Green School
The Waldorf School of Baltimore has been a Certified Green School since 2010 (our certification was renewed in 2023) through the Maryland Green Schools Program, which works to integrate hands-on, inquiry-based instruction to empower individuals towards an active role in responsible environmental care.
For more than a century, Waldorf education has maintained a strong focus on immersing children in the outdoors to promote a love of nature. At the Waldorf School of Baltimore we have transformed this core belief into a formal, concerted effort to instill stewardship, appreciation, and love for all living things by intertwining our educational experience with the land around us.
In 2021, our school became the first school in Baltimore City to open an exclusively outdoors Forest Kindergarten. This outdoor classroom in the woods allows for an immersive, all-season nature experience to which our Waldorf curriculum is uniquely suited. Our campus has a total of 5 unique outdoor classrooms and play spaces and about 600 feet of woodland trails which are utilized daily by our preschool and kindergarten students, who spend 75-100% of their school days outdoors in all seasons and in nearly all weather conditions. Elementary students enjoy two recess periods per day for a total of 40 minutes of unstructured, child-lead outdoor time. PE/Games classes are frequently taught outside and classroom lessons are brought outdoors when appropriate. Nature walks through our trails and the surrounding urban woodlands are a frequent part of class teacher time where nature studies are frequently integrated with the curriculum (botany, mycology, zoology, land formulation/ecology, gardening, shelter building, biographies of environmental leaders, foraging fallen twigs and seed for use as math manipulatives, etc.).
Our playground is a certified Wildlife Habitat, with food, shelter, and water sources for indigenous species. We have been awarded a Baltimore City Master Gardener’s Outstanding School Garden Award and a Monarch Waystation Designation. Bountiful hiking trails weave through our woodlands. Yearly camping trips begin in third grade and promote outdoor learning.