Thinking, feeling and willing; these are words we have heard many times by the third year of the teacher training. I thought I knew what each of these were–after all I think and feel and have will or determination in my life. But in the third year we are reading Study of Man by Steiner. Three chapters into this book and two weeks into the third year, I am finding that this three-fold nature of man, and especially the will, is looked at in quite a different way.

Exploring the nature of will, I try to separate out its different qualities. There is the will that controls my environment and imposes my preferences upon others. There is the will that gets things done. There is the will that attempts to live up to my ideals of being a better person. And most significantly, there is the will that moves my life forward in new directions, such as taking this teacher training and starting a new career.

Going forward into new and inspired directions seems to be connected to an invisible force. I have the feeling that this force draws me forward through life toward my destiny. Reflecting on Study of Man, I would say that my inner affinity toward those things which enliven me are the signposts that I am working in the realm of will.

Becoming a third year student is much different than I expected. My focus is all of a sudden very practical, in a survival sort of way. One year from today I could have my own class! I am glad to have another year of training. I am doubly motivated to support the transformations that are preparing me to survive and thrive as a Waldorf grades teacher (and as a person). This is no small miracle. No small amount of will is required of me as partner in this process.

After all the anthroposophy of the first year I asked, “So when do we learn about the curriculum and becoming teachers?” Well we finally do, but it seems that the focus on the practical nuts and bolts is somehow only the skeleton, the support for the teaching that happens through the work of the will. We’re practicing how to artistically imbue the curriculum material with life. The third year so far seems not so radically different in terms of material. But my experience of being in the third year is radically different. I am much more aware of this time as a grace-filled opportunity.

I was perhaps in greater need of this teacher training than many. My journey through the intellectual realm started very young (my brother was teaching me square roots when I was in second grade). I have travelled a long road into the depths of the intellectual darkness; to come back again into aliveness is a great exercise of will. The third year for me is about supporting this journey to life through developing the will, this seed of spirit and soul.

Copyright © 2002 by Michael Seifert

For my research, I was interested in deepening my own understanding of the festivals celebrated in Waldorf schools, the spiritual significance of the seasons and the annual rhythm. I currently teach at a Waldorf-inspired nursery school in San Francisco. In nursery school, circle time is a prime opportunity for a teacher to give the children an experience of the seasons. Through my project, I was able to simultaneously deepen my understanding of the spirituality of the annual rhythm and strengthen my ability to create and present circles imbued with this deeper understanding.

I began my research by reading a number of books which helped me to form pictures of the qualities of the different seasons within the annual rhythm. Additionally I worked daily with The Calendar of the Soul by Rudolf Steiner. In working with Steiner’s calendar verses, I experienced myself as a conscious human being participating in the spiritual nature of the earth’s annual rhythm. This preliminary research laid the groundwork for my practical research.

I began my practical research by creating an index in a loose-leaf binder for my collection of books containing poems and songs appropriate for nursery school. I divided this index into categories, then went through each book in my collection and wrote down titles and/or first lines of each song or poem, along with descriptions of mood, length, potential movement to accompany and other helpful notes. This was a laborious but extremely fruitful experience as I discovered treasures I didn’t know I had and brushed up on my sight reading of music in the process.

All the while, I continued to bring circle to the nursery school children in my care, alternating two week “blocks” with my mentor teacher, Monica Leicht. The weeks when I wasn’t bringing circle I observed her beautiful, masterful circle creations, noting with admiration her ability to weave poems and stories together to create a flowing journey for the children.

In my final presentation, I created a circle which began in fall, traveled through winter, and ended in early spring. I used some songs and poems from my book collection, sometimes using suggested movements and melodies but often modifying them. At the beginning of my presentation, I spoke briefly about the developmental characteristics of the nursery school child, the role of imitation, play, seasons and the annual rhythm. Then I invited my classmates to join me on stage. I led them through the circle I prepared as though they were my nursery school students. It was my goal that they might experience within themselves the transformation of the annual cycle as nursery schoolers do.

Copyright © 2002 by Amy Van Der Wyk

For eight years I was a tile maker. Then, after three years of training under the direction of Dorit Winter I became a Waldorf teacher. Now, as both teacher and human being, I study many things, including words. Words and their echo in the world interest me, as well as their hidden essences, their alchemical treasures. Verbs and nouns and their relationships interest me. When I think about active words it is easy for me to turn many of them into nouns: being, the being; finding, the find; working, the work; reading, a good read, etc. Shifting nouns into action isn’t as natural –think of words like star, child, earth. They are difficult to turn into verbs even though they are imbued with constant movement if we imagine them in their true senses.

What disturbs me in our time is that our actions are so hurried, so forced and yet so often empty of an understood or clear intention, and that our words, in response, are becoming more and more inert. Words are becoming things to consume as products or mere ornamentation so that they end up “uninhabited,” lost, their action never set free.

I speak of these things because they relate closely to my experience of enlivening the will for students. In the teacher training, I learned that it is not the words but the deeds of our day that create openings in work, in our understanding, and in the possibility for clear thoughts. If our deeds can be infused with flexibility, with lucid intentions, humor, and contemplation we can learn and subsequently we can teach. In my teaching of 6th and 7th graders in a recorder ensemble, I have learned that the children’s work is affected by how I create the mood in the class, how I enter and stand before the students, how I play the music they are to learn, how I listen and notice everything I can while in their presence, and how I reflect on them at home. The “how” is as important as the “what.”

I try to hold my students in a strong, yet open form. When they play music, I conduct them so the song is the form, inhabited by their will. In such moments, a certain construct of peace can ensue, a peace infused with dissonance, harmony and action. It is usually fleeting, but it is keen and physically as well as spiritually understood. It is when the will of child and teacher are engaged in releasing an unknown, yet expected beauty or truth that we fully experience the force of educating.

When I was a tile maker I taught myself to throw on the wheel. One of my favorite things to make was a mortar and pestle. I loved how it was both tool and vessel. I enjoyed its parts: the mortar sitting still and holding fast, and the pestle, when in an able hand, milling and releasing new elements held in the mortar. As a teacher, I realize the importance of a still form holding the children, while an active will liberates their true essence, their individuality, their “spice.” My aim is not to keep a closed or rigid form but rather a chalice; not to crush but to release. My goal is to support the transformation of my students in a savory or healthy way so that the magic of their “will” becomes the vital ingredient to their knowledge, their love and their freedom.

Copyright © 2002 by Amanda Sanfilippo

The idea that “Waldorf school education is not a pedagogical system but an Art-the Art of awakening what is actually there within the human being” resonates very powerfully for me. The thought that “the Waldorf school does not want to educate, but to awaken” –to nourish– is especially compelling when we realize that this art starts with the teachers themselves and then reaches to the children.

Throughout The Younger Generation, Steiner carefully and thoroughly describes how humanity has come to find itself in its present situation. Today, human beings find themselves in a cold, dry, empty culture “expressed in a withered life of mind and heart,” filled with cleverness and even an inordinate pride in this cleverness, devoid of joy and true human-to-human connectedness, devoid of life and balance. Steiner concludes that “human beings have reduced themselves to their head and forced themselves to believe that the head is the most valuable part.” Almost humorously, he reminds us that “to be tremendously learned is not difficult.” Proceeding with “business as usual” and trying to solve our problems with the very thing that has caused them only hopelessly exacerbates the situation, especially with regard to how we approach education. Education that values only the head actually interrupts and hinders the child’s development.

It is incredibly comforting and inspiring to realize, then, that there is an alternative to this grim zeitgeist. There is an educational approach that is truly wise and compassionate and even joyful –which values and speaks to the whole child, not just his head. To understand that it is not the teacher’s own sum of knowledge but the teacher’s own being and individuality, and the artistic impulse permeating and enlivening the atmosphere between pupil and teacher which enable the children to slowly but surely come “to the full development of their own powers” is to feel hopeful again. Waldorf education values the child’s feeling and will; it prizes human individuality; it strives to educate the child “for the whole of life.” Waldorf education recognizes the tragedy in “exterminating what is alive in the child” and clearly sees what a precious thing it is that “the child wants to remain human,” that children want “to feel the beating of their hearts again and not merely add something to their knowledge.”

Copyright © 2002 by Maribeth Lockhart

In The Younger Generation, Steiner makes a moving case for the decline and loss of the living spirit in our culture, how it’s been superseded by a veneration of the disembodied intellect, and how we as a culture have become stranded without recourse to our souls in the face of Nothingness. His entreaties for a return to concrete spirituality intensify with each succeeding chapter, as well as his recurring insistence on behalf of the youth movement that we simply must accept these terms if true human evolution is to occur. In Chapter 6, his eloquence culminates in a cursory exploration of how the spirit might move in the more worthy realms of life, these being individual ethics, community relation and education.
It is with regard to the realm of education that I find his ideas most poignant, for Steiner seems to accord education a special significance in relation to what he calls “the world-riddle.” I greet this theme in Steiner’s lectures with anxious anticipation. As an ambivalent member of the so-called ” click culture” (so coined by Dorit), part of me expects some quick and comprehensible answer to the Great Riddle itself from Steiner. “Tell me;’ I might say, “exactly what to do to awaken myself and evolve.” Like the students attending the lectures at the time Steiner gave them, I also share an undefined yearning for spiritual restoration. What does Steiner say in coming lectures about how to set such a thing in motion? Would I be able to apply that knowledge to my own century’s frenzied and diverse cultural life? Would I even be able to apply it to myself?

At this sensitive juncture in the lectures, Steiner’s intermittent use of words like “soul” and “spirit” are still as nebulous to me as the cut-rate eastern mysticism peddled on every street corner in Berkeley. It’s not that I disagree with his ideas; it’s simply that I wish to know where he is taking me. I am duly humbled, however, by something he briefly touches on in Chapter 6 which might even be considered an invaluable hint. It happens in the middle of the lecture. After making it perfectly clear that a solution to the “world-riddle” found through means of the intellect would be terribly dissatisfying, he says:

“We know that the question of the nature of the universe has resounded from times primeval until today, that the answer to these world questions has resounded from human hearts, but that the questioning will go on resounding endlessly, that human beings must continue on into the distant future to learn to live their answer.”

Perhaps Steiner won’t hold my hand and give me the solution after all. Perhaps I’ve missed the point in hoping he would. I feel like he’s intimating that part of reckoning with the world riddle is constant vigilance, for the seeking after a solution is part of the finding, part of “learning to live” a solution.

Steiner, I notice, advocates a unique approach to the growing child. If the riddle of life stands before us, and the solution lies within us and echoes in our very striving, then the question every would-be educator must ask himself is: “What living forces must I release in myself to look rightly upon those who are coming after me?” Teachers, in his view, have a responsibility to live out this cosmic drama unceasingly. Therein lies the most profoundly tantalizing (not to mention shocking) idea I come away with from the reading so far. As one, you see, who has felt a calling to the teaching profession for as long as I can remember, I now ask: what on earth have I gotten myself into?

Before I can effectively greet the growing child, I have some inner work to do. Of course, it makes nothing but sense that before I can hope to awaken another to a deep understanding of their true humanity, I must first awaken myself in this way. In other words, I need to show a child that I have some tools at my disposal to model how to properly keep that Nothingness-ever on the horizon-at bay.

Copyright © 2002 by Todd Krake

[ Editor's Note: After reading selections from Karma and Reincarnation and Manifestations of Karma, the second-year class worked on their personal biographies. they focused on the defining events of each seven-year cycle in their life. In class, students sat in order of age and shared details of their biographies, beginning with the oldest student and moving to the youngest. As each student spoke, Dorit listed the key experiences on the blackboard. ]

Christine Margetic, age 51

Listening to my fellow students describe significant events in their lives was a moving experience. It created an interesting picture of who we are and how we arrived where we are today. There were so many events to choose from in each seven year cycle. Everyone had difficulty picking just one to exemplify that period of his or her life. As the list of events grew on the board, our commonality began to percolate to the surface. We are very different and yet our life cycles contain similar material.

As the eldest in the class, I was aware of a certain distance or equanimity I now experience about events in my life. Where once I swam in the emotions, passions, and fears of my life, now I can observe them with a more dispassionate eye. The first traumas- the death of my mother and subsequent death of my father- were horrific. I fell into what I described as “the valley of darkness” and wondered if I would ever get out. Now when trauma occurs a voice within me says, ” Ah, here we are again,” and though it is still painful I know with a depth of certainty that I can survive it.

A little over a year ago when we arrived as first year teacher training students, we all carried within us rich lives not yet revealed to one another. This was a marvellous exercise for filling in who we are as individuals and who we are as a group. I was struck by the way we all stand alone in our own individual destinies and yet we stand together as one–the second year class. I believe that this sharing will give more depth and clarity to our work together.

Copyright © 2002 by Christine Margetic

____

Lauren Burger, age 40

The objective for this assignment was to notice the tendencies of particular events occurring at certain ages and therefore see the patterns in all individual biographies that indicate the universal stages humans go through as they live their lives. At first, this seemed like an easy enough task. I just turned forty this summer. Remembering past events of my life is kind of appealing, since I am at the age where one typically takes inventory of all that has unfolded so far and begins to think about what one wants to do with the next forty or so years to come.

On the surface, this activity resembled what happens in the therapist’s office; you retell your life journey starting from birth, and from there you might gain insights into how to solve your problems. So why was it actually a bit painful to examine my biography this time when I had done this for psychologists in the past? This time I had to face the notion that on some level I had created everything that had happened to me, both good and bad. All things had occurred for a reason. My higher Self had decided sometime back that this was my destiny for this lifetime. Even before birth, I had chosen it all, including the horrible things. I had no one to blame or be angry with. It was no one’s fault. Somehow it was all part of the bigger picture of my spirit’s evolution, as esoteric and fatalistic as it sounds.

When it came time to share my own biography and listen to the biographies of others, it turned out to be quite a powerful experience. In a way, it was comforting to see the thread of similarity in each of our seven-year cycles, and to realize that we are all very much connected even though the surface events of our lives can appear so different. Perhaps how I approach the years to come, with my hopes of what I want to accomplish, and my dreams of building ever stronger relationships with family and friends, will be approached with a little more compassion and understanding, even if events don’t go just according to my plan.

Copyright © 2002 by Lauren Burger

____

Ximena Sierra, age 33

It was fascinating to examine the idea that there is an intrinsic quality that I underlies each life, despite our individuality and our personal stories. It was quite a realization to have this new thought.

This helps us see that life can be viewed in a deeper and wiser way. Certain things in a person’s life will come from beyond, determining the specific processes for the period of seven years leading to the next phase in our life. There is a continuous building up, during which new qualities in us make themselves manifest. At the same time, other facts emerge in a very individual and unique way to trace the beginnings and ends of the lessons we must each learn. It is the combination of those two streams that weave each human being’s life and allow us to be unique in our own story.

I look back at the choices I made in my early youth with a different awareness of life than I had when I made those choices. Only after the age of 28 did I truly feel myself to be a full person, but before then I had already made choices that would last for a long time. In looking back at some of those choices, I realize that I need to transform them as closely as possible to my reality at this moment. Looking ahead, I can see from the lives of my colleagues that there is a time still to come during which I will experience a feeling of darkness, and then I also see from the oldest person in our class that there is a lightness that follows it-not a child’s lightness but one coming from a wisdom of experience.

When we understand that at every moment in our lives we have the power to be responsible for what is going to happen next, we gain an incredible feeling of freedom. However, we must remember to live with consciousness and realize that we cannot escape the laws of life and karma. This is what ultimately can create the balance that everyone in this life is trying to achieve; the act of balancing it out is the striving that every single person goes through.

Copyright © 2002 by Ximena Sierra

____

Mike Ro, age 24

It can be difficult to find any semblance of reason in the hodgepodge of madness we call life. Confusing, uplifting, painful, and joyful moments dapple biographies with no apparent structure or pattern. Worst of all, no matter how hard we try to slow things down, time marches steadily along, paying no heed to our personal struggles and/or triumphs. Therefore, it is easy to see why it is preferable to throw one’s hands up in resignation and hope that things work out, praying that life be merciful.

However, if looked at closely, human biographies reveal to us a key that can unlock the mystery of this randomness seemingly inherent to life. This key is very simple: everything happens for a reason. While listening to the personal biographies of my classmates, I was able to begin to experience what this means.

As the life stories were told, the manner in which the younger students recounted their biographies was full of drama and emotion, as if just speaking of their experiences put them right back into those moments. It was clear that they had only begun to scratch the surface of understanding the implications of their experiences and were still struggling to even get past their emotional aspects. The recountings of the older students were much more subdued. These colleagues seemed to have moved past most of the sentimentality attached to their youth, their eyes beginning to open to the bigger picture. The oldest of my classmates were able to speak of their life events with objective clarity, reflecting on them with wisdom and understanding. They have had the time to penetrate past experiences with thought and find the real significance behind these events.

It was listening to the eldest of my class that helped me realize that there is purpose, not only to everything that happens in life, but also to every action I take.

Copyright © 2002 by Mike Ro

The sun continues to shine even on a cloudy day. At this moment of human history, the clouds are particularly dense and thick and they are gathering. How can we prepare for the storm to come? For such darkness surely portends a powerful tempest.

That is the question we are all asking at this season, in this year. Our festival today is the answer. Only by realizing the significance of the holiday we are now celebrating will we be able to strengthen our understanding of the potential for sunlight from within. Inside each of us there is sunlight, no matter how dark the storm-tossed clouds.

Our inner light is the light cast by our own thinking. En-lightenment is the capacity to be awake, to be conscious. When vision is focused enough, and there is sufficient strength to see the light itself, we speak of claire-voyance.

And yet, we notice all around us that we are in danger of losing our inner light. The dark clouds gathering want to rob us of our light. They want to dumb us down, to blind us to our own light, to darken consciousness. How does this happen? How do we get dumbed down? Through fear, stealth, speed, mechanization, paralysis of will. For instance, consider how many of us find our mail boxes regularly stuffed with catalogues filled with gadgets to lure us into paralysis of will. Here, for example, one catalogue offers gadgets for counting your money, for pressing your ties, for selecting your CDs. These are the more innocuous machines, made to enhance our comforts but intended, ultimately, to rob us of our limbs and the strength that is in them- comforts to make us will-less. How many hours of human intelligence go into the making and selling of these “conveniences”-the automatic timers for your Christmas lights, the videos to entertain the children in the back seat, and on and on.

Will misdirected, will misused can result in horrific acts. There is a lot of wasted will in our world today. Think of the incredible will required to fly a plane into a building. Tragically, it is a blind will. Is it too far-fetched to posit the connection between such a blinded will-power and the “click culture” purveyed by these catalogues?

We are surrounded by a culture that sees progress in protruding buttons and stunted limbs. This is the dumbing-down culture. And it has become the foundation of the culture of fear that, since September 11, 2001, has become so overwhelming. Recent headlines declared: “Carte blanche to use force anywhere anytime to meet a potential threat.” Fear of power has authorized power to be feared.

Darkness gathers about us, but light gathers within us. It is this light that we are here to celebrate today. It is a light that shines for any human being, for it shines within every human being, and deeds of individual human beings will foster that light. It is a light that can disperse the black clouds, allowing the sunlight to reach earth in purity, as the child in the manger also did.

Copyright © 2001 by Dorit Winter

[ Ed. The following is an interview with Deborah Krikorian, currently teaching Class 6 at the East Bay Waldorf School. Deborah also teaches Curriculum Studies to third year students in the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training. ]

MEG: Tell us something about your biography.

DEBORAH: When I look back on it, it’s amazing how the different influences come together in a way that you don’t expect. My father was in the army, and we traveled all over the world – Taiwan, Oklahoma, Germany and then the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s amazing how all those different environments visit me when I go through the curriculum as I’m teaching now. Before I was a teacher, though, I was a music major at UC Berkeley. Then I got a masters degree in business from Cal State Hayward. Then I was a mother of two at home, before I discovered Waldorf education. And then everything seemed to come together.

M: Is “following in your children’s footsteps” what led you to the Waldorf Teacher Training?

D: Exactly. We explored all sorts of educational alternatives for my son. When he entered first grade at a private school and was coming home with stomach aches and headaches from the pressure of what he was asked to do, we took a serious look at the entire situation. Believe it or not, the East Bay Waldorf School was the last school we considered. As soon as we walked in, we knew it was the right place – we knew we’d found home. Alex’s experience in the kindergarten and first grade really set me to thinking. I wanted to understand what was going on with the school. So more from investigating and wanting to learn myself, I entered the teacher training; not ever planning to become a teacher.

M: And what changed, that you then decided to teach?

D: It was some time in the second year that it became more clear to me that I should probably consider it seriously. Everything I learned in the training was fascinating, and so involving – it made so much sense. I began to have the courage to think that I could be a class teacher. And then it was a huge destiny question, of where I was supposed to teach. So I really sympathize with those students who are trying to figure this out, because a log of factors come into play. Having a family, I had to consider their destinies as well. I had to look at their teachers, and my husband’s situation, and what was right as a whole. Luckily, I think we ended up in the right place.

M: How is what you learned in the teacher training, expressed in your daily teaching?

D: That’s difficult to answer, because every day, constantly, I’m using things that I learned in the teacher training. I almost can’t pick out ways, because everything in some way is related to the teacher training. Certainly the anthroposophy, certainly the child development, is right there, in determining what’s brought in where in the curriculum. But more deeply and beyond that, I was just thinking of how the six basic exercises are so critical to the success of the main lesson. Am I focused on the right thought at the right time, is my will engaged, am I open to the moment, and can I see with positivity as things are coming toward me? Can I take it all in with equanimity, and how do I balance it for the rest of the lesson, and the rest of the day? So even something as simple as that infuses your teaching. I really appreciate that foundation in anthroposophy that the program focuses on. I know that students in the program sometimes feel, “Oh gosh, we need more practical tools.” Yes, you know you will always feel that; but those tools are a lot easier to acquire actually than the foundation in anthroposophy, and the chance to really study and delve deeply into the subject matter.

M: This is your first year teaching in the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training program. Can you share some of your experiences with that? What led you to do it?

D: I feel a great gratitude to Dorit’s leadership and guidance in the program, and I was flattered when she asked me. Not in a small sense – in a great sense, I was honored that she thought I could do it. I’ve found that it’s actually very refreshing and energizing to work with these concepts once again, and to speak about them with adults again. Even though we have faculty meetings and studies while working in the school, there is something different about just really stepping back and looking at how a main lesson is constructed, or what is it when you do “concentration,” or a wake-up activity for ten minutes in the morning. So to be able to delve into that once again, having been there, is refreshing and inspiring. I find it enjoyable and fulfilling to revisit all these subjects from a new perspective.

M: You have a background in music studies. Do you use that in your teaching?

D: I can’t imagine doing it without a music background. I don’t mean to discourage the non-musicians, but so much has to do with incorporating musicality into the day. Not so much the singing as just knowing how to breathe in and breathe out, how to vary the tempo of how you introduce things, or how to really work on a passage, and that discipline of practicing – it all comes in extremely handy. And then, the class sings very beautifully too.

M: Thank you very much, Deborah. I was fortunate enough to spend my first practicum in my second year in your class, at that time the fifth grade, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you so much.

D: Thank you.

Copyright © 2001 by Meg Weber-Gil

[ Ed. In The Younger Generation Rudolf Steiner describes how the teacher must draw out the inner abilities of the children. First year students were asked to write an essay based on their reading. ]

Before the fifteenth century, teachers viewed education as an art form and strove to impart a sense of beauty and artistry in their presentations to their students. The teacher gave instruction in a way that fostered a strong connection with the students, and elicited from them a feeling of respect. All this was experienced before actual knowledge was imparted. This set the stage for the intellectual soul of one to meet the intellectual soul of another, in a truly meaningful way.

Since the last third of the fifteenth century, when Man began to lose the ability to learn and understand with his whole being, and objective, abstract science began to permeate humanity’s thinking, it has become increasingly difficult for human beings to know each other and the world around them on a soul level. Approaching life in an instinctive and artistic way has become an increasingly rare ability. Man no longer feels connected to his inner world and learns to distrust or close off this part of himself, causing a major blockage to his whole being. Thoughts are simply stuck in one’s head, and inner strength and individuality fail to thrive, so that more and more, Man lives in a world of dead concepts and superficial relationships.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the link between the spiritual realm, the heart, the will, and the head had been broken, and the younger generation no longer felt respect for their elders, because all was taught through intellectualism, which could be mastered by the young just as well as the old. At the same time, the younger generation was longing for something more meaningful and began to search for spiritual experience to escape the deadness of what they were learning.

It is at this point that Steiner talks about the path that needs to be taken in order to break free of a dry and abstract approach to knowledge, which will eventually deaden humanity. The role of teacher needs to be that of an artist once again, in order to help younger generation see the world as a magnificent place of beauty. In this way, the artistic emphasis creates activity of the will, a fundamental element in bringing back one’s sense of aliveness.

An education permeated with artistic beauty will feed the head, heart and will, so that the path to meaning and truth, and ultimately, the supersensible world, can be known. In the primary school years, between the change of teeth and puberty, the child is even more able to sense in his heart that his individuality comes from a pre-earthly existence. This feeling in his soul is experienced intensely as a powerful quality of his human existence.

Great inner work is required by the teacher, who undertakes the task of drawing out the innermost abilities of children. The teacher must be awakened through art. He will then be able to move closer to the students as he offers them who he is as a human being. It is not of primary importance to be full of knowledge, but rather to bring the child to a place inside himself, where he will, over time, be able to experience his whole life as it unfolds on earth.

It is through the teacher that the direction taken by humanity can be changed. Our own deep experience of the art necessary for creating a truly living education is the answer.

Copyright © 2001 by Lauren Burger

People are often amazed when we tell them that we are commuting to teacher training by plane. It doesn’t seem amazing to us. What is amazing, however, are the circumstances that allowed each of us to find this teacher training program. Each reason, unique on its own, led us to the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training. The idea of commuting by plane did not seem like an impossibility but a necessity. Although this presented many challenges, we decided to make the commitment.

The financial aspects were the first challenge. The cost of the program combined with the commuting expenses at first seemed overwhelming. However, we discovered a program through Southwest Airlines that issues a free round trip ticket for every four booked on-line. Although each round-trip ticket costs approximately $100.00, at the end of one year each of us will have received seven free round-trip tickets anywhere in the U.S. We can either apply these to our regular flights, or as some of us have decided, take our families on vacation in the summer. The other financial challenges were addressed by the graciousness of two families. Rachel’s parents have provided a car for us each weekend; Lauri, a third year student, and her family allow us to stay at their beautiful home every Friday night.

The second challenge was the distance and time away from our families. We have been blessed with very supportive families that have made it possible for us to leave our homes each week without hesitation. The unique schedule of this particular program (Friday nights/Saturday mornings) also enables us to be home by 5:00 P.M. Saturday evening. In total we are away from our families for just over 24 hours.

We were also concerned with the effects that the traveling would have upon us. Once we established a rhythm, it became part of our lives. As full-time parents, the Friday evenings and Saturday mornings have given us time to take a breath and really focus on our studies. The time blocks have allowed us space to develop friendships that have become enriching. When we return we feel renewed, refreshed and able to give our families a better part of ourselves.

Facing the challenges has strengthened our resolve to make our dreams a reality. Our dedication to this teacher training program, we know, will enrich our lives and our families’ lives in ways that pale in comparison to the distance we must travel.

Copyright © 2001 by Robin Theiss