ADVENTURES IN STEINER EDUCATION

An Introduction to the Waldorf Approach

Brien Masters

An internationally acknowledged authority in Steiner education, Brien Masters has worked for decades as teacher (both State and Waldorf), teacher trainer, consultant, writer and lecturer. In Adventures in Steiner Education he draws on his rich and varied experience to paint a vivid picture of Waldorf education in practice. Spicing the text with many personal stories and anecdotes, he brings to life the theory behind this increasingly popular educational approach, from the Early Years through to the Lower and Upper Schools. This lively book serves not only as an informative and entertaining introduction, but also as a helpful refresher course for those seeking to become fully acquainted with the basic principles of Steiner Education.

AN INTRODUCTION TO STEINER EDUCATION

The Waldorf School

Francis Edmunds

'To educate youth ... is to ennoble the mind, to fire the imagination, to fortify the will and to quicken initiative for life.' So writes Francis Edmunds in this inspiring, authoritative and popular introduction to Steiner (Waldorf) Education.

AUTHENTIC PARENTING

A Four-Temperaments Guide to Your Child and Yourself

Bari Borsky

Judith Haney

Are you finding it difficult to understand your child? Do you feel frustrated because you often end up in an argument but not sure about how you got there? Authentic Parenting can help.

AUTUMN SONGBOOK

Seasonal Verses, Poems and Songs for Children, Parents and Teachers

An Anthology for Family, School, Festivals and Fun!

Sally Schweizer

This treasure trove of an anthology is full to the brim with songs and seasonal verses that will delight children and encourage them to sing and play. Illustrated throughout with colour images, the Autumn Songbook features five thematic sections: ‘Animals and Birds’, ‘Farming-Harvest’, ‘Festivals & Related Themes’, ‘Weather’, and ‘Spooks, Riddles & Odd Things’. Providing ample material for teachers and parents, the book also includes selections of rhyming words, commentary on the significance of repetition, rhythm and beat, suggestions for incorporating movement and gesture, and practical teaching and parenting tips.

BIOGRAPHY AND WALDORF EDUCATION

Willi Aeppli

THE BURNING BUSH

Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophy, and the Holy Scriptures: Terms & Phrases

3rd revised edition

Edward Reaugh Smith

More significant for Christianity than the twentieth-century Dead Sea and Nag Hammadi discoveries is the growing North American awareness of Rudolf Steiner's works. No Bible commentary has yet reflected the remarkable spiritual insights of Anthroposophy. In The Burning Bush, Edward Reaugh Smith combines his own extensive traditional biblical knowledge with his years of concentrated study and reflection on hundreds of assembled works by Steiner. The result is the first Bible commentary in the light of anthroposophic insight.This volume is based on the anthroposophic understanding given to humanity by Rudolf Steiner during the first twenty-five years of the twentieth century. The dramatic newness of anthroposophic thought means that the usual method of Bible commentary is not appropriate here. Much of The Burning Bush is devoted to laying an anthroposophic, or spiritual-scientific, groundwork. A major assumption indulged in most Bible commentaries—that one can go directly to portions dealing with given passages of scripture and understand what is being said about them—does not fit.

THE CHILD AS A SENSE ORGAN

An Anthroposphic Understanding of the Imitation Processes

Peter Selg

“Because children’s ability to observe and perceive is unconscious, one does not notice how intensely and deeply the impressions coming from the surroundings enter their organization—not so much by way of various specific senses as through the general ‘sensory being’ of the child. It is generally known that the formation of the brain and of the nerves is completed by the change of teeth. During the first seven years, children’s nerve-and-sense organization, in its plasticity, could be likened to soft wax. During this time, not only do children receive the finest and most intimate impressions from the surroundings, but also, through the working of energy in the nerve-and-sense system, everything received unconsciously radiates and flows into the blood circulation, into the firmness and reliability of the breathing process, into the growth of the tissues, and into the formation of the muscles and skeleton. By means of the nerve-and-sense system, the body of children becomes like an imprint of the surroundings and, particularly, of the morality inherent in them.” —Rudolf Steiner
(Waldorf Education and Anthroposophy 2, p. 68)

CHILDHOOD

A Study of the Growing Child

Caroline von Heydebrand

Caroline von Heydebrand, a teacher in the first Waldorf school, traces human development through childhood. She describes the spirit and soul as the child incarnates and how the individual comes to expression in various ways, including the particular temperament; the unique formative forces that give shape to the physical body; the development of consciousness; natural transitions in the child's life; and the child's destiny and relationship to the world.

THE DEVELOPING CHILD

Sense and Nonsense in Education

Willi Aeppli

This experienced Waldorf teacher allows us to enter his classroom and gain insights that serve as valuable guides for both parents and educators. Aeppli also presents a challenge to teachers: penetrate the subject, grasp its essence, transform it artistically, and present it to the children in a way that fits their evolving inner orientation. This fresh approach is not just another theory about good education. Aeppli writes out of practical experience with the intention of sending young adults into the world who can stand on their own two feet and accept responsibility for their own actions.

THE DIGNITY OF THE YOUNG CHILD, VOL. 1

How can we keep the young child healthy?

Care and up-bringing in the first three years of life

Michaela Glöckler

Claudia Grah-Wittich

New and successful insights for the care and raising of the child in the first three years of life.

A DROP OF LIGHT

Educating for the A-ha Moment

Liz Attwell

with contributions by Josie Alwyn and Catherine Fenton

A-ha!

EDUCATION FOR NONVIOLENCE

The Waldorf Way

Torin M. Finser PhD

Education for Nonviolence describes how we can actually do something about our increasingly violent world. Few in the media draw a clear connection between the all-too-frequent tragedies we hear and read about in the news each day and the way as parents and teachers we raise and educate our children. Abstract concepts, rote learning, and standardized tests cannot develop the emotional and social intelligence our children need later in life to build relationships, contribute to society, and succeed in the workplace. The author describes how Waldorf independent and charter schools provide much-needed pathways toward wholeness—sensory and nature-based education; the arts; character education; community building; traditions of hospitality; meeting the needs of boys...to name just a few of the topics covered in this book.

EDUCATION IN SEARCH OF THE SPIRIT

Essays on American Education

John Fentress Gardner

Real education will always seek to strengthen what is best in the human soul: its longing for the experience of spiritual truth that brings into the self an objective appreciation of the noble aspects of its own nature, together with a subjective sense of real affinity with the rest of humanity, the earth planet as a whole, and the great cosmos above and beyond.

ENCOUNTERING THE SELF

Transformation and Destiny in the Ninth Year

Hermann Koepke

A lucid explanation of events in the life of a child between the ninth and tenth year, a time when the ego incarnates more deeply.

THE ESSENCE OF WALDORF EDUCATION

Peter Selg

"It is a simple but essential principle: education aims at the future, at a time that we as educators do not yet know and cannot foresee. The challenges that will confront the children in the future are not those of the past - of our past, of our life story and our horizon. Times change, so do the realities of life, and in our times they change quickly and dramatically. Education aims at the future and that puts us as educators in a difficult situation: this future is not - or is only to an extent - identical with our past, with our life experiences. My youth, your youth: they are not identical with the adolescent constitution and life reality toward which we currently have to direct our educational efforts. Yet educate we must, and educating means preparing for a future." - Peter Selg (from the book)

THE FALSE DOOR BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH

Supporting Grieving Students, Teachers, and Parents

Torin M. Finser

When a school community loses a child, parent, or teacher, the experience can be devastating to the whole community. Few things in life can prepare anyone for such a tragedy. Teachers and parents often struggle with how to speak with the children and may have important questions, such as:
What is the best way to work with grief?
What happens after death?
How can we stay connected?
Working through shock, grief, and even depression is a necessary step in life following a death in one’s community.

A GRAND METAMORPHOSIS

Contributions to the Spiritual-Scientific Anthropology and Education of Adolescents

Peter Selg

"A tumultuous situation arises in the relationship between the adolescent...and the world. This tumultuous situation is necessary, and as teachers, we need to have it in mind during the years leading up to it. Overly sensitive teachers might get the idea that it would be better to spare young people this upheaval. However, in so doing, they would make themselves the worst enemy of youth." - Rudolf Steiner.

HEAVEN ON EARTH

A Handbook for Parents of Young Children

Sharon Oppenheimer

Photography by Stephanie Gross

As we witness the shifting of old forms that once stood as the foundation of our daily lives, parents - who must prepare the next generation to meet this changing world - have more questions now than ever before. Although our culture and the nature of the family may be changing, the atmosphere in the home continues to create the foundation of a child's life. In Heaven on Earth, parent and educator Sharifa Oppenheimer reveals how to make the home environment warm, lively, loving, and consistent with your highest ideals.

HOW THE FUTURE CAN SAVE US

Fresh Perspectives on Waldorf Education: Principles, Methods, Curriculum

Stephen Keith Sagarin, PhD

“Education prepares us for an unknown, uncertain future. Conformity, convention, and a lack of creative thinking and action will not serve us fully to face this future. We cannot know, and can only guess, what the future will bring, and we educate truly when we educate for inspiration—for insight and creativity—in the face of the unknown. We aim not to define our students, not to pigeonhole them according to our own inevitably partial and too-narrow view of the world they will inhabit and make. We aim to educate them while leaving them free to rebel, not for no reason, but for a reason, for a cause.” —StephenSagarin (from the introduction)

I AM DIFFERENT FROM YOU

How Children Experience Themselves and the World in the Middle of Childhood

Peter Selg

In many of his lectures to teachers on education, Rudolf Steiner called attention to a significant but often overlooked change in the way children experience themselves and the world that occurs in the middle of childhood, in the ninth or tenth year. "There comes a time when children show, not in what they say but in their whole behaviour, that they are struggling with a question or a number of questions that indicates a crisis in their soul life. It is a very subtle experience for the child that requires an equally subtle response."

LISTENING TO OUR TEACHERS

Advocacy through Research

Torin M. Finser

This book (first published as Silence Is Complicity) began life at an Antioch University Waldorf program for educators to introduce students to action research, a philosophy and methodology for transformative change through the process of taking action and doing research. This revised and expanded edition focuses on research and the inner life, indigenous research methods, and much more—all to empower teachers and support their enthusiasm for learning and developing new curricula. Teacher research goes beyond personal understanding to a level of documented inquiry that holds up to public scrutiny while also challenging misguided funding, tests, and legislation.

MILLENNIAL CHILD

Transforming Education in the Twenty-First Century

Eugene Schwartz

Today’s children are like an endangered species. Many have lost their childhood and have been prematurely thrust into the confusing and chaotic world of the adults. Schwartz points to the radically new paradigm of childhood development offered by Waldorf education. Parents, teachers and child psychologists will find here a wealth of insight concerning educational questions.

THE MOTHERLY AND FATHERLY ROLES IN EDUCATION

Erich Gabert

ON THE THRESHOLD OF ADOLESCENCE

The Struggle for Independence in the Twelfth Year

Hermann Koepke

This book tells the story of how Suzanne, a young Waldorf teacher, struggles with the changes her class is going through. The problems she and parents must deal with are familiar to all parents - drug use, smoking, lack of responsiveness, rebelliousness, and moodiness.

PARABLES

Torin M. Finser

“One could say that a parable contains a larger lesson in a bite-sized portion. Using other words, a parable is a simple short story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson.... The word parable can be traced back to Middle English and Old French origins as parabole and to the ecclesiastical Latin sense of parabola, meaning “discourse, allegory, or comparison.”... Parables use comparison, allegory, imagery, analogy, or a short story to convey a larger meaning.” (from the book)

RECOGNIZING REALITY

Youth Education in a Time of Global Crisis

Peter Selg

“[Children and young people] should know—and really sense and feel—that viruses are not ‘evil’ but a part of our organism, of our organic ‘self,’ and that also the group of mutable coronaviruses has been known for many years; we also live with them and deal with them, especially in the upper respiratory tract, although not with SARS-CoV-2, which is a new challenge for the human immune system, though not quite as new as initially assumed.” — Peter Selg

SCHOOL AS A JOURNEY

The Eight-Year Odyssey of a Waldorf Teacher and His Class

Torin M. Finser

A lively, colourful, absorbing account of one Waldorf teacher's journey with his class through the curriculum from first through eighth grades. A moving story, told in a straightforward, anecdotal, humorous style, it is an excellent introduction to what goes on inside the classroom of a Waldorf school.

SCHOOL RENEWAL

A Spiritual Journey for Change

Torin M. Finser

In today's educational crisis, many people are coming to realize that there is far more to a school than imparting knowledge and skills and administering tests. Schools are communities, and like all communities, they can be healthy or unhealthy. School Renewal speaks to the problems and challenges of developing healthy schools. Using mythology, personal experience, and his research, Torin Finser describes how teachers and parents can handle such common problems as burnout, organizational stress, interpersonal conflict, and change.

A SECOND CLASSROOM

Parent-Teacher Relationships in a Waldorf School

Torin M. Finser

What does a healthy, successful school look like? Is it all about measurable outcomes, test scores, and pass/fail grades set by the government? Can learning be quantified in short-term measurements or does real learning take years to manifest in a career or biography. All seem to agree that a healthy school is also a community and that community depends on the quality of relationships—chiefly the relationships among students, teachers, and parents.

SILENCE IS COMPLICITY

A Call to Let Teachers Improve Our Schools through Action Research - Not NCLB (No Child Left Behind)

Torin M. Finser, Ph.D.

What if the voices of our teachers were truly heard in today's public discourse? Teachers work with children everyday and have always understood intuitively the materials and curriculum needed. Teacher research, however, allows teachers to go beyond intuitive understanding to a level of documented inquiry that can stand the light public scrutiny in publications, news media, workshops, and town meetings.

SOLVING THE RIDDLE OF THE CHILD

The Art of Child Study

Christof Wiechert

It may be a truism to say that every teacher should make efforts to understand his pupils. Our real understanding, after all, can be a sure foundation and support for children’s whole development; and without this our lessons will be a random undertaking that connects with our pupils, at best, only in a superficial way. A skilled teacher seeks to understand his pupils so that he can raise learning beyond mere compulsion or drill. It was Rudolf Steiner’s ideal that the weekly pedagogical meetings in Waldorf schools should support teachers’ continually developing insight into their pupils. He exhorted them to ‘become psychologists’ but did not mean this in the commonly understood sense. He himself demonstrated this ‘art of evolving insight’ in the faculty meetings in which he participated on many occasions. One can say that it is an essential part of the quality of our work as teachers for us to develop these skills of perception, reflection and insight. Christof Wiechert here picks up these suggestions of Steiner’s anew. He elaborates from them the art of the child study as a key tool in nurturing pupils’ development and, at the same time, teachers’ own growing powers of insight. In short, the approach described here can enliven the educational and social dimensions of a whole school community.

SPRING SONGBOOK

Seasonal Verses, Poems and Songs for Children, Parents and Teachers

An Anthology for Family, School, Festivals and Fun!

Sally Schweizer

This treasure trove of an anthology is full to the brim with songs and seasonal verses that will delight children and encourage them to sing and play. Illustrated throughout with colour images, the Spring Songbook features four thematic sections: ‘Animals and Birds’, ‘Nature’, ‘Dancing and Games’ and ‘International Greetings and Foreign Languages’. Providing ample material for teachers and parents, the book also includes selections of rhyming words, commentary on the significance of repetition, rhythm and beat, suggestions for incorporating movement and gesture, and practical teaching and parenting tips.

SUMMER SONGBOOK

Seasonal Verses, Poems and Songs for Children, Parents and Teachers

An Anthology for Family, School, Festivals and Fun!

Sally Schweizer

This treasure trove of an anthology is full to the brim with songs and seasonal verses that will delight children and encourage them to sing and play. Illustrated throughout with colour images, the Summer Songbook features four thematic sections: ‘Animals and Birds’, ‘Nature’, ‘Dancing, Rounds and Games’ and ‘Silly Verses’. Providing ample material for teachers and parents, the book also includes selections of rhyming words, commentary on the significance of repetition, rhythm and beat, suggestions for incorporating movement and gesture, and practical teaching and parenting tips.

TEACHING AS A LIVELY ART

Marjorie Spock

The author, an experienced Waldorf teacher and eurythmist, radiates her enthusiasm and sense for beauty as she takes us through the various stages of development of the child. She shows us that nothing can be taught to the child until he or she is ready to receive it. This book will help us approach the child with sensitivity and insight.

TEACHING, THE JOY OF PROFESSION

An Invitation to Enhance Your (Waldorf) Interest

Christof Wiechert

To be a teacher and teaching children and youngsters is still a wonderful profession: it never gets dull or boring. But it is also a professional life under pressure. Complex demands, a high profile in professionalism, delivering sound results, yet also being attentive to the individual needs and development of the students and helping parents to understand their own child. All this demands from the teacher a multitasking talent. The teacher is constantly serving others, without time for him or herself. Working in this profession you can easily lose your balance – the balance between inner needs and demands put on you by children, their performances, the parents and the school organism as a whole. If that happens, then we grow sour in this delightful profession. This book is a guide to find that balance which means gaining access to more energy.

THE THERAPEUTIC EYE

How Rudolf Steiner Observed Children

Peter Selg

Rudolf Steiner's extraordinary ability to perceive the inner nature and development of children provided insights at many levels and areas of the creative learning process. He spoke of this ability as a precondition for all forms of healthy childhood education - including special education - and suggested that teachers should develop such a capacity within themselves.

TRANSFORMATIONAL TEACHING

Waldorf-Inspired Methods in the Public School

Mary Goral

Mary Goral explores ways that Waldorf principles can be applied in public schools to educate children for life rather than simply to meet the demands of rigid, one-size-fits-all programmes. She points out ways that Waldorf methods require teachers and parents to engage more fully with students, to practice ways of self-development, and to build a greater sense of community. Using the concrete example of the 'Waldorf-inspired Cadre' - a group of state-school teachers 'who have agreed to go on such a journey, take risks, and learn new skills along with their students' - Dr Goral shows how teachers can bring many of the benefits of Waldorf education into the public setting, with remarkable results.

UNDER THE SKY

Playing, Working and Enjoying Adventures in the Open Air

A Handbook for Parents, Carers and Teachers

Sally Schweizer

'An uplifting philosophy on childhood and life, and an absolute treasure trove of information for anyone who believes nature and childhood are perfect companions. Sally Schweizer manages to combine magic with common sense in this wonderful book, which is authentic from cover to cover. What she writes with such lively enthusiasm, she has also lived.' - Sally Jenkinson, author of The Genius of Play

UNDERSTANDING CHILDREN’S DRAWINGS

Tracing the Path of Incarnation

Michaela Strauss

It is not uncommon for children’s drawings to end up in the wastepaper basket. Yet these early artistic expressions indicate how children communicate with their environment. From the first scratches and scribbles to the detailed sketches of houses and people, the drawings and paintings of our young ones are significant manifestations of inner processes, containing important statements about their development and gradual incarnation into a physical body.

THE UNIVERSITY AT THE THRESHOLD

Orientation through Goethean Science

Nigel Hoffmann

‘Concern for the world today provides the impetus to ask of ourselves a profound question… how can our way of knowing, the very style of our thinking which informs our research and our teaching, come to express care, to reveal itself to be a deed and duty of care?’

WALDORF KINDERGARTEN SNACK BOOK

Lisa Hildreth

Illustrated by Jo Valens

Here is a useful compendium of information, recipes, and anecdotes from Waldorf kindergarten teacher Lisa Hildreth - a rich book for teachers, parents, and anyone who cares for young children.

THE WALDORF SCHOOL

An Introduction

Christof Wiechert

What is distinctive about Waldorf or Rudolf Steiner schools? How do their pedagogical aims relate to the wide range of educational provision available today? Many people have heard of these schools, but few know much about them.

THE WAY OF A CHILD

An Introduction to Steiner Education and the Basics of Child Development

A.C. Harwood

Pressured by exams and premature academic demands, surrounded by screens and technology, children today face huge challenges. Childhood itself, it could be said, is facing a crisis. Are children in danger of losing their natural imaginative faculties, which are the source of all creative activity in later life? As a society, are we in danger of losing childhood altogether?

WELL, I WONDER

Childhood in the Modern World

A Handbook for Parents, Teachers and Carers

Sally Schweizer

'Have we come to misunderstand children? Have we forgotten that children's consciousness, their minds, are intrinsically different from ours? And is that why we are trying to train them to become 'adult', rather than realizing we need to relearn our way of thinking in order to understand children?'

WINTER SONGBOOK

Seasonal Verses, Poems and Songs for Children, Parents and Teachers

An Anthology for Family, School, Festivals and Fun!

Sally Schweizer

This treasure trove of an anthology is full to the brim with songs and seasonal verses that will delight children and encourage them to sing and play. Illustrated throughout with colour images, the Winter Songbook features four thematic sections: ‘Christmas’, ‘Winter Indoors’, ‘Wintry Weather’ and ‘Winter Outdoors’. Providing ample material for teachers and parents, the book also includes selections of rhyming words, commentary on the significance of repetition, rhythm and beat, suggestions for seasonal stories, and practical teaching and parenting tips.

WITH STARS IN THEIR EYES

Brain Science and Your Child’s Journey toward the Self

Sharifa Oppenheimer

In this book readers will find not only a heart-filled rendering of the gentle ways young children have been traditionally raised and educated, but also cutting-edge research that supports these practices. With love as the foundation, and through the neural tapestry created by joyful movement, music, art, stories, and play, we feed and bathe the brain of the young child. These deep connections with life are woven together during childhood to become the wholeness we call “I”.

YOUR REINCARNATING CHILD

Welcoming a Soul to the World

Dr Gilbert Childs and Sylvia Childs

The primary contention of this book is that, as a spiritual being, each of us lives beyond death, and eventually returns to earth in a new human body. With this knowledge in mind, the authors give much sound practical advice as to how parents, and others who spend time with children, can welcome a soul to the world and help it grow into a healthy and responsible human being.