Our Strings Students - Doing Great Things in the Community

Our 6-8 grade students have a tradition of providing beautiful music at the Covell Gardens Holiday Strings Performance (see photo from Dec. 2016).  They plan to perform again on Thursday, December 14th from 1:15 - 1:45 p.m.  All DWS parents and friends are encouraged to attend if you are available.

Some recent garden activities include: The first and second grade students making pinecone birdfeeders. The third grade has been busy raking leaves for compost and tending the garden crops and chickens. Fourth grade is learning about native plants while planning and preparing the site for a pollinator garden near the inner circle drive. Fifth grade recently pressed apples into cider.  

They have also made an impressive hot compost pile. Sixth grade has been studying soil composition and even crafted some fun creative writing stories based on sand, clay, loamy soil and compost.  Seventh grade has started on a spiral succulent garden. Last month eighth grade rode their bikes to Davis Waste and Removal processing facility and took a tour of their recycling operation as part of their ongoing study into best waste management strategies. All the students made California poppy seed balls. We have been enjoying lots of fresh garden salads from our lettuce beds and lemonade from our Meyer lemon tree. 

 

Or, you can support DWS through the eScrip online shopping mall:   https://shopping.escrip.com/

Contemplating Choices in Death and Dying

An afternoon workshop discussing, reflecting and learning about caring for oneself or a loved one before and after death with Susan Pelican and Heidi Boucher.

Saturday, January 20, 2018 1:30 - 5:30 p.m. in the MPR.   Suggested donation $10.00.  All are welcome and no one will be turned away due to cost. 

Join us as we touch on issues around end of life documents, hospice, options for body care, home funeral and green burial. Participants will also watch the award winning film, In The Parlor: The Final Goodbye, a documentary following three families who cared for their own loved ones after death.

 

Susan Pelican, RN is a retired homebirth midwife and one of the early founders of the Davis Waldorf School. She is currently authoring a guide to conscious choices in death and dying from her experience with her husband's passing. Susan brings practical and insightful knowledge of the conventional medical system surrounding end of life issues.

 

Heidi Boucher has been guiding families in home funerals and caring for the dead for over 30 years. Working out of Anthroposophy and closely with the mainstream funeral industry, Heidi has bridged both worlds bringing reverence and beauty to families taking a more hands-on approach. She also works in the film industry and recently produced In The Parlor: The Final Goodbye.

 

Advance tickets available at choicesindeathanddying.brownpapertickets.com

 

By Joseph Hartman, Ph.D., P.E.

As a long-time professor of industrial and systems engineering-and the parent of three children who have attended Waldorf schools-I have been asked for years about the ability of the Waldorf curriculum to produce engineers and scientists, professions that are valued in a world defined by ever advancing technology.

In 1995, I was in my third year of graduate stud­ies at Georgia Tech, the leading school in my field. That year I also met my lovely wife Karen, who introduced me to Waldorf education. The word "skeptical" only begins to describe my reaction to a pedagogy that emphasizes movement, music, and the visual arts. But, being a curious student, I listened to Karen, attended lectures, and tried to learn. Eventually I conceded that Waldorf seemed to be a great idea, albeit only for kindergartners.

We moved to Scotland for a year and lived near a Steiner school that went through 12th grade. Again, I attended lectures and quizzed the teach­ers. I was shocked to discover that they taught calculus...right after poetry and before pottery. If they taught calculus, I reasoned, they had to be doing a good job teaching the fundamentals of mathematics and science.

But I still wondered how all of this "other" stuff (pottery?) helped a potential engineer or scien­tist. That is when I started taking a closer look at the students in my classrooms and the changing world around us.

In his best seller The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman lays out what is necessary for students to make it in a highly connected, global community driven by technology. He does not dwell on technology skills or the ability to write computer code. Rather, he points out four survival skills:

Note that the above skills have nothing to do with calculus or trigonometry. Rather, they have everything to do with a love of learning and exploration-cornerstones of Waldorf education.

Elementary classrooms at Waldorf schools are bright, colorful, and uncluttered. Teachers bring the curriculum to life with vibrant, full-color chalk drawings, dramatic story-telling, and movement. What you won't find in a Waldorf classroom are computers, iPads, electronic white boards, or other electronic devices.

Friedman goes on to describe the transformation at my alma mater, Georgia Tech. Then-president G. Wayne Clough realized that some of the best engineers "might not be the ones who could solve the calculus equation better, but they could define the problem that the calculus had to solve better than anyone else." More importantly, "they knew how to think creatively."

So, beginning in the late 1990s, Georgia Tech changed its admissions process to admit more students that played musical instruments, sang in a choir, or played on a team. The result is that a computer science student at Tech is likely to be taking a course in computer graphics while studying Hamlet in Classics. Echoed by Charles Vest, former president of MIT, "the humanities, the arts, and social sciences are essential to the creative, explorative, open-minded environment and spirit necessary to educate the engineer of 2020."

The fact is, a well-rounded student who exercises both sides of the brain is more apt to be creative and curious. This is the type of engineer that I hope I am, the type of engineer I want to work with, and the type of student I want to teach. This is the son or daughter I want to have. This is why I trust Waldorf education. Educating the whole child works in any world, for any eventual profession. I can only hope that some of these children show up in my class someday, eager to learn.

Dr. Hartman's youngest child currently attends the Waldorf School of Lexington. He is Dean, Francis College of Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Lowell.

From the  Waldorf School of Lexington.