Bonnie's Corner: Waldorf Core Principle #4
Fourth Core Principle of Public Waldorf Education
Human Relationships:
Public Waldorf Schools foster a culture of healthy relationships.
Enduring relationships -- and the time needed to develop them -- are central to Public Waldorf education. The teacher works with each student and class as a whole to support relationship-based learning.
Healthy working relationships with parents, colleagues, and all stakeholders are essential to the wellbeing of the student, class, and school community. Everyone benefits from a community life that includes festivals, events, adult education, study, and volunteer activities.
Public Waldorf education encourages collaboration in schools, within the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education, among all schools working out of a developmental approach, in conjunction with the broader field of education.
When the Friends of Tahoe Truckee Waldorf learning group was in its first years, before becoming Golden Valley Tahoe School, we had already started the Compassionate Campus Program. This program, used in other Public Waldorf Schools, supports student leadership and places ever-growing accountability onto the oldest of the students. As we began with the Mountain Lion Class as the oldest group, they took on the responsibility of creating skits to act out the social learning that was either in evidence or was needed within our groups. This was adapted to be the Virtues Project when Golden Valley Tahoe School began. The students loved gathering together in a bi-monthly assembly and not only sharing what they were learning, but watching the creative and touching skits put on by the older children. Skits depicted, for example kind or unkind ways to approach a student who needed some help with math, reading or the arts. We slowly defined what we came to call “Noble Being” and teachers could use the terms “Be your Noble Self” with a common understanding of what this means throughout the school.
In addition to this, the faculty and staff were exploring the behaviors of trust from the works of Stephen M.R. Covey’s book “The Speed of Trust”. We worked on creating high-value working conversations and we fostered an ability to question our wellsprings of motive for any action. This is still a focus of the faculty, in general as they greatly value and respect each other. This is the important foundation for the overall Ambient Field of a school. The faculty models the very Noble Self that they strive to foster in the classroom.
The families of the FOTTW community has an already established Institutional Memory in the festivals and events that have been sponsored by FOTTW and the Golden Valley Tahoe School over the past six years. Post-Covid, we will once again enjoy the rhythm of the visit from the Great Knight in the Festival of Courage, The Apple Harvest, The Lantern Walk, Spiral of Light, Elves Workshop. Tea in Celebration of Love, Leprechaun’s pranks, May Day dancing and so much more! These festivals help to weave the fabric of the community and Friends of Tahoe Truckee Waldorf love to sponsor and support these great events!