The Art of Staying Curious

When you were a child, could you imagine your teacher doing anything other than teaching? Seeing a teacher at the grocery store could be mildly astonishing. They buy cereal? They have a life outside the classroom?

To a child, the adults at school can seem fixed in their roles: teacher, administrator, receptionist. But in Waldorf education, it is important for children to encounter the adults who care for them as dynamic, creative people who are still learning, growing, making mistakes, and developing new capacities of their own.

Rudolf Steiner emphasized that children are shaped not only by what a teacher says, but by who that teacher is. A teacher who remains curious invites curiosity. One who practices an art understands what it means to struggle, persist, and improve. A teacher who creates simply for the joy of creating shows students that imagination is not something we leave behind when childhood ends.

This kind of creative life also nourishes the teachers themselves. Painting, fiber arts, music, woodworking, and other artistic practices offer renewal, inspire fresh approaches to lessons, and keep teachers connected to the vulnerable and satisfying experience of learning something new.

Teacher Kitt, who understands this deeply, has curated a beautiful new exhibition of faculty artwork in our second-floor gallery to welcome students back to a new year. The show opened during In-Service Week, giving faculty the opportunity to admire one another’s work and discover creative sides of their colleagues they may not have seen before.

Now our students have that same opportunity. As they pass through the gallery, they may discover that the person who teaches their lessons, answers their questions, or welcomes them each morning is also a painter, a sculptor, a photographer, or a maker.

And perhaps that discovery will quietly expand their picture of adulthood: growing up does not mean becoming finished. The adults around them are still wondering, experimenting, learning, and creating, just as they are.

The faculty exhibition will remain in the second-floor gallery for the next month.

Families are warmly invited to stop in and enjoy it anytime.