Option for Parent & Teacher Conferences

Dear Families,

Outside the Butterfly classroom, I have posted Thursday morning parent & teacher conference times. While we do not expect parent & child families to sign up for a conference, I want to offer this possibility for you. It would be a chance for me to answer any questions about Waldorf education, my classes, or whatever you would want to talk about without the possible interruptions of class as usual.

The healthy social life is found
When, in the mirror of each human soul,
The entire community finds its reflection,
And when, in the community,
The virtue of each one is living.

Rudolf Steiner—The Social Motto

Elsewhere Steiner wrote that a social group can be at its healthiest and most effective when the work of the individual serves the needs of the group and when the needs of the individual are served by the work of the group. As I reflect upon the manner in which I teach parent & child classes and the changes I have made to my format over the years, I see that I strive to get closer and closer to this ideal in which children can bring their love of work into serving the class as a whole. As such, craft projects that led to individual objects to take home (not that there is anything wrong with this) tended to yield to cooking and cleaning projects in which the whole group could serve the individual or the individual could serve the whole group (all, of course, infused with the possibility of child-directed free play with a background of song and rhyme). Andrea Gambardella writes of this combination of work and play in "Sun and Rain." As children move through their first six years, they want to develop their senses of autonomy, initiative, and industry, and I have found that allowing them to be involved as much as possible in adult work from start to finish (with obvious limitations for safety--and respect for comfort levels of different families; some are quite willing to have a young child use and learn from a sharp and effective knife for cutting vegetables; others will want to wait until an older age feels just right; both are valid positions) has been a way to cultivate hearty and strong individuals and classes.

With warmth and light,

William Geoffrey Dolde