2026 Middle School Retreat

Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning.
— Fred Rogers

At Waldorf, the role of play does not disappear as children grow. It grows with them. The imaginative play of early childhood becomes collaboration, creative problem-solving, healthy risk-taking, and the courage to meet a challenge without already knowing how it will turn out.

We begin calling upon those capacities early and often in the Middle School years, starting in the very first week with the annual Middle School Retreat. The day is designed to shake off the ease of summer, welcome the Sixth Grade into this newly-formed group of senior students, and blow open the gates of what they believe themselves capable of.

This year, our Middle School students traveled to Terrapin Adventures for a full and very active day. They began on the ground, working together through team challenges with names like “Helium Ring” and “Iceberg.” Success depended less on individual strength than on communication, patience, and the ability to adjust when the first plan did not work.

Then they headed into the trees.

Students zipped through the forest at exhilarating speeds and took on a four-level aerial ropes course, climbing higher as they navigated tightropes and wire bridges from platform to platform. Those who made it to the end faced one final challenge: rappelling more than 25 feet back to the ground. The day closed with a giant three-seat swing, which offered a deceptively gentle ride upward followed by a stomach-dropping launch.

It was wonderful to see principles so familiar from early childhood translate so seamlessly for this group of tweens. Outdoor play still required cooperation and imagination. Experiential learning offered lessons no classroom could replicate. And “challenge by choice” gave each student room to decide what stretching beyond a comfort zone looked like that day.

For one student, courage meant finishing all four levels of the ropes course. For another, it meant stepping onto the first platform, trusting the harness, or trying again after an uncertain start. The goal was never for everyone to do the same thing. It was for each student to move one honest step beyond what felt easy, while learning how to steady, encourage, and celebrate one another along the way.

Before they ever sat down for their first Middle School lesson, they had already begun some of the most important work of the year: discovering what they could do and who they could be for one another.