Gardening on Long Island
is a rare phenomenon, if you happen to be a school
Long Island, NY is home to 125 school districts and a total of 656 public schools with over 450,000 students in the two counties of Nassau and Suffolk. There are hundreds of private and parochial schools as well.
However, there is only one school on Long Island that has a gardening program integrated into its curriculum:
The Waldorf School of Garden City.
Jeannine Davis teaches gardening to grades one to eight. Ariadna Armenta from the Long Island Report paid a visit to the garden with Jeannine to learn about the Waldorf School of Garden City’s truly unique program. Ariadna produced a video to accompany her story, which you can view here. Just click on the photos to view the video story.
This year’s AWSNA summer conference will be held at the Waldorf School of Garden City. There's a lot going on with over 300 participants and dozens. Hope you find time to visit the garden if you're there.
The Movable Classroom
has come to America
The term “movable classroom” describes an evolution in traditional Waldorf pedagogy and classroom design. Distinctive features include replacing desks and chairs with wooden benches and large cushions, which can be arranged in a wide variety of ways depending on the activity. Teachers who work with the movable classroom place special emphasis on the autonomy of the child’s individual learning process. The challenge to educators is that it requires a corresponding inner flexibility from teachers so that a child-centered pedagogy can arise. The term “movable classroom” has to be understood in two ways – on an inner and an outer level.
Swedish musician and Waldorf teacher Pär Ahlbom is the “father” of the movable classroom concept. 30 years ago, he founded a school for difficult children where, among other things, he sought to create a movement-based way of learning to harmonize the children’s imbalances. The emphasis was always on doing. In the 1990s his impulse found its way to Germany and was first used at the Bochum Waldorf school. Over one-third of German Waldorf schools have movable classrooms.
Now, the movable classroom is coming to America. Pine Hill Waldorf School just finished the first year with a movable classroom for their first and second grades. They plan to continue with it through the grades, perhaps as far as sixth grade. It’s been a wonderful success and what better way to share their enthusiasm with you than to let them explain it in their own words:
The Waldorf approach to education has long supported student learning by promoting high-quality nutrition, plenty of sleep, enough warmth, and lots of recess and fresh air. Yet even in Waldorf schools, students – especially those in the early grades – can struggle to stay focused during lessons. They fidget, readjust their positions, slouch in their chairs, or flop onto their desks. In spite of our best efforts, young children, it seems, simply have trouble paying attention. At Pine Hill Waldorf School, we thought we had tried everything – until now!
Enter the Movable Classroom. Conceived in Scandinavia and developed in Germany, the Movable Classroom is a concept that meets children in a new way. Instead of traditional desks and chairs, the Movable Classroom uses low benches that can be moved and utilized in a multitude of ways. Whether in a circle, a horseshoe, as a long lunch table, or grouped for children working in pairs… whether as an obstacle course or a balance beam … whether in rows “just like a normal classroom”… these benches lend themselves to flexibility, form and supreme functionality: the Movable Classroom invites children to learn – and love learning – in an environment that is both amenable to them and productive.
At Pine Hill Waldorf School, we have welcomed the Movable Classroom into our first and second grades in the 2010-2011 school year, inspired by the teachers of those two grades and our Education Support specialist who identified the need and were willing to rise to the challenge.
We are further emboldened to pioneer this concept by research about the relationship between children, learning, and the physical environment. Since the turn of this century, growing evidence from the fields of neuroscience, child development, and education has shown a powerful connection between movement and cognition in children. Evidence indicates, for example, that there is a connection between postural control and the executive function of attention. Postural control is the ability to stabilize the trunk, neck, and head so that skilled tasks, such as reading and writing, can occur. Executive functions (EFs) are cognitive abilities such as attention, self-control, and problem-solving that govern other learning tasks. In the early elementary years, if postural tone is weak (i.e., when a child’s body lacks sufficient muscle tension to maintain an upright position), there are greater demands placed on the executive system (i.e., a child needs her
brain power to stabilize her balance rather than to focus on a lesson). This means that a child has fewer cognitive resources to use for paying attention. Slouching in a chair, fidgeting and wiggling, or flopping over a desk are symptoms of postural fatigue and therefore poor attention. So, when we help a child develop her postural control, her executive function of attention can switch over to learning.
Children today are noticeably lacking postural tone because today’s culture is increasingly sedentary: hours per day are spent sitting in cars, sitting in front of media, and sitting at desks. Movement activities of all kinds are necessary to develop postural control: walking, running, climbing, balancing, jumping, lifting, throwing, and more. The action of sitting, when not supported by the back of a chair or by leaning on a table, also activates postural muscles. When postural control becomes automatic, more attentional resources are available for cognitive processing. Thus, movement can support thinking.
At Pine Hill Waldorf School, we hold as our greatest tenet the honoring of the unfolding of childhood, and we work diligently to understand true child development. In an age where countless schools are cutting recess and physical education, we hold fast to these valued elements of our curriculum so that all our students can reap the physical, social, emotional, and cognitive benefits of movement activities.
The inauguration of the Movable Classroom in grades one and two aims to restore lost movement time and create an academic setting that is developmentally conducive to learning. While the implementation of this innovation will not be a panacea for every student’s needs, we are confident that all students will derive some benefit, and many students will greatly benefit from this change. And while the Movable Classroom opens opportunities for learning, the children within will learn the greatest lesson of all: that school is a child-friendly place where education is dynamic, interesting, and FUN!
The photos above are from Pine Hill Waldorf School in Wilton, NH. The following photos are from Schwaebisch Hall Waldorf School in Germany. The photos are by Wilfried Peltner and were taken for a portfolio project by Martin Carle. They are reproduced from Waldorf-Ideen-Pool.de.
The following photos are from various German Waldorf schools:
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Waldorf Book of Poetry book signing at the AWSNA conference in Garden City
The Waldorf Book of Poetry will have its editor David Kennedy in tow for a book signing at the AWSNA summer conference in Garden City this weekend. If you didn't get a copy yet, there'll be some there and if you already have one and want it signed, bring it along.
It seemed most fitting to include a poem from New York:
The New Colossus
Emma Lazarus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
In 1882 Emma Lazarus was asked to donate an original poem to the fundraising effort to build a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. She initially declined, stating she could not write a poem about a statue. At the time, she was involved in aiding refugees to New York. These refugees lived in conditions that the wealthy Lazarus had never experienced. She saw a way to express her empathy for these refugees in terms of the statue.
“The New Colossus”, was written in 1883. A bronze tablet that bears the text of her most famous poem is in the Statue of Liberty Museum in the base below the pedestal.
"The New Colossus" and the notes about Emma Lazarus are from the "History" chapter of the Waldorf Book of Poetry.
Click here to learn more about the Waldorf Book of Poetry with over 425 poems that enrich and support the Waldorf curriculum for grades one to eight (and beyond).
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