GMWS Blog

This article from last month in The New York Times is an interesting follow-up to a recent blog post about movement in Waldorf Education. One of the most interesting quotes: "...the way the brain records and remembers movement in space may be the basis of all memory."

Check out my recent blog post about Screen-Free Week (on Nyack Patch) here!

http://nyack.patch.com/blog_posts/celebrate-screen-free-week-april-29-may-5

Green Meadow Waldorf School does not supplement our curriculum with movement: our curriculum IS movement. Starting with the youngest children in the Early Childhood section, our pedagogical approach recognizes that healthy, self-initiated movement is the best foundation for physical and cognitive development at every age. The Waldorf School’s curriculum and method of teaching recognizes that nimble, imaginative, full-body movement in the youngest child becomes nimble dexterity in thought after puberty, and that the capacities of free and responsible action in young adulthood are developed through an artistic, holistic education based on movement.

Waldorf Schools throughout the world are grounded in a commitment to movement and are being recognized as leaders in cutting-edge learning techniques, though Waldorf Schools have been working this way since their founding in 1919.

Every subject in the Waldorf School develops foundational skills through movement. A subject unique to Waldorf Schools is eurythmy, a movement art that integrates language, music, geometry, and spatial awareness in lively weekly classes from Early Childhood through High School. Artistically, students learn to use their whole body to listen, speak, sing, perceive, and think. In First Grade, students learn eurythmy movement through the rich language of fairy tales, Sixth Graders learn by moving complex geometric forms collaboratively with classmates, and High School students learn to perceive and express the inner nature of poetry, music, and themes from the curriculum through expressive choreography and gesture. Being in touch with the expressive capacities of the body is to be in touch with a way of intuitive understanding. As students’ capacities for higher cognition develop through thinking, eurythmy supports students healthy thinking through highly conscious movement.

Every few weeks, we are posting new clips from our Parent Education talks.

Up now: Kim John Payne's talk from last year, Elizabeth Hall introduces the Lower School, and our Early Childhood teachers on child development from birth to seven and First Grade Readiness.

Coming soon: Farmer and author Joel Salatin, Anna Silber on Literacy the Waldorf Way and Renate Kurth on Teaching Science.

Take a look at www.gmws.org/videoclips.

From the Washington Post, February 9, 2013: "For more than a decade now, we have heard that the high-stakes testing obsession in K-12 education that began with the enactment of No Child Left Behind 11 years ago has resulted in high school graduates who don’t think as analytically or as broadly as they should because so much emphasis has been placed on passing standardized tests. [In the article linked to below], an award-winning high school teacher who just retired, Kenneth Bernstein, warns college professors what they are up against. Bernstein, who lives near Washington, D.C. serves as a peer reviewer for educational journals and publishers, and he is nationally known as the blogger “teacherken.” His e-mail address is kber@earthlink.net. This appeared in Academe, the journal of the American Association of University Professors."

Read the full article.

From WTOP radio, Washington, DC, 1/7/2013: another article on the benefits of a Waldorf Education.

A good article from Boulder County Business Report.

More support for the importance of unstructured play here, from TIME magazine.

Happy Holidays! Click here.