team - "With sugar, lemon, or milk?" - and bounds off to prepare it. This is a fifth-grade boy?

But he's not the only one. It soon becomes apparent that virtually all these children are communicative, engaged, and enthusiastic. They seem eager to participate in their lessons, and they do so with a certain joy and exhilaration. What is going on here?

The Rudolf Steiner School, on East 79th Street, is the oldest "Waldorf school" in the country, having recently celebrated its 70th anniversary. With only 295 students in the lower school (grades pre-K-8) and the high school combined, Steiner has a student waiting list a mile long. And it's not just the fine architecture or the outdoor recesses in nearby Central Park that make it so appealing. The building's very atmosphere holds a key to the Waldorf philosophy and to that of its founder, Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian scientist, artist, and visionary who lived from 1861 to 1925. Everything here is beautiful.

"We learn through the arts," explains Bennett. "They are integrated with everything." Every child learns how to paint, sculpt, dance, act, sing, knit, sew, work with wood, and play two instruments. What is not surprising, then, is the most common term applied to Waldorf graduates: self-confidence. Says Steiner graduate and educator Christopher Schaefer, Ph.D.: "What my Waldorf education gave me in the most fundamental sense is the belief that I could do anything I really wanted to do."

Daily at 8:30 A.M., the fifth graders stand, the lights are dimmed, and a candle is lit. In unison, the children recite a verse composed by Rudolf Steiner that begins: "I look into the world, / in which the sun is shining, / in which the stars are sparkling." The class then breaks into song while their teacher enthusiastically conducts, coaxing them to "sing from the belly." Like their students, the teachers here seem capable of just about anything. Bennett plays the piano with ease, paints with a skilled hand, and declaims Greek poetry as if on stage.

"Teachers are not just teachers, they are artists," says Bob Dandrew, director of development at the Steiner school. Waldorf training is rigorous, taking two years if one goes full-time. (In addition to a Waldorf teaching certificate, some training programs will confer a master's degree.) "The first year is the beginning of a path of self-transformation through the arts," says Eugene Schwartz, director of teacher education at Sunbridge College, in Spring Valley, New York, a center for Waldorf teacher training. "Most people by virtue of modern education learn that they can't paint, or can't sculpt, or can't sing. It's a great revelation to learn that they can."

A visitor won't see a textbook used in the Waldorf system. In fact, each child from first grade on creates his or her own artistically rendered text throughout the year, designing and refining what will become a unique expression of learning. After looking over several of these, I notice that the elegant penmanship and the sophisticated drawings all have a strikingly similar quality from volume to volume. Although the individual's creativity still shines through, there is clearly a prescribed order to what every child is asked to include. The reason for this, according to Waldorf literature, is that the artistic subjects in such books develop from the academic lessons and are taught in a systematic manner. This builds a strong foundation of artistic skills.

Nothing, it seems, is extraneous or out of place here. This is true of the building itself, from the softly colored walls and delicate curtains to the richly detailed research projects on the walls. The pre-K rooms are painted an inviting pinkish red, which "provides a soothing environment for young children," says Dandrew. The fifth-grade classroom is a gentle pastel green. As youngsters progress upward by grade, their classrooms' colors move through the rainbow's spectrum. According to Rudolf Steiner's theory of child development, each color is appropriate for each age level, tuning in to children's natural energy at certain life stages.

The philosophy of "natural stages" is an intrinsic part of the Waldorf curriculum. Steiner, who developed the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1919 (for children of workers at the Waldorf-Astoria factory - hence the term "Waldorf schools"), shared Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget's theory that children develop in stages. Each stage lasts approximately seven years, the first being that of the "hands," or the will, in Steiner's view. During this time, youngsters need to play, explore, and literally "grasp" their worlds. In younger classrooms, children follow a reassuring, rhythmic schedule that mimics the home environment: baking bread, playing with all-natural materials such as wood and beeswax, singing, napping, and cleaning.