High School

Elizabeth Nevieve Deputy Head of School Years 7–12

Spring Festival Year 10–11 Winter Spiral The Cove Year 9

Rhythms re-established

2022 focused on the reestablishment of familiar rhythms and cultural practices that give meaning to our human journey, and the wellbeing of the high school again began to be supported by punctuating events that mark time, celebrate growth and provide us with the knowledge that we are developing and progressing.

The autumn, winter and spring festivals were moments of celebration that highlighted our human connection to the world and, while not necessarily the activity towards which most students look forward, the regular examination periods for those in Years 9 to 12 brought back a sense of certainty and trust in the pulse of the academic year.

The secure knowledge that the outdoor education expeditions and

Year 10 musical could go ahead, a little tweaking notwithstanding, provided students with special events to anticipate and our knowledge that we will round out the year with the Carol

Service, the Shepherds’ Play, Gleno

Cup and the ‘big handshake’ assures us we are back on track.

The Glenaeon ‘cycle of the year’ again began to take form and we realised how important it was to firmly re-establish our cultural events, to recognise the annual progression that combats what has familiarly become to be known as ‘ground hog day’.

Many rhythms may be observed in daily life and as adults we are conscious of the additional will and focus required if we need to navigate a day or week when our familiar routine is disturbed. We can manage a chaotic period for a short span of time but become fatigued when a lack of rhythm begins to become the norm. The daily (Sun) and the weekly rhythms (planetary*) are important and provide continuity that allows us to ‘get on with the job’ but these cycles relate primarily to the here and now and not to the future.

Throughout 2020 and 2021 these rhythms were largely retained, although sometimes altered in their form. In that same period, however, while the yearly seasonal progression could still be observed, the human or cultural annual cycle was lost as gatherings were not permitted, events were cancelled and future planning was put on hold.

At Glenaeon and as we saw that increasing numbers of students were becoming burdened by a lack of direction and meaning, we became starkly aware that we were no longer supported by the cycle of the Glenaeon year. The task in 2022 was to bring that back!

In a Steiner school, the significance of rhythm as an essential element of education is well understood. In particular, it is acknowledged that rhythm strongly supports ‘will’ which is the capacity to engage with interest and sustained focus on a task. Actions that form our daily habits are ‘will activities’ that have become automatic, requiring less conscious determination. In the school context, rhythmic habits that support ‘will’ include the recitation of the morning verse that connects feeling and thought and lets the students know it’s time to learn, the Main Lesson period that calls for prolonged absorption in a theme, and the lessons in the latter half of the day which have their own rhythmic breathing as they journey through theoretical content and practical experience.

These established daytime practices are then followed by the hard-won homework routine that, if embedded, means it’s just that much easier to pick up the pen again after school.

The weekly cycle too has its value and provides a breathing that allows us to perform our daily habits without them becoming monotonous.

Year 7 Play

Spring Festival Year 8 Play

High School Assembly

Wednesday’s tasks are just a little different to those that occur on Thursday, and five days in the school environment followed by the weekend provides a needed balance between a structured stretch and time that is more our own. Students return to campus after the weekend not because of a conscious decision to again engage with lessons, but simply because Monday follows Sunday, and the Year 9 cohorts’ willingness to arrive at 7:30am for the morning Cove session doesn’t happen because of an inner desire to rise early for a run, but because it’s a regular expectation.

The daily and weekly rhythms therefore can be seen to provide the structure that supports concrete learning and engagement, but our assimilation of knowledge and development of skill feels purposeless if there isn’t a larger cycle present that allows us to feel connected to life’s journey. It is the yearly cycle, the connection to something larger than ourselves and the familiar return of dates and events that give reference to our development over a greater span of time, that allows us to experience our lives as meaningful. It is this assurance, felt subconsciously, that ultimately provides us with real inner drive, with sustained ‘will’.

With Meaningful Lives as our school motto, Glenaeon teachers felt the very real wish to bring the yearly cycle to the forefront of our work. Re-establishing cultural rhythms during 2022, however, hasn’t been easy. Memory was there, but felt practice wasn’t. Years of Glenaeon tradition told us that it was possible, but both teachers and students ‘muscles’ lacked conditioning.

Conscious effort and resolve were needed! The 2022 yearly cycle therefore didn’t yet provide the level of inner support that the annual rhythm has gifted in the past, but we laid the foundation, the future seeding, and for that we are grateful. Rhythm is, after all, something that takes time to establish, something that is only recognisable if it occurs more than once! 2023 will be a little easier and I hope that by 2024 students, parents and teachers alike find themselves subconsciously supported by happenings that again link us, with inner joy, to the future. Our ‘will’ will therefore be enlivened because it is the future, and not the past, that the ‘will’ seeks.

A side note: Interestingly, we often equate ‘meaning’ with ‘consciously understanding’ or ‘comprehending’. The latter two states arise as thoughts, they are in their nature cerebral. But a sense of meaning in terms of a Meaningful Life comes about through a felt sense of purpose, and purpose can be clearly seen to be related to the activity of ‘will’. A meaningful life is a purposeful and valuable life. It is not a life looked at and deconstructed, it is not a life that is necessarily cerebrally understood. Instead, a meaningful life is one that is ‘felt’ and where our many actions and tasks are seen to unite and weave together into a thread that creates the stream of our individual journeys. Hence, while on the surface the word meaning may be seen to relate to the realm of ‘thinking’, at its deeper level it can be understood as something that is intrinsically linked to the activity of our ‘will’. 

*The days of the week are named after the seven ‘planets’ that are visible with the naked eye as ‘shining objects’ that are seen to move across the sky. Important to note is that the word planet comes from the Ancient Greek word, (asteres) planētai, meaning wandering (stars), hence the inclusion of the Sun and the Moon as they are also seen to move over the sky when observing from the earth perspective. Further detail can be read here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/planet