Nature Stories in the Waldorf Elementary Classroom by Carrie Reuther, Waldorf MEd Year-Round Program

In the Waldorf elementary classroom we use imagination to reach the students we teach. Instead of teaching new ideas to children about the natural world around them as a series of facts, we tell them stories. Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf education, believed that children learn best through pictorial representation; as Waldorf teachers we present much of the curriculum through story with many valuable facts imbedded in the narrative and description. The following is a sampling of a nature story I composed in my Waldorf curriculum class for kindergarten or first grade to explain the change of seasons from fall to winter.

The sun faded and the days had started to get shorter. The trees all around began to sing sweet melodies to Grandmother Wind. When the trees sang, beautiful colors appeared on them: crimson, rust, orange, gold and lemon yellow. These colors then awakened the leaf children who loved to frolic and play with Grandmother Wind. One of their favorite games was to see how long they could float in the sky with Grandmother Wind, before they would eventually tumble to the earth below. However, as the days became shorter the leaf children could not play as long during the day and began to argue about who would play when and where. When Grandmother Wind heard them bickering she was sad at the sight of their arguing.

“Have patience dear children. It is important your playing days are shorter now and you will soon know why.”

“When will we know why Grandmother Wind?” they uttered back.

“You will know soon enough,” she answered reassuringly.

And so it was that the leaf children kept playing and trusted that Grandmother Wind knew why their playing days were getting shorter and shorter. As the days continued many of the leaf children noticed they were tired more easily and did not want to play as long. The leaf children felt content to lie on the earth’s floor, because it felt soft and warm to them. They watched Silvia the Squirrel gather nuts and hide them in strange spots all over the meadow. The leaf children’s game now was to count all of the places Silvia hid her nuts. So, their play changed from that of the sky to that of the earth. When Grandmother Wind saw they were all comfortable lying on the earth she knew it was time to talk to them.

“Your blanket over the earth is very important,” she whispered to them. “Now Father Winter will know it is time for him to come. And soon enough he will tell the snow fairies it is their time to come. Without your help he would not know. Thank you leaf children, you are so dear to me.”

Just then Grandmother Wind moved more strongly about as she felt Father Winter approaching.

The Rap of Montessori

Maria Montessori, she was one smart Lady.
First Woman PhD, in all of Italy.
Nobel Peace Prize, three times nominated.
She took in Roman street kids,
and the mentally retarded.
(no play, no play)

There ain’t no reason, to pressure kids to Learn.
They need creative Space, to learn at their own Pace.
Some like the order, some like the details.
But in all the cases, the environment prevails.
(no play, no play)

Afraid of looking stupid, afraid of being wrong, ,
Maria said, Don’t educate by fear, all day long.
Sensitive Blocks, are what makes them yearn,
The little ones are eager, and able to learn.
(no play, no play)

Itty bitty desks and itty bitty cupboards,
Everything’s accessible to Itty bitty paws.
Without Organization the other schools
But in her class, you won’t find a fairy tale.
(no play, no play)

Independence = Con-cen-tration,
Give them choices, let them decide.
You’ll see kids have, real application.
And the teachers observe, always observe.
(no play, no play)

There’s no punishment, there’s no control,
The child’s set free and on a roll.
There’s science, there’s math, there’s reading writing,
But there’s No puppet show,
And where the heck’s the Play-Doh???

Submitted by Joy Cole, Kenny Harris and Sophie Barbier

Poem by Sophie Barbier

A field covered in snow, a mirror of white,
The silence of a cold winter’s morning.
The sun sparkling bright, with silver finesse,
Your eyes sting, but you stare nonetheless.
You can’t look away, so you stare at the tracks,
A perfect straight line, coyote perhaps.
I want to capture the silence, capture the peace,
Keep it safe in my head and my heart.
So when the day starts and the magic is broken
I’ll remember, this morning’s start.

by Sophie Barbier

Leaving Mars by Marguerite T. Atkinson

We stand watching another brilliant sunset knowing Sol is slowly growing dimmer. Always now fatalism enshrouds us, as we struggle with the acceptance that our beautiful red planet is dying, fading into a forever sleep, along with our last hopes and dreams. Terran, his proud demeanor and chiseled features impassive, shudders and wraps his cape more closely about him, perhaps more out of forbearance than the penetrating cold to which we have now become accustomed. And I, mindful of the dust in the air that coats every strand of fur and causes these deadly displays of brilliant hues on the horizon, turn back towards our dwelling to re-start the generator that runs the ozone filter inside. My tired mind works to put one foot in front of the other, and I stumble, as if the ground beneath me has heaved itself up to thwart my progress. As twilight settles upon us we turn to our evening routine, now that the wind turbines have recharged our batteries. Gone are the days when our sun did this for us, too much cloud cover. Our time is so much more limited and scheduled, defined by the urgency of the diminishing hours when we can depend on power to do everything!

Still there is a certain comfort in knowing resourcefulness is our ally in these trying times. I check the meter before turning on the convection oven that will bake bread and heat the kitchen. Terran has come in, pulling the heavy weather-stripped door closed behind him. He crosses purposefully to the lavastone fireplace to breathe life back into its dying embers. Soon the stew placed on the grate will begin to bubble as we go about our evening chores. Meat is rationed now. We have become experts at combining the right nuts and grains to synthesize the amino acids necessary for the proteins we no longer get from animal proteins in our diet. I find myself proud to be able to cook with the roots, grasses, and fungi we manage to grow and still prepare a sparse but tasty repast. The sluggishness following those heavy holiday feasts is a folly of the distant past, and though I miss the camaraderie of the conversations that followed, I don’t miss the waste and feel better for the leanness of our eating habits these days.

Now that the quilted window jackets have been zipped into place, the evening meal and chores finished, we wrap our cloaks around us once more and step outside for our traditional twilight ritual of welcoming the stars and planets. A semi-circle of the small, blue, luminous planet that is Terran’s namesake is visible, rising just above the horizon, along with its crescent moon. The stars are barely hints of light through the high wispy cloud cover. During the meditation, I find myself wondering where we will go when we are finally forced to flee our homes, and which disaster will be the one to ultimately precipitate our flight? Will it be when the winter stretches on until Spring never arrives, when the rains no longer come at all and nothing will grow, when the cloud cover thickens such that daylight won’t penetrate?

I stagger slightly. Perhaps the weight of my thoughts is bearing down on me, or did the ground beneath me just tremble? No, Terran felt it, too. His head snaps up, a look I cannot quite read in the faded light, a knowing apprehension? Terran’s gaze is far away, pulled towards the Tarsis Range, and as I turn to follow his line of sight, the fur on the back of my neck and head prickles eerily. Along with the familiar wispy smoke issuing from two of our world’s largest volcanoes, Olympus Mons and Arsia Mons, whose thready smoke spirals towards the low grey cloud cover, a far more ominous sight meets our eyes. A lower bump of a volcano to the east, Alba Patera, has begun to produce a pernicious vermillion corona, resembling a toxic star rising from behind its stubby peak. Terran, crouched like a wild beast of our ancestral past, is frozen in place, riveted by the spectacle of this malevolent phenomenon. And I, spit drooling unwittingly from my gaping jaw, watch in horror as the deepening glow grows orange-gold, increasing in size. Alba Patera has been dormant for many revolutions, long before the Great Drought.

A thunderous explosion rents the air as Alba Patera disgorges a column of hellfire, rocks, and noxious, belching smoke. The flash illuminates the entire bleak landscape, silhouetting the towering airship atop its launch pad not a quarter mile from our dwelling. Across the tundra within and beyond our range of vision, the buzz of frightened voices reaches our ears. Hundreds of others are scurrying, beetling about their homes like desert whirligigs. In the same moment, Terran and I turn to each other in sudden cognizance of what we must now do, and simultaneously bolt for the dwelling.

We rush about, urgently gathering, scattering, choosing, as judiciously as possible from a lifetime of belongings. Terran whimpers almost inaudibly, tears in his dark eyes as they light fleetingly on the large and complex solar system model he spent so many hours lovingly constructing. My heart catches at the sight of my life partner forced to make a choice that only yesterday would have been impossible for him. I grab the small stringed instrument he made, unable to part with this one unessential item that is so intrinsic to me. We must leave before the choking, poisonous smoke suffocates us. How could we have let this happen, my fellow scientists and me? I pack more furiously, boiling with antipathy over the greed and gluttony of a society that overused and spent its natural resources, the mining disasters deep below the surface that reactivated long dormant volcanoes (not the other way ‘round as our pundits insisted!), over-consumption of fossil fuels and even woody plants which left the landscape denuded. But no one heeded us, and now we must leave a world so unloved, it has been thrown away by its careless inhabitants, its climate so out of balance it has become completely uninhabitable.

The fury of my thoughts reaches my partner, and Terran grabs my shoulder, a look of true alarm in the taut musculature of his face. We must go, now, I send back, my brow furrowed in suppressed fear and emotion. We heft our bulky rucksacks and hasten out the door towards the launch pad with its looming rocket. Although the ship is still tethered, someone has fired the initial boosters, a little soon I should think, if everyone is to board safely. But the few left on the ground clamber in, the portal closes, and the ladder is falling away! By Ares! Someone has already released the cables, unfettered the ship and begun the launch sequence for imminent take-off and in far too much haste! As we watch in amazement, the flare of blinding white light and roar of the boosters indicate lift-off. Our belongings fall to the ground, and we stare in disbelief as our only escape leaves without us.

In desolation we drag our belongings back home. The air is becoming noticeably harder to breathe. Terran barks, the characteristic hack of lungs already compromised by a vocation he could not bear to abandon when air quality became an issue. My breathing, too, feels labored. Suddenly, I recall the small, dust-covered pod stored in Terran’s workshop. My father designed it for exploratory interplanetary travel, but it hasn’t been used for a very long time, well before he expired. Mother insisted the little machine would take us out of here one day when more advanced technology failed. Remarkably, its solar batteries still hold a healthy charge, but I have no idea if it will perform. Neither of my physicist parents lived long enough to find out whether this mode of long distance travel based on using gravity slingshot propulsion to jump from one planet to another actually worked.

Nevertheless, we swiftly load our belongings and after freeing it from the confines of the shop, board the small spacecraft, unable to think about anything but getting off the planet. Fortunately, Terran learned enough basic pilot skills to get us into orbit when we were contemplating a short trip to Phobos and Deimos to celebrate our betrothal. His nimble fingers skillfully punching code sequences, Terran commences the launch, while I set a course via Jove that will hopefully use the giant planet’s gravitational force to propel us on an accurate trajectory towards Terra.

Breathing a guarded sigh of relief in unison, we successfully launch the pod and are leaving the atmosphere of Mars. Within our view, not a mile away, is the ship carrying hundreds of others trailed closely by several assorted smaller aircraft like ours straggling behind. As we prepare to put ourselves into stasis for the long journey, a second explosion rocks us. I look down, yet there is no evidence of another volcanic event from the surface. Parallel to our trajectory, the giant starship carrying the other travelers has prematurely begun to separate from its power booster. The rocket begins losing thrust, a stabilizer breaks off, and the great ship starts spinning out of control. As it becomes more unstable and off course, a third detonation cracks the fuselage. Terran and I reach out to lock each other’s free hands as we watch the entire rocket become engulfed in flame and vaporize along with all its tiny protégés in one final, fatal thunderclap. The debris rains down in tragic pyrotechnic beauty back to our dying planet, along with all remaining souls aboard, except us. We have witnessed the death throes of our civilization.

In searing sadness, weeping at this final tragedy, we ready ourselves for stasis for the long journey to Terra. We contemplate the finality of our choice to return to an ancestral planet as consciousness fades into dreamless oblivion.

The rockiness of re-entry awakens us to our arrival in Terra’s shimmering atmosphere. We have landed on an opulent emerald carpet of spring prairie, edged by higher bands of deep green, encircled by blue mountain ranges without smoking peaks, and a sky so bright we must shield our eyes. Along the edges of the higher vegetation, stands a band of stunned bipedal apes who look just like us, bystanders from whom we were plucked eons ago and plunked down upon another world. Unclothed and curious, the progeny of these ancient ancestors stand sentry to our return and our new life. As they approach tentatively, we shed our heavy, dusty cloaks and reach out our arms, palms up in traditional Arean greeting, We are Terran Adamis and Jova Evea.

The Imperial Spelling Bee Diane M. Coventry

I remember spelling “bees” in Mr. Rife’s fifth grade class. There isn’t much else I recall of that year in retrospect other than learning the “Thirty Days” poem and the teacher’s tiny bow ties with neat, white shirts. Normally, I was trudging through math problems or memorizing state capitals, but when Mr. Rife called for a spelling contest I perked right up!

My nemesis was Brian Knicely, a geeky, quiet kid in the class. However, he was always selected to be captain of one team because that boy could spell. I swear he swallowed a dictionary! I was usually selected to be captain of the other team. On this particular day we chose our teammates by turn as usual and began with the week’s spelling list. We made short work of that without losing too many classmates to spelling errors. Next, Mr. Rife proceeded to the chapter for the following week in our speller. When that round was over we were both down by a number of teammates.

As I recall, we were nearing the end of the school year and there were few chapters left for the teacher to draw on for challenge words. Finally, it was down to the two team captains, Brian and me. Out of words to give us, Mr. Rife pulled a sixth grade speller out, to the “oohs” and “aahs” of our seated classmates. This was a moment that really got my blood moving. I couldn’t believe we were going to use the 6th grade textbook. We each received our words in turn and slowly and carefully spelled them out. I was determined to defeat Brian. A few times there were pauses and I thought the teacher had him for sure, but like a true performer he came through.

It was nearing the end of day and all of us wondered if the contest would end in a tied match. I can’t remember what word it was that finally tripped me up, but trip me up it did. Then Brian had to spell the same word. I held my breath with the rest of the class as he repeated the word again and paused. Slowly he began to spell. When he stopped there was a pause. There was not a sound in the room except for other classes, oblivious to our contest, preparing to depart for the day. Finally, Mr. Rife shouted, “Correct!”, to the joy of his fellow teammates who had long been benched. I suppose I should have felt crushed, but I didn’t really and I don’t think my team did either. The sheer joy of the challenge had caught everyone up in its spell. Yes, many would have loved to have seen Brian defeated by just about anyone in spelling, but there would be other days. Besides, by the next day the whole school was buzzing about how we got to use the big 6th grade book to break the tie in our 5th grade competition. In fifth grade it’s all about the fame.

Having Wings to Fly by Hannah Putnam

Once I looked into the dying eyes
of a hawk
and understood everything
there was to know just then
about having wings to fly
above this beautiful
and difficult world
To train raptors, to work closely with them, is to journey with faith from being strangers together in a foreign land to being known in a world you have created together. There is an incredible power and beauty in the close working relationship that develops, and it is what pulls me into the heart of this work. To train raptors is to see myself through their eyes; to be conscious of all that I am saying in the silent language of my movements. Every moment we spend with these birds, we are training them, teaching them. And they are watching, watching us so closely that it seems they know us better than we know our own selves. To train raptors is to structure your movements out of the confidence that the birds are watching, moving with you, moving in response to each small change in your own movements. Training raptors is to move together, journey together. It is a dance, a continuous ebb and flow that always touches back on the familiar, time and time again. To train raptors is to learn to see the world as they see it. To stand thus, in their presence, is a humbling experience.

To stand in front of a classroom of children, teaching, is to see the world through their eyes as you carefully scaffold their learning experience so that the next step falls on new ground, yet always within grasp, built firmly on what has gone before. Through repetition, patterns emerge that enable new concepts to be added to existing knowledge. Again and again, you show them that you are there; you are their teacher, guide and companion. Again and again, you show them that they can know you and trust you. They seek the reassurance in the familiar and the known expectations that you touch back on, time and time again.

Having worked both as a classroom teacher and a bird handler and trainer, I have felt the countless ways that both experiences have drawn from the same inner core of who I am, and required that I approach my work in both fields in a similar way. Working with birds calls us to embrace the everyday ordinary, as well as the unexpected and our own mistakes. Cannot the very same be said of working with children? This thing we call training, education, is a beautiful, yet very hard thing.

There was a time when young children came running towards me, calling out “Ms. Putnam! Ms. Putnam!” There was a time when my world consisted of math, reading, writing, and twenty-one great children. When I raised my hand, twenty-one hands were raised in echo. Now when I raise my hand, a harris’ hawk lifts off the glove and flies towards me. My world consists of feathers, curved beaks, sharp talons, and bits of cut-up mouse. Despite the seeming differences between these worlds, I have discovered a common thread running between them, connecting these disparate pieces into a seamless whole that is the self I am coming to know.

In its purest form, that common thread is trust. I cannot do my work with either children or birds if I do not stand on the solid grounding of a trusting relationship. You not only have to trust the children and the birds, they must trust you in return. Ultimately, this work is a journey in knowing one’s own self, of being willing to be fully present for the children, the birds, yourself.

When you handle a bird, time slows down and the world shrinks to minute proportions. Nothing is more important than giving your self to that bird. Nothing exists except you and the bird. You are communicating in a language without words; a language you have created together out of all the unspoken that exists in those long intense looks exchanged between bird and human. When you work with children, your shared existence fits within the four walls of your classroom. From the moment they first walk through your door to when they leave, nothing is more important than giving your self to those children.

There is a quote that has hung on my bulletin board. It has spoken to me as a teacher, and it has spoken to me as a handler and trainer of birds.

“Teaching tugs at the heart, opens the heart, even breaks the heart – and the more one loves teaching, the more heartbreaking it can be. The courage to teach is the courage to keep one’s heart open in those very moments when the heart is asked to hold more than it is able.” - Parker Palmer
For this too, is what it means for me to fly the birds, to work with them, and to learn from them. When you do not have the ability to communicate through the English language, you realize just how much our lives center around our need to speak and be understood. This is never more evident then when training a bird to the glove for the first time. Training a screech owl has been a process that has tugged at my heart, opened my heart, and seemed to almost break my heart. It has required that I enter into the vulnerable place where our mutual trust is all that we stand on. There are times, as there are in any classroom, when it seems that each step we take is in the backwards direction, and that all we’ve learned so far has unraveled to show just how much further we still have to go. When I feel almost crippled by the language barrier, I look for comfort in the reminder that I am not only teaching this screech owl how to learn, but I am carefully reconstructing her entire world, piece by piece, replacing the familiar with the unfamiliar, to become the new ‘familiar’. And I am asking for her trust.

In a classroom, we often have the benefit of a shared language, but it can still be a difficult journey to create a learning environment that supports the growth of each individual. Training raptors has opened my eyes to the deeper possibilities that exist when we fully open ourselves to teaching children from the solid grounding of a community built on trust. I have sat in a circle of children, carefully constructing a new understanding of the power of words through poetry and song. In that circle we opened ourselves to the creative process, believing in each other, ourselves. The poem that was born from that circle caused the children to break into spontaneous applause out of the joy of success. We sat there, in that circle, a teacher and twenty-one children, sitting in a moment of joyous celebration where our shared accomplishment was the only thing just then that mattered in the world.

And I have stood, just me and a red-tailed hawk, waiting for each other, waiting to make eye contact across eighty feet of space, waiting to be called on, waiting in the stillness of late afternoon and the openness of time that said that right then, that was the only thing that mattered in the world. We looked at each other. I saw her lean forward, tensed, and I called her on, over the benches, over the grass, to me, watching that long, long flight, the focus and determination in her, the beauty of it all.

The journey that brought me into the circle of children, and to the late afternoon flights with a red-tailed hawk, is a journey that has also brought me to new understandings of my own self and of what it means for me to be a teacher and a trainer of birds. This long journey, this beautiful dance, with its continuous ebb and flow, is what carries me, again and again, back to the mutual trust that I strive to place at the heart of my work. Standing on this solid grounding, I am seeing the world through their eyes, the eyes of our children, our birds. We are no longer strangers in a foreign land, but rather, fellow travelers in a land shaped by each other’s presence.

Memory of Imperial Self by Liza Lowe

Every year on our birthday, from about age six up until age twenty-one, my parents presented each of their children with a birthday card. Inside the card, along with a birthday note, was our privilege and responsibility for the year. My parents felt that it was important for us to understand our role in the family as well as our role in the world. One way for them to assist us in doing that was by helping us realize that along with privileges come responsibilities. So, depending on our age and our individual needs at that time in life we were presented with an appropriate privilege and responsibility.

I vividly remember the privilege I received on my ninth birthday. I was now allowed to ride my bike, something I loved to do, all the way down our private dirt road to the paved city road and as far as the railroad tracks. Did they really trust me that much? How had I fooled them? What liberty! I worked diligently repairing and improving my bike with the help of an older neighbor who was very bike savvy. I would save up my allowance and babysitting money to buy fancy things that could embellish my bike any way I could afford. Then every day after school, before dinner and homework I would ride to freedom, beyond that dirt road where no one else seemed to go (on their bike anyway)!

Thank God it was only my privilege to be had. No brothers or sisters to follow me - this world past the private drive was mine. The feeling of power and control and the comprehension of what this independence meant was exhilarating! I would ride until daylight was gone. I would ride no matter how cold or rainy. If the dirt road gave way to pot holes, even better. Back and forth, faster and faster! I could pop wheelies, I could fishtail and better yet, I could ride the entire way without using my hands. Never again was I bored. Never again was I lonely. With my stellar bike and my newfound freedom I could take on the world!