Julie Bennett

movement, it's time and space. If you're washing the dishes, and you don't have any idea how far it is from your hand to the table, and you plunk down a dish and it cracks and breaks, well, that's a learning experience. And it might take some children more time than others to learn about that." Purposeful tasks include opportunities to use a hammer, sew with a real needle and thread, dig in the earth and plant real seeds, polish their shoes and tie shoelaces, make soup, and bake bread.

This concrete development sets a solid foundation for academic learning later on. "Any occupational therapist will tell you that organization starts in the body...knowing where we are in space in relation to other things" says McCormick. Once this ability is established, "if I raise my arm, I don't have to look but I know it's shoulder height," she says. "There's a system in our body that organizes us through movement...to know where we are in our own body before we have to even sit still in a chair. That's work for some children. Sitting still in a chair is not an easy thing. It's not just a given."

All this sets up a child for grade-level learning, for example, working with pencil and a piece of paper. McCormick says, "There are edges on the paper. Well, if I don't know where my own edges are on my physical body it's going to be really hard for me to honor the borders and the abstraction of my body on a piece of paper. Children need to move through all planes of space before they're even able to copy off of the chalkboard and onto paper."

The final gift of Waldorf early childhood education is flexibility. Other systems try to teach fixed ideas and have a child regurgitate it back. McCormick says she often bases the specifics of her teaching on in-the-moment interactions with a child. "Our education is very much what lives between [the teacher and students] and although there may be a story already prepared, or a festival or a season, we're also trying to find a way to bring the magic of childhood into every single thing and I think that's a gift to the children. That's what we bring to them. We reflect their magic back to them and that's a gift to us, too."

Kindergarten students helping rake mulch in their play area and sweeping the path to the kindergarten building. Opposite page: Washing their own dishes and helping to sand wooden tables.

By Julie Bennett It was a homecoming of sorts for me when our son Max chose to attend the Santa Fe Waldorf School after visiting many private middle schools in Santa Fe. At an open house I attended years before, the evocative beauty of the main lesson books on display filled me with joy and longing for the education I wished I had had. The rich inner world portrayed in those hand drawn books represented a spiritual antidote to my "see Spot run…" education.

Max’s clarity in choosing Waldorf for fifth grade represented a big commitment for our family: a forty-five minute commute and a financial challenge. But overwhelmingly it was a gift that continued for sixteen years and beyond, through Max’s acceptance into Colorado College and his life as an artist blacksmith, and Shaefer’s graduation as valedictorian in 2016 and his current attendance at the School of Veterinary Medicine at Colorado State University. It was a gift of community and also of an education with intellectual and artistic depth imbued with a spiritual (not religious) awareness.

The intimacy of teacher and student who stay together through the early grades allows a knowing and a rhythm that supports each child. The intimacy also exists among the students and parents who get to know each other through volunteer engagement in the life of the school. This intimacy persists into the High School through the Coming of Age program and the Vallecitos Wilderness retreats. Waldorf education is an enduring educational movement that is free of the fads we encountered in the public school realm. It recognizes the developmental stages of the child, and is anti-materialist. The wilderness program shines and the sports program models teamwork. Our family’s values were reflected in the school’s philosophy and enhanced through our time there. The academic rigors of the school afforded both of our sons’ acceptance and success in selective schools. Attendance at the Santa Fe Waldorf School allowed our children to become fully themselves.

Julie Bennett is a designer and former Waldorf parent who lives in Espanola, NM. She and her husband Scott, a mechanic and land keeper, are parents to Max, SFWS HS Class of 2008, and Shaefer, HS Class of 2016. (See page 16 for updates on Max and Shaefer)