Dear Westside Waldorf Parents,
As you continue to weave schooling into your home rhythms, our hope is that your children, whether in the Early Childhood or Grades, continue to be healthy and grounded in our beautiful Westside Waldorf curriculum. These four weeks of remote learning have been a unique window that provide insight into your child’s school life, the task of the teacher and how your individual child learns. Many of you may also be experiencing a heightened sense of anxiety as you juggle working full-time, supporting an online curriculum, caring for your youngest children, managing your home life, and staying healthy.
This new experience has been filled with stumbles and triumphs for parents, children, and faculty alike as we mobilize and adjust. That work will continue for our faculty and administration over spring break as they work to make changes at all levels of the program with the intention of creating a remote learning plan that expresses the richness and values of a Waldorf education. Part of the adjustment upon our return will be that your students will have more full engagement with all of their teachers and the special subjects that round out our curriculum. For our Early Childhood families, our teachers will continue to be available to you and to provide you with rich resources, and as much support as they are able to at this time, until your children are back in the nurturing social environment of the classroom.
This time has truly brought us together. Never has the connection between home and school been more important. Your feedback has been critical as we continue to refine. Over break, we will be sending you a Distance Learning program survey. Please take the time to fill it out. Your responses will inform how the program develops as we plan for the weeks to come. It is this level of working together that will create the successful learning and development that we all wish for our students.
We are also grateful for your continued tuition which supports our faculty and staff. It ensures that our school and programs can continue to exist and will be in healthy shape for your children when we are able to welcome them back to the warm and nurturing hearths of our EC and the lively and rich classrooms of our grades school. For now, please also know that if your family is experiencing the financial strains of this time, you can reach out to our finance office for support, at mike@wswaldorf.org.
You have all been working hard and we have been inspired by how you have risen to the challenges of this occasion with great courage. Take this spring break to unplug, to connect with your family without the pressure of school, to rest, and regenerate. This much needed impulse is being observed and celebrated throughout the world at this very moment with Passover and Nowruz, and soon with Easter and Ramadan. Each of these festivals are symbols of hope, perseverance, survival, inward strength, and each reveal the hidden capacities of human beings and bring the promise of renewal at a time when we need it most.
Enjoy the blessings of this time and we look forward to rejoining in our work together on April 20th.
Warmly,
The Leadership Council
Anjum Mir
Ellie Jenkins
Liis Edwards
Laura Scheurer
Paul Helfrich
Jessica Breakey
Mike Quishenberry
