AFTER WALDORF

Carol Steil and Waldorf education helped make me a centered person. Growing up at Waldorf, I was accepted and given space to make my own way. Acceptance and love are so empowering. With this, I left Waldorf with my feet solidly rooted and the confidence needed to continue to branch out, explore, be different and always be myself.

I would definitely say that Waldorf has had a profound impact on my further education. Waldorf teaches an alternate way of thinking, one that I feel is sorely neglected in most other schools. It is a certain freedom from the structure of the classroom and curriculum. It is almost a sort of inner awareness brought about through the ability of the students to explore all aspects of learning for themselves, and this consciousness allows them to learn about their individual personalities while learning the basic facts and figures of the lessons simultaneously. Waldorf education allows the individual to bring a different viewpoint to a discussion, one that can easily see both the big picture as well as understand how all the tiny pieces fit into that picture. It is an overarching cognizance of the world around you.

When I think back to my time at Waldorf, my memories have a rainbow tint to them. I don’t mean this in a fairytale sense in that there is a pot of gold, some secret formula to knowing the world, but rather that I learned to notice more than just one color and one surface at once. The focus of Waldorf education on the multiplicity of the senses and ways of experiencing the world furthers the creative mind, be it in artistic or scientific endeavors. I don’t like always keeping the two separate, which is why I decided to bring the two together, pursuing a doctorate in medical anthropology. Understanding different ways of approaching the world, of understanding sickness and health, of death and birth, takes more than a quantifiable approach. It takes knowing how to listen and to tell narratives as well as enter into another’s cultural vocabulary. Waldorf education has been integral in enabling me to do this.

I am grateful for Mrs. Nierenberg, my class and the WSB faculty who taught me with a care of wholeness, creativity, and the continual nurturing of my highest potential. It is from the solidarity of this foundation that I feel capable and called to help create equal educational opportunities for individual and community growth both inside and outside the classroom.