Aloha ʻāina – Blog 4
Moorea C -
Hey everyone! I hope you are all having a wonderful day 🙂 For this week’s blog I will be talking about my trip to California and a bit about Waldorf education.
During my trip, I had the privilege of touring and interviewing a preK-8th grade Waldorf school in Long Beach, CA. Some of you may be wondering what exactly is Waldorf education? Waldorf pedagogy (the method/practice of teaching) is based on the central goal of cultivating a strong academic foundation, set of social skills, and a connection to the natural world for each student through kinesthetic, experiential, and collaborative learning. What this means is simply that this type of pedagogy focuses on educating each child not only on general core curriculum, but also on broader topics like environmental awareness, nutrition, and sustainability through hands-on learning approaches. Because Waldorf education is extremely similar to what I am researching for my curriculum development, you can only imagine how thrilled I was to be given the chance to see this curriculum in action at a Waldorf school. I started off my time by interviewing the Head of School about her experience co-founding the school. I interviewed her about the process of developing the environmental curriculum and policies set in place for the students and teachers, as well as what her experience has been like working with the students on Waldorf education. She then took me on a tour of the school in which I got to go into every classroom and learn about the general and environmental curriculum each grade receives.
I then had the opportunity to meet with the school’s garden teacher and learn about what her methodology for teaching the students is. Through my time spent with her, I got to learn about the indigenous Hawaiian practices and beliefs that she uses in the classroom to teach students about what it means to nurture the outside world. She teaches students 2nd-4th grade about the importance of caring for the Earth and why being environmentally aware is so important to our future. I learned that she bases her teaching around the Hawaiian phrase “Aloha ʻāina” which means “love of land”. She explained that it is a central idea in native Hawaiian culture that teaches people that when you take care of the land, it will take care of you back. One particular phrase that she often repeats with her students is that “when we heal our soil, we heal our soul”; meaning that the more we learn to take care of the natural world around us, the more our society will grow and flourish. It was such an amazing experience for me to be able to meet with her and learn about how to properly engage and teach young students about topics like gardening, decomposition, and environmental awareness.
Overall, my experience with this school was absolutely wonderful and taught me so much valuable information. Thank you all for reading and I will see you next week!
Link below to Waldorf education if anyone would like to learn more about it
P.S. the surveys have been working out very well 🙂
Comments:
All viewpoints are welcome but profane, threatening, disrespectful, or harassing comments will not be tolerated and are subject to moderation up to, and including, full deletion.