As a teacher, a parent, and life long student myself the topic of education is an important one for me. Lately I have been pondering various models for what creates the successful education of a child student (as compared to an adult student) and who bears the responsibility of a child reaching it’s full educational potential. I think we can all agree that a child’s teachers, his or her parents, and the student itself, all bear a degree of the responsibility to create a powerful triad for successful education. But are these three components akin to the three legs of a wooden milking stool, all equal in size and importance? Or perhaps they are more like the three wheels of a tricycle where two of the wheels are smaller and set behind, but not less important in creating forward motion? Maybe the teacher, parent and child education model is similar to a three-ring circus with each having an independent and separate input for a fabulous show? When looking closely at the role each offers and gives to the successful output of a
child student’s education we can see it is much closer to the picture of three golden gears in a well working machine, each adding to the mechanism, each important and each individually responsible for the working of the whole, but potentially varied in size and shape given the uniqueness of each child’s needs.
As Waldorf Teachers, we are trained to assess the needs of our students, to have the widest possible interest in them (pg 116 of lecture six of Human Vales in Education by Rudolf Steiner), to see each one as a unique beings on a journey of self discovery, and to create and adjust our curriculum and teaching styles to support student growth and their full potential coming to fruition. We must do our best to assess each child, know their strengths and weaknesses, know their starting point, from where they are beginning their learning from so we know where to present their next step. We set the environment and tone of our classroom, being mindful of colors, smells or odors,
and materials or furniture that harmonize with the child’s growth, evolution, and leaning. Just as Rudolf Steiner instructs us in lecture six of Human Values in Education (pg 116), we learn about teaching our students from our deep interest in and keen observation of them. Our students themselves are our teaching manuals. (pg. 116) Through this trained observations in the classroom we teachers become very accustomed to noticing the smallest of changes in our students, sometimes called “state changes”, and are able to relax a situation, intensify it, add amusement to it, create movement with, or model a new pattern through our curriculum, learning aids, and classroom all with the mindful purpose of furthering the child’s education.
The parents too bare responsibility for their child’s successful education. They truly are one of the three golden gears that without it working properly, the entire educational mechanism, breaks down. A much talked about area, that parents can help with, is the support of the child’s health and immune system. Home health includes heaps of love and affection, abundant play and laughter, a simplified lifestyle, balanced nutrition, fresh air and exercise,
and peaceful sleep. A child will have an easier time in the classroom setting if the home-life is supportive, emotionally stable, balanced with activity and quite time, healthful with sleep and nutrition, and with minimal artificial stimulants such as media, electronics and junk foods.
Parents can support their child’s successful education by cultivating their child’s ability to form a mental image. This is sometimes called inner picturing, imagination, or seeing in the mind's eye. Albert Einstein, who said, “If I
can’t picture it, I can’t understand it” summarized beautifully the importance of creating mental images and imaginations. The fundamental difference between children who understand math and those that do not lies in the realm of having the ability to turn numbers into pictures. 3 + 4, to a child that no longer counts on their fingers has created an imagination of number sense internally.
One way to strengthen the inner screen is to limit or better yet, eliminate, external screens such as television, movies, computers, and electronic gaming from a child’s environment while at the same time engaging the child in memory games, chapter books that are read aloud, along with hours and hours of imaginative play. In the absence of the already formed images on the external screen, the mind’s internal screen will grapple with and create it’s own pictures. Fostering the mind’s eye or imagination has
added benefits of cultivating amusement, lifelong playfulness, independence or the ability to be content alone, and creative thinking / problem solving as well. It was Helen Kelly who reminds us all that, “It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision”.
The student is the third of the three golden gears and perhaps the most important. The child’s own desire to learn, capacity for curiosity, and ability to reflect are it’s fundamental tools for successful education. “Each individual is a species unto him/herself.” Says Steiner in, Theosophy: An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos (1904). As parents and teachers we can do our best to support, but it is the student who must take up their own education and awaken to themselves and their unique destiny and an individualized self. As a child grows we can hand over more and more of the responsibility of a successful education to the child. Steiner is quoted as saying, “Essentially, there is no education other than self-education, whatever the level may be. Every education is self-education, as teachers we can only provide the environment for children’s self-education. We have to provide the most favorable conditions where, through our agency, children can educate themselves according to their own destines.” (Gratitude, Love, and Duty: Lectures by Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, April 20, 1923, pg. 88)
During teacher training sessions I have often heard teachers report frustrations around students coming for help at the end of a lesson or block and saying that they “did not understand anything”. This blanket statement is a frustration of teachers because it does not point to what the student may have learned, where a hole or block is and what to re-teach. It is therefore hard to gauge if the student simply went unconscious during the lesson or if
there is a point to re-explain that would unlock everything for the student. Teaching students to ask poignant and meaningful questions supports students to wake up within themselves and empowers them to take responsibility for their own education. To cultivate curiosity and questioning in students has been a goal of every good teacher in order to hand the reins of driving successful education over to the student. How to cultivate curiosity has been the challenge.
Middle school and high school students can be asked objective questions at the end of a day’s lesson such as: “What questions might a student have after this lesson?” A 5-minute classroom recap such as this at the end of a lesson offers the potential for students to become objective about their learning as if they are looking at someone else’s learning. It is often easier to see in the other than it is to see in self. A student might report about their own questions but do so in a way that they are speaking more objectively about another student.
Some teachers use hand or finger gestures to awaken students to their own learning. At the end of an important topic, these teachers ask the students to put their closed fist on their own chest with one finger extended (the pointer finger) if they do not understand what was just taught, two fingers (pointer and middle fingers) if they somewhat understand or three fingers out if they feel that fully understand (pointer, middle and ring fingers extended). This allows for some amount of student privacy while giving the teacher a quick and easy assessment of the
classroom learning.
“Gems and Stones” is a game that can be played in support of students taking responsibility for their own learning as well. This is a fun and quick feedback tool for the teacher as well. Gems and Stones can be played daily or just after important lessons. The more it is played the better the students become at it.
Gems and Stone:
On an index card size section paper students are encouraged to anonymously write the valued gems and rough stones of the learning that day and then place this paper in a basket near the door on their way out. Students take a minute and reflect upon their days learning and then write a sentence or two about what they feel was the heart of the lesson, the “gem”. Teacher’s words are, “reflect upon today’s lesson then write down what you think or feel is the most important topic or gem of the lesson”. On the backside of the same paper, they write out the heavy stones. Stones are the parts of the lesson that they did not understand or are still unclear about or need help with. Teacher’s words are, after the gem is complete: “now use the back side to put into words any points that are like heavy stones in your mind or that you do not understand”. I have heard some teachers call the stones “the muddiest point” of the day’s lesson.
After reading these completed papers, a teacher can then plan a next lesson that can clear stones, validate gems, and offer a student another opportunity to re-learn or wake up to the lesson. Having had an opportunity to reflect and write, a student may notice that they do not know what they understand, have learned or are confused about. From this not knowing what they do or do not understand place, will arise a desire to know themselves. In this way, the more often Gems and Stones is played, the sooner a student will cultivate a desire to know self greater, be able to form full questions to gain clarity, or to regurgitate notes from the lesson on areas they did understand, which validates self.
There is a balance that must be struck. As teachers we tread that fine line between enabling students to stay asleep in their learning by over helping or empowering them to take a hold of their own education by noticing when and what they do not understand, be able to formulate a question to gain clarity, and provide a means to share both what they do not understand and what they do understand. We must trust the student to move into a place of knowing self and allow them to be free to succeed at times and to fail at times as they chose or need to. Thus all three gears awaken to successful education and celebrate.