Sense of Community

Principle: Unfolding individual potential within a spirit of community

Collaborating and learning as an inclusive and diverse community supports the gradual unfolding of individual potential of every child.

In practice this means

The social hygiene of the class is paramount in decision making. For example a class play is selected, studied and performed to bring about greater social hygiene of the class rather than as a dramatic performance.

The Whole Class and The Individual

The Steiner Waldorf classroom is seen as a model for community, with a strong emphasis on social awareness and cohesion, with children learning and helping each other through shared experience.

The lower school teacher will be the leader, guide and focus of the learning experience. The ability to work with the whole class as a community and be responsive to the diverse and differentiated needs of individual learners within that community is at the heart of the art and craft of teaching.

The teacher will ensure that rich lesson content has the capacity to engage every child at their own level, temperament and learning style. Those who need it will receive support. Extension, which is based on

the learning activity, will be given to those who need further challenge.

In the first two to three years of schooling, when the children’s mode of learning is still highly imitative and their reality is experienced as an undifferentiated unity, the teacher will teach primarily to the class as a whole.

The third year is seen to be particularly significant developmentally as children around the age of nine waken to their difference and individuality. They start to become more self-conscious, experience themselves as the centre point of their experiences and have an emerging sense of self and other. It is a time of transition for the individual child and for the dynamics of the class. This is a time when children are observed to be able play team sports with unfolding social consciousness and is seen as an appropriate time for children to learn how to work in groups, to experience differentiation and roles. Group work will usually follow common experience. What has been worked on will then be

reintegrated back into the whole by the end of a lesson. The teacher will increasingly provide opportunities for individual or group project work after this time depending on the needs and interests of the children.

Children needing learning support may receive individual remedial help from specialists or teacher aides. In cases in which a learning difficulty is perceived to have an underlying physical basis children might take part in Extra Lesson™ or other therapies, e.g., therapeutic eurythmy.

Learning Support

Parent-School Partnership

Positive, active support and participation by parents in the educational process and in the cultural life of the school is considered a fundamental element of the child-whānau-school support triangle. To ensure the best outcome for their child’s learning and wellbeing, parents are encouraged to provide a home life that supports and fosters the learning environment of the school and kindergartens.

Parent and whānau interest in and understanding of, the holistic nature of Steiner Waldorf education and of what is conducive to healthy child development strengthens the partnership between home and school and gives congruence to the child’s life experience. This is made explicit in any enrolment interviews or talks that are held in order to promote and establish the parent relationship to the Special Character.

That the class teacher accompanies a child for up to seven years of their schooling gives the possibility for a deepening relationship with parents and of forging a strong alliance centred on the needs of the child. Regular class parent evenings give the opportunity for an active and supportive class community to develop.