About Me

I love so many things about this approach to education: I love the emphasis on beauty and the morning handshake.

I love the developmental focus on the whole child . . . through drawing and painting, movement and singing, and stories and drama.

I love that the children knit and crochet, carve bowls and spoons out of wood, put on a class play each year, and play the violin or cello.

And I love that through all of these life-giving activities, the children learn to read, write, and do math. It’s such a joyful approach to learning!

But, over my years as a teacher, I’ve also encountered some major areas of struggle. It’s so hard to learn everything required of a Waldorf teacher.

One of my most consistent challenges over the years has been how to effectively teach the academic skills . . . the “reading, writing, and arithmetic” aspect of learning in a Waldorf classroom, beyond the morning lesson. The morning lesson presentation, with its inspiring stories and beautiful main lesson book pages, has been a delightful, imaginative way to introduce learning to children.

But, then what? The morning lesson wasn’t enough to firmly secure academic skills for my students.

While I found excellent resources that told me which specific academic skills to teach in each grade, I had little guidance on how to teach this content effectively, whether it was in math, reading, or writing.

I didn’t know the best way to teach academic skills —

• how much practice the children would need to become proficient.

• how to break the learning down into small, bite-sized lessons

• how to teach in a sequence that made sense and built cumulatively on previous material.

• how to weave the academic skills practice into the other rich elements of the school day.

I often turned to resources outside of the Waldorf-inspired approach for help. There were many wonderful, expert, well-researched resources that I drew upon to guide me. I learned so much. However, none of these worked completely in a “just-right” way in my Waldorf classroom. I had to adapt everything to align with my teaching philosophy and approach, which was time-consuming. Sometimes the resources had graphics that were distracting and didn’t feel right for my students, or there were way too many practice problems, so that the students became glassy-eyed, and stopped learning.

Over the years I ended up creating most of my own practice worksheets and materials. I noticed that I could create practice papers that met my students’ needs better than anything I randomly pulled from online sources.

Then, my colleagues began asking me for support with their students, and I began sharing what I created with them. After all, they were in the same position that I had been . . . trying to learn the academic skills required for each new grade.

With each class cycle I’ve taught, I’ve been able to refine and strengthen my understanding of what academic skills are essential to teach in each grade, and how to teach those skills in a way that aligns with the pedagogy. Teaching effective academics in the Waldorf classroom has become my professional passion.

I’d love to share the best of what I’ve learned over the years with you!

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