This course will be taught remotely in real-time. Details here. 

Professional development for Waldorf teachers and home school parents

This course offers you an invaluable opportunity to focus entirely on your upcoming sixth grade school year in five days brimming with discussions, presentations, practical activities, and the arts.

Under the guidance of a master class teacher, you’ll discover ways to enliven your teaching and learn how to approach the blocks so that they may meet the sixth grader in a lively and meaningful way. With the insights of anthroposophy, gleaned through a daily look at child development focusing on your class’s age group, you will get to know the sixth grader in depth as they enter early adolescence. There will be 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 be chock-full of key sixth grade topics, such as:

• Roman history and the early Middle Ages
• New math concepts, including business math and the percentage
• Geometrical drawing with compass and straight edge
• Geography
• Sciences, including earth science, physics, and observational astronomy

These subjects will be supported by explorations in art and music, giving you practical tools to take into your school year.

In addition to the inspiration and guidance which will support your teaching throughout the year, you’ll gain many invaluable opportunities for building connections among a community of parallel colleagues from across the country, to carry with you into your teaching.

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 background in Waldorf education.

Lead Instructor

Jessica Crawford has 11 years of grades teaching experience at City of Lakes Waldorf School, where she has been on the faculty since 2003. Jessica took on her first two classes in middle school and taught her most recent class from first grade through their eighth grade graduation in 2021. Her experience at CLWS also includes serving as a member of the College of Teachers from 2008 to 2020, including three years as College facilitator, and as a member of the Board and of the Teacher Development, Social Health, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committees; in addition to her grades teaching, she also taught handwork for many years and a parent-tot class for one year. During her current sabbatical year, she is offering teacher support to City of Lakes while also working as pedagogical director for Wishing Well School on the California coast.

Before discovering Waldorf education, Jessica taught photography at St. Catherine University, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and Film in the Cities. She holds a BA in anthropology from St. Olaf College, an MFA in photography from the University of Oregon, and her Waldorf grades teaching certification from Rudolf Steiner College. Jessica, who grew up on a Minnesota farm, currently lives in Minneapolis with her cat and dog, and a rotating array of adult children (all CLWS graduates) as they come and go in their busy lives. In her free time, she enjoys knitting, gardening, writing poetry, watercolor painting, photography, hiking, and being among trees.

Of her upcoming course, Jessica told us:  “The sixth grader stands on the precipice of adolescence, with their back to the settled balance of the Greeks, looking out to a world that is both confusing and exciting.  We will dive into the Waldorf sixth grade curriculum (the stars and stones, the tools of the geometer and the historian, the practical application of math, and the phenomena of the visible, audible world) and see how it is so beautifully designed to provide just the right foundation and inspiration to meet these young people at such an important and often difficult time in their lives.”

Your course also includes sessions in art with Kelly Beekman and music with Jeff Spade.

Schedule

This course takes place July 10-July 15 in a synchronous online classroom

Sunday evening: 7-7:30pm technical check-in; first session starts promptly at 7:30 and ends at 9
Monday-Thursday: 4.5 hours of formal instruction delivered between 10-4:30
Friday morning: Last session runs 10-12
ALL TIMES LISTED ARE EASTERN (NY) TIME ZONE

NOTE: Participants should be prepared to work on course-related assignments outside of their regularly scheduled instructional sessions (including some that may be assigned in advance), as well as to be available to attend (optional) late afternoon and/or evening facilitator-led discussions.

Cost
$600 includes all resource materials, yearlong access to Kelly Beekman’s art portal and your Sunbridge Grade Six Google Classroom, and a $60 non-refundable deposit. See main summer page for discount options.

You will be expected to procure some materials to use during your course. A materials list will be sent to you three weeks before your course start date.

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.