Professional development for Waldorf teachers and home school parents. Read all about Summer Series 2025.

Taught remotely in real time, this course offers you an invaluable opportunity to focus entirely on your upcoming fourth grade school year in five days brimming with presentations, discussions, and practical activities.

Under the guidance of an experienced class teacher, you’ll discover ways to enliven your teaching and how to approach the blocks so that they may meet the fourth grader in a deep and meaningful way. With the insights of anthroposophy, gleaned through a discussion of child development focusing specifically on your class’s age group, you will get to know the fourth grade child in depth as they step into a more objective relationship to learning.

Along with time and space to consider and hone your skills in such practical matters as main lesson books, block planning, projects and activities, and classroom management, your course will include such key topics for fourth graders—and their teachers—as:

• Topics in language arts, reading groups, and class plays
• Pre-colonial/indigenous approaches to local geography
• Norse mythology and beyond: fourth grade stories of world-making
• Topics in math
• Fourth grade approach to zoology and gardening
• Fourth grade approach to geography and local/state history
• Fourth grade morning circle
• Fourth grade assessment
• Parent work and colleagueship

These subjects will be supported by explorations in art, music, and eurythmy, giving you practical tools to take into your school year. In addition, you’ll gain many valuable opportunities for building connections among a community of parallel colleagues from across the country to carry with you throughout your teaching. And participation in an anthroposophical study undertaken in common with all Grades participants will help enable you to build bridges between colleagues and parents once you return to your school.

Grade-specific resource materials useful for your year, including poems, songs, stories, and main lesson book ideas, will be provided to you electronically.

NOTE: This course is taught with the expectation that you have a foundational background in Waldorf education.

Lead Instructor

Allison Stovall currently teaches grade five at Maple Village Waldorf School in Long Beach, California. Allison began her teaching career in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. Knowing her interest in integrating the arts into teaching, friends encouraged her to look into Waldorf education. She began taking Waldorf workshops and went on to bring aspects of Waldorf education into her public school classroom until, wanting more freedom within the curriculum, Allison decided to fully commit to the work of a Waldorf class teacher. She began her Waldorf teaching career by taking a class from grades 1-5 at Brooklyn Waldorf School, where she delighted in engaging in activities with her students such as sharing imaginative stories from diverse backgrounds, math lessons involving thousands of acorns ultimately turned into pancakes, class plays in three different languages, and constructing an igloo. Allison holds a Waldorf teacher training certificate and a master’s degree in elementary education, and we are delighted to welcome her to our Summer Series faculty.

Your course also includes sessions in art with Adrienne Patrick, music with Katey Dolezal, and eurythmy with Alexandra Spadea.

Schedule

This course takes place June 29-July 4 in a synchronous online classroom. ALL TIMES LISTED ARE EASTERN (NY) TIME ZONE.

NOTE: Classes will be held July 4.

Sunday evening
6:15 pm-6:25 pm: Log-in for technical check-in and attendance
6:30 pm-8:15 pm: First session

Monday – Thursday
9:45 am-9:55 am: Log-in for technical check-in and attendance
Sessions run from 10:00 am through 4:45-5:00 pm, with time for breaks and lunch

Friday
9:45 am-9:55 am: Log-in for technical check-in and attendance
Sessions run from 10:00 am through 1:30 pm, with a mid-morning break

NOTE: Most sessions are required in order to receive a certificate of attendance. Others, such as Q&A sessions with your lead instructor and studio time with your art and music instructors, are optional. You should be prepared to work on course-related assignments outside of your regularly scheduled instructional sessions (including some that may be assigned in advance). A complete schedule will be sent two weeks before your course start date, along with a list of materials you will need to procure for use during your course. 

Cost 
$645 includes all resource materials, yearlong access to your Grade Four Google Classroom, and a $55 non-refundable registration fee.

25% discount for:

• Students currently enrolled in a Sunbridge teacher education program
• Sunbridge program graduates
• Payments made in Canadian dollars

Accounts must be in good standing and discounts may not be combined. Qualification for discounts will be verified by Sunbridge staff. 

REGISTER

Questions?
Please contact Barbara Vitale, admissions and summer coordinator, at [email protected] or 845-425-0055 x20

Sunbridge reserves the right to make faculty substitutions when necessary. See registration form for refund policy.