Posted: March 30th, 2010 | Author: Joan Jaeckel | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Alliance for Childhood
P.O. Box 444, College Park, MD 20741
Tel/Fax 301-779-1033
www.allianceforchildhood.org
Update—March 2010: Rethink the “Core Standards”
Dear Friends,
As many of you know, the Alliance for Childhood is gravely concerned about the newly proposed “common core standards” for children in kindergarten and the early grades. Hundreds of early childhood health and education professionals have signed the Alliance’s joint statement on the K-3 standards calling for their withdrawal. Now is the time for each of you to take action on this critical issue.
After months of drafting in secrecy, the final proposed version of the K-12 standards was released by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) on March 10. Some aspects of this version are better than the draft that was leaked to the press in January; some are worse. But overall we are sure these standards will intensify an already inappropriate emphasis on cognitive development of young children that is divorced from social-emotional and physical development. Current practices are already causing enormous stress in children’s lives. These new standards will add to that.
The NGA and CCSSO have announced that the proposed standards are “available for comment” until April 2, after which they will revise the standards and issue the final version. Unfortunately, this is not a true public comment process, such as would be required for an important piece of legislation moving through Congress. Yet the federal government has announced that billions of tax dollars—including “Race to the Top” and Title I education funds—will be tied to states’ adopting these standards. We are deeply troubled by this entire process.
The NGA and CCSSO have set up an online survey to collect comments. The survey is rather confusing. Here are the steps you need to take to ask that the early childhood standards be withdrawn and reconsidered:
1. Go to www.corestandards.org.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the home page and click on the link to the questionnaire.
3. At the “Section 2—Feedback” page, choose the third option, “English Language Arts and Mathematics Standards.”
4. The next page asks you to “select the level of feedback you would like to give.” Choose the second option, “General Feedback and Feedback on Specific Sections.”
5. On the “Specific Feedback—English Language Arts” page, check the four boxes for K-5 (Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, and Language). This will enable you to select “Remove or entirely rewrite” as your preference if you agree with our position.
6. On the “Specific Feedback—Mathematics” page, check the four boxes for Kindergarten, Grade 1, Grade 2, and Grade 3. This will enable you to select “Remove or entirely rewrite.”
It is vital that you submit comments and get friends and colleagues to do the same. It’s a small window of time between now and April 2, but the biggest one Americans have had yet to speak out about the need for strong, experiential, play-based approaches to early education. Use the boxes for “additional comments” in the questionnaire to inform policymakers about your own experiences and concerns about early education.
See the Alliance web site, www.allianceforchildhood.org, to read our statement on the standards, the comments of many of the signers, and more details on how you can respond. Policymakers need to hear from us all, especially parents and teachers. Their voices are rarely heard on educational issues. It’s time to act.
With warm regards,
Joan Almon and Ed Miller
P.S.: Please forward this message to others. We apologize if you have received more than one copy of it.
Posted: February 8th, 2010 | Author: Joan Jaeckel | Filed under: Education Policy | 1 Comment »
Butterfly, butterfly, fell in a pond.
Why spider, why spider, why?
That’s the poem of a two-year old.
The fact of this poem raises the a question: Does the proliferation of charter schools in Los Angeles, since so many of them serve ethnic minorities, really mean charter schools are bringing back a socially backward era?
Charter schools’ growth promoting segregation, studies say. A UCLA study is one of two finding that the increasingly popular campuses skew toward racially separate student bodies.
Given that a two year old can make up a poem without anyone teaching him to do so, that’s doubtful. Think of the implications of this fear. When we believe that a classroom filled mostly with children of one racial group is inherently deficient in some way we might as well say that those children’s race limits their potential. No child is solely defined by their ethnic or demographic profile. Overarching factors common to every human being in childhood play a much larger role in how well the school serves the children – in a traditional public school, a charter public school, or an independent ‘private’ school.
Our own observation tells us that children arrive gifted with remarkable strengths or natural drives and capacities. Our colleague and friend, Bill Crain, wrote a book about this called Reclaiming Childhood: Letting Children Be Children in Our Achievement-Oriented Society . I have some decent notes on a talk Bill gave about this and as soon as I can figure out a way to link to the file in this blog, will. Meanwhile, the highlights:
First of all, Bill is pretty disdainful of America’s practice of preparing young children to “compete in the global economy” in Kindergarten and younger. “How would YOU like to spend eight hours a day in a rocking chair ‘preparing’ for old age??” is how he puts it.
Here’s what children do without any teaching from us:
1. Children are natural-born artists. At two, all children begin to scribble; it does not need to be taught to them. We can assume that children NEED to do art just as they need to walk, talk and think. Doing art is not a frill for children, it’s a necessity without which we stunt an essential capacity for IMAGINATION. If we eventually want people who can ‘compete’, then the more art they did in childhood, the more competitive they will be as an adult.
2. Children are natural-born make-believe dramatists. Children are not deluded or little liars. The make-believe capacity allows the child to transcend reality and create a new reality. Since we know because Einstein told us that a problem cannot be solved from the same reality that created it … it becomes obvious that the more children are allowed their make-believe worlds for as long as possible the more they, as future adults, will be able to play themselves into a new future.
3. Children are natural naturalists and sensitive to nature. Sifting sand, watching water splash, blowing dandelions - these are not time-wasters but scientific observation which ‘teach’ lawful behavior and develop a sense of consequence and reality. Bill tells stories of adults who, as a troubled teen, recalled an experience in nature as a young child and how that experience gave them a sense of the order of the world and helped them to find their own center. How much of today’s anxiety in children is because they have so little time to experience nature’s orderly calm?
4. Children are by nature linguistic geniuses. Linguist Noam Chomsky tells us “the rules of syntax are harder than advanced calculus and yet understood and mastered by children”. Do we drive this genius out of them when we try to ‘improve’ on their language skills by pushing phonics and words devoid of syntax on them at ever earlier ages? Do so many children have a hard time reading in 5th grade because of our methods of teaching rather than their ability?
“I tried to develop a ‘radical child-centered’ view that is not obsessed with the future and, instead, works with the strengths of children in the present.” – William Crain
There is so much to do with children that is really important. Letting children be children in traditional public schools, in charter public schools and in independent/’private’ schools will ultimately raise the level of meaningful learning in schools.
Posted: November 2nd, 2009 | Author: Joan Jaeckel | Filed under: Inventing markers for public schools inspired by Waldorf education | 3 Comments »
This email- overflowing with great questions - came to us from a father with experience at an independent, non-public, Waldorf school.
This father’s questions are invaluable. A public school “inspired by” Waldorf education doesn’t quietly fit into the traditional public school model with its highly regulated environment and it doesn’t quite fit the independent, non-public Waldorf model with its highly un-regulated, community ownership model. A public school inspired by Waldorf education is a hybrid that people working at the 44+ charter schools are inventing right now. A hard, but necessary, controversy exists within the Waldorf education network of organizations in the U.S. about whether hybridizing Waldorf education “waters it down” and renders it “not authentic”. I come down on the side of bringing Waldorf education in America into the public sector by inventing an authentic hybrid. I think the strict boundaries between public education and private education need to be – and are – blurring. A hard, but necessary, controversy exists within the public education establishment about these lines blurring. If we allow ”private” interests and “outside operators” to “take over”, will public education still be authentically “public”? To me, the exercise of inventing the hybrid education model which incorporates the best of traditional public education (equality) and the best of traditional Waldorf education (human worth and individuality) is a socially responsible necessity in these modern times. All the answers to the questions come from the perspective of a hybrid education model that does not yet fully exist.
I post the father’s questions, with permission:
Dear Joan,
….Regarding testing, it seems like other public schools are having to “teach to the test” in order to keep their doors open.
School doors will always stay open, but management may change. A public school is free not to teach to the test, but if students don’t do well on the tests as a result, officials can – according to No Child Left Behind (“NCLB”) – replace the staff and teachers.
How can a Waldorf-inspired school survive without teaching to the test?
The short answer is, Waldorf education teaches to the student, not to the test. As a result, students acquire knowledge and the capacity to think. Students in public schools inspired by Waldorf education learn the mechanics of test-taking, but that’s not the same as limiting the curriculum to possible test questions.
How do Waldorf-inspired public schools perform on such tests?
According to “The Waldorf Way”, an Edutopia article on Waldorf education in public schools, Stanford researcher Ida Oberman found that “students tested below their peers in language arts and math in the second grade, but they matched or tested above their peers in the same subjects in eighth grade”.
How is their state funding affected by the results?
Test results affect the re-authorization by LAUSD of all public charter schools including those inspired by Waldorf education. A public charter school is “authorized” by the District for five years and then has to become re-authorized. If test scores are deemed inadequate the District can deny re-authorization and then, obviously, the moolah goes away too.
I’m aware that some preparation and test-taking skills are taught, but how is this done? In blocks, similar to the rest of the curriculum, or as a once-a-year sort of thing?
I’m not really sure. It’s evolving. My guess is that each teacher will tailor the process to the age group and the particular nature of his or her class.
To what level are you expecting parents to be involved with the school?
We are a school “in development”, so we are still developing our views on parent involvement.
Our preliminary thinking is has two parts. (1) The most basic form of ”parent involvement” is simply being there: choosing your child’s school, being open and positive about your child’s teacher, and supporting your child’s school experience at home. While some people might consider this not enough, we tend to think this is actually alot. (2) Once the school is formed, and even during the forming process, it is up to parents themselves to shape the kinds of activities they want to do at school as long as those activities are aligned with the core vision of Waldorf education and the social ecology of the particular school.
In general, our philosophy tends towards an integral field of ”home” without teachers being present and an integral field of ”classroom” without parents being present and a third field of “community” where home and school intersect.
Remember the “20% of the people do 80% of the work” axiom? In my experience, 20% of entrepreneurial parents actively shape the community field activities, 20% help when asked, 40% participate and enjoy and appreciate the fruits of the others’ labors, and 20% are gasping for air just to survive today and don’t really show up so much. Parents tend to move in and out of these categories over the life of their involvement with a school, I’ve noticed. We will probably let nature follow its course.
At [my independent, non-public, Waldorf school], each grade has a class parent (who changes each year). Parents put on Halloween plays and help student productions with costumes, staging, music, etc. Are you expecting this kind of involvement?
Not “expecting” and confident that people will take initiative to do this sort of thing. When human beings get together, this kind of activity erupts without the need for any prompting.
Where do the teachers come from, and how much Waldorf training will they need to have?
Grrrrreat question and my obsession, personally, as Lead Developer of el Rio Charter School. Ideally, the teachers will be Waldorf-certified as well as state certified. Unlike independent, non-government, schools teachers HAVE to be state-certified or in the process of being state-certified to work in a public school. That being said, the number of Waldorf-certified teachers is not (yet!) keeping pace with the growth of Waldorf education in the U.S. First we had 200+ private Waldorf schools and now 44+ public charter schools. People are scrambling for solutions. Among them, “in-house” teacher professional development where state-certificated teachers at public charter schools inspired by Waldorf education teach and, at the same time, work towards their Waldorf credential.
Rudolf Steiner College, for example, is in the process of becoming a WASC-accredited “transpersonal” university offering an MA in Waldorf education. They graduated 30+ “Waldorf MA’s” this spring. My fervent, daily mission, is to make an extension of this program available to teachers in the LA region.
Over the past 19 years, Steiner College’s Betty Staley interpreted the CA state standards into the Waldorf curriculum. This work is the Rosetta stone upon which it has been possible for 44+ public charter schools to incarnate. Two teacher professional development programs at Steiner College organized by Betty and Arline Monks, “The Waldorf Approach for Public School Teachers” and “Waldorf Teaching for At-Risk Youth” have been designed to bring out the human essence of Waldorf education without preaching any world view.
Today, the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education continues the work of these two pioneering innovators of the hybrid Waldorf model.
I found it almost shocking when I first arrived at [my independent, non-public Waldorf school] and heard the lower grade verse, which contains passages like “The soul with spirit’s might…” and “I reverence Oh God” and “From thee comes light and strength.”
Oh boy, you and I are soul-mates in this regard. Speaking only for myself, I think that, even in an independent, non-public school that this spiritual jargon belongs to a previous era of Waldorf education in Europe when religion was still somewhat integral to people’s lives. Today, this is not so and one can feel violated even if one has a spiritually-oriented world view. Today, in my view, such phrases are not in alignment with Steiner’s overriding plea to teachers: ”we teach out of anthroposophy, we do not teach anthroposophy”. To me, Steiner’s wish for Waldorf teachers to respect student’s independent thinking and to focus, instead, on themselves as conscious teachers is the same as modern-day master educator Parker Palmer saying ”We teach who we are“.
It’s really hard for me to imagine a public school that could get away with it.
I, personally, would not even want to use such jargon in our school. And, you’re right, no public school could or should use it because to do so would violate the doctrine of separation of church and state. All public charter schools are subject to this doctrine same as any public school.
Is is possible, or will there be restrictions on the language of these verses?
Your questions hit at the heart of evolving the hybrid model of equal AND enlightened education that is not just a compromise but an authentic step up the human evolutionary ladder. As I said, we would want to curb our own enthusiasm for spiritual jargon at our school and, in addition, being a public school, such language is properly inadmissible.
And, does anybody really appreciate any kind of jargon??
As a matter of fact, many people appreciate that Waldorf in public schools automatically strips away the “Waldorf” jargon. That’s the hybrid part. It’s not so much that we feel “restricted” but more that we find that spiritual jargon is restricting to the children’s intellectual freedom.
Similarly, the 3rd grade curriculum (as I know it) involves using the stories of the Old Testament, and saints have a presence throughout the year. Will this be allowed?
Now we get into complexities and paradoxes that only a hybrid solution can address! Creation stories are part of Waldorf education’s cultural history curriculum because we wish to provide the students with the human family album and creation is something human beings wonder and think about. To this day the story of wondering about creation continues with the ’big bang” theory.
Why the Biblical creation story? More and more, in different parts of the globe, Waldorf schools use creation stories belonging to the cultural ecology of the region. In hybrid Waldorf model, practitioners investigate creation stories as a story, not a religious teaching – and teachers will tend to tell many stories of creation from all over the world including the Genesis version.
And why do creation stories show up in 3rd Grade? It’s developmental, dear Watson. At around nine children will typically ask parents questions like, where did I come from?, was I adopted?, and such like questions that show a developmental shift from feeling totally at one with everything to feeling oneself as a separate person – which will really grow huge in puberty. So the Waldorf curriculum satisfies that cognitive itch by saying, in effect, look, your ancestors asked the same questions and here are their stories. The idea is to help the child have a sense of being rooted in time and grounded among their fellow human ancestors even as they, personally, start the journey of uprooting themselves as individuals towards puberty and away from the nest.
Re the “Saints” Curriculum: Again, think hybrid. Today our “saints” win the Nobel Peace Prize and in earlier times they were sainted by the church. Take away the old-school word “saints” and one is left with the modern day concept of ”social innovator”.
In general, the aim of Waldorf education is to develop human beings who can take responsibility for the direction of their lives – who are social innovators. So, Waldorf educators don’t just present history as a rogues’ gallery of evildoers, warmongers and socio-paths. Those tales are told. We also present human beings that are sort of ”saintly” by ordinary standards. In this way, the children see that even though lies and corruption and heinous behaviour is possible and happens, so is doing the good. I’m not sure, but I imagine that again the use of the word “saint” may be religious jargon. Maybe the main lesson will be renamed “Superheroes!”. In any case, kids in Waldorf schools learn about the whole category of extraordinary humans from St. Francis to Mother Theresa to Martin Luther King. The emphasis is on exemplary humans, not on religious faith. Our aim at el Rio will be to be true to the essential message that human being can and do commit acts of kindness and bravery. The between-the-lines message is: ”… And so can you”.
Do Waldorf-inspired public schools follow the same festival schedule as traditional Waldorf schools (Michaelmas in the fall, Festival of Light/Santa Lucia in winter, May Day, etc)?
A little point of awareness. Since the hybrid isn’t yet embraced the use of the world “Waldorf” comes with a few legal considerations. Public schools inspired by Waldorf education may not describe themselves as “Waldorf-inspired public schools”. The name, “Waldorf” is a service mark, or trademark, that belongs to and is protected by the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America (AWSNA) and can only be used for independent, non-public schools. In this reading, a public school cannot be a “Waldorf” school. A public school, from the perspective of AWSNA, can only be “inspired by” Waldorf education. The difference is that a public school is not master of its own ship since it has to follow certain rules (like administer tests) and, therefore, violates the principle of self-governance and academic freedom. I, personally, understand and respect that view and the appreciate the realities of trying to be innovative and true to childhood in the highly regulated public school environment. It’s like trying to make a healthy meal in a fast-food kitchen. And, I also think that the way to move systemic change is to get on the playing field.
Back to the festivals. You can see the theme here that it’s all about perspective. One can use the jargon or one can find modern-day words for celebrating seasonal transitions that are rooted in our common human consciousness. We do feel different in different seasons. To me, personally again, the Michael saga of saving the light from the light-eating dragon fits right in with daylight savings time. I think we will have fun with secular, non-religious, hybrid ways to celebrate the seasons and their authentic psychic roots.
Will eurythmy be taught (provided a teacher can be found!)?
Yes.
Do you have ideas as to where you’d like to have the campus?
The campus will be in the Northeast neighborhoods of Los Angeles – the Highland Park, Mt. Washington, Eagle Rock areas. This is a culturally and socio-economically diverse part of Los Angeles.
How do you envision it? Obviously, furniture and decor is not nearly as important as education, but will there be an effort to use natural materials and age-appropriate colors in the classrooms? Nature tables? Natural space? Play equipment?
Visually, it will look pretty much like a “Waldorf” school because the environment you describe is part of the whole Waldorf experience for the children. That said, I know that there are Waldorf schools in the poorest parts of the globe where all that cannot be and still they are “Waldorf” in spirit.
I think that’s all for now, though I’m sure more will come up. I’ll try not to be too obnoxious with them. Thanks again so very much.
Your questions are great and very helpful to the process of evolving the hybrid model of Waldorf education for our school. You hit on exactly the questions at the heart of it all.
Go the the website for the “Race to Nowhere: The Dark Side of America’s Achievement Culture”. Watch the three-minute trailer. Look for a screening near you. Heck, organize a screening. It’s a documentary film by a parent, Vicki Abeles, for parents, educators and anyone with an empathetic heart about the staggering increases in homework kids get and the resulting sleep deprivation, sedentary lifestyle and depression – even suicide – among kids who pick up on the pressure to ‘excel’, ‘succeed’, ‘achieve’ and ‘win’. This is the other side of the ‘achievement gap’. This is the ‘achievement trap’.
