The audience (55 attendees) sat in a large circle. The lecture was interpreted by M.J.
We started with an ear and voice exercise listening to and repeating the word BIRD in numerous European languages.
This was followed by a short audience discussion between seat neighbours. Then we tried to speak simultaneously
(as 6- or 7-year-olds still do) with the lecturer slowly counting one to twelve in English and reciting "Little Jack Horner".
To get a taste of the German language this was also done with "Auf der Mauer auf der Lauer".
When the children are a little older they will be able to improvise shifting the stress from word to word as in the following
sentence:
DO you want to come here tomorrow?
Do YOU want to come here tomorrow?
Do you WANT to come here tomorrow?
Do you want to COME here tomorrow?
Do you want to come HERE tomorrow?
Do you want to come here TOMORROW?
We have many Language Learning Games. To find out who takes part we use Counting-Out Rhymes. The audience practises one pointing
to a different person each with each stressed syllable: Acker, Backer, Soda Cracker, Acker, Backer, Boo; Acker, Backer, Soda Cracker,
out goes YOU. Another one would be Eeny, meeny, miny, mo; catch a tiger by is toe, eeny, meeny, niny, MO! Or a German equivalent:
Ene, mene, miste; was rappelt in der Kiste? Ene, mene, meck Und du bis WEG!
Then we did a game called One, two. three: heads down! Three people were chosen to come to the front. They call out the command. Every body shuts their eyes (puts down their heads), the three in front creep up to someone and touch them on the head, shoulder or elbow. Then those touched stand up ("Stand up those three") and guess who touched them: "Did you touch my shoulder, Jenny?" to which Jenny answers "Yes, I did" (in which case they exchange places) or "No, I didn't."
In a so-called Conversational Exchange where everyone gets to say things in English the teacher asks "Who stole the cake from the baker's shop?" addressing one of the pupils, who says:
"John stole the cake from the baker's shop!"
John replies: "Who me?"
"Yes, you!"
"Not me."
"Then who?"
Whereupon John accuses another pupil and so on till everybody has had a turn.
Next we talked about acquiring a larger vocabulary. Words are more than just a 'bunch of letters' with an equivalent in Czech. We stood in a large circle. With a large wooden cooking spoon words were mimed: a comb, a flute, a cello bow etc. The action, activity or use of the spoon showed what object it had 'turned into'!
This exercise was followed by a 3-minute audience discussion on what this exercise 'did'.
At some time, story telling begins. We hear a story built on a proverb ("Barking dogs don't bite").
In Class 4 we start writing. We first write songs, rhymes, dialogues, Simon Says commands etc.: all things the children have in their ear, know by heart and can 'hear inwardly' while they are copying the text off the blackboard.
Little Jack Horner
Sat in a corner
Eating his Christmas pie
He put in his thumb
An pulled out a plum
And said "What a good boy am I!"
The children get to write things down a quarter of an hour every lesson over a few months. Class 4 are very good at discovering 'rules' so they will notice similarities in spellings (Horner, corner; the U in thumb and plum as well as a second U (!) in put and pulled.
This was, in essence, the introdutory talk for the weekend seminar.
Sunday, January 22, 2023
Saturday, January 21, 2023
Closing Lecture Brno Waldorfska Škola Teachers Training Course 13 - 15.1.2023
(translated by M., who is a part-time teacher at Brno WS for IT)
Most of you here have come for a general introduction to Waldorf Education. The focus this weekend was on Eurythmy with Dana Holečková, Watercolour Painting with Roman Vančura and Foreign Language Teaching. I hope the examples of foreign language teaching methods helped give insights into Waldorf School teaching as a whole.
In the introductory lecture I mentioned that mdern research has shown (but we all feel it) that children are inherently creative, eager learners, healthily curious and learn best without pressure. For most children (and indeed grown-ups, too!) pressure starts when we correct children too often, when we criticize them, when we contradict them, when we say "you are wrong!" en we talk sarcastically (class-four child is late, teacher says "you are early today!"); or when we laugh at them!
I also mentioned children very much need moments of success. This means we teachers must avoid children feeling lost, not able to understand what we are saying. We avoid saying and explaining things but try to help children experience things,
[3-MINUTE EXCHANGE WITH NEIGHBOUR: some best and worst moments in my own schooldays]
[some participants share some rally attrocious experiences of feeling stupid, not-understood, lost and giving up]
Children need to be able to trust their teachers. In the higher classes there's no better way to make them lose trust than to say things like:
- when I was your age ...
- you're not doing this for me ...
- you could've used the break to go to the toilet ...
- I would've expected more from you ...
- everything we've done will come up in the next test ...
- you don't need to play the clown ...
etc.
A teacher needs to be 'de-professionalized', she needs to stimulate and provoke, not just pass on information; a teacher needs to engage the children not teach AT them.
Of course we should know how our pupils are progressing but diagnostic tests should not ne the dominant culture. We facilitate learning, support the learning process. We avoid obstructing it. Otherwise children will lose their creativity, and their interest; and submerge in a culture of compliance.
I said we have four radically different kinds of pupils:
(classes 1-3, classes 4-6, classes 7-9, classes 10-12).
The youngest trust their world to be 'good',
the 10-to-12-year-olds that their world is 'beautiful' (aesthetic);
in puberty, when their world starts to appear as 'logical' the first doubts appear but that's 'thinking' (contradictions, arguing, asking difficult questions starts) and we must never feel offended but take it with a lot of humour and inwardly applaud these first manifestations of thinking!
In 10-12 we try to 'throw the youngsters back on their own resources', allowing them, giving them the freedom to discover things for themselves, to think things out for themselves, alone or in discussion.
Our reactions, our way of teaching, our methods as well as the background content of our curriculum as well as the actual lesson topics all combined may well be the chief determinants of whether our older pupils develop into 'idealists' or 'cynics'. Classes 7-9 are the age in which we must never be dogmatic or try to pass on our private judgements. Youngsters at this age are extremely impressionable as well as critical but they still have to develop their independence.
At this age the youngsters have questions like: Do hospitals only care for the good of the patients or are there financial interests? How free are journalists really to write what they think and see? Is scientific research really free from commercial interests? Do the politicians in the parliaments debating new laws really think about what is best for society? Etc. etc. At the same time these teenagers are often aware of the fact that they might be getting too absorbed by their cell-phones and computers and need to learn how to make really good use of internet media.
And we as parents and teachers ask ourselves: Do government departments and politicians responsible for education really consider what is necessary for the healthy development of the younger generations or are there business-interests here too?
This question was already there in 1919 when the first Waldorf School was founded. And this is why Rudolf Steiner spent a lot of time calling for freedom from state and other interests in the realm of education, the arts, the sciences, medicine etc. Many of his lectures at this time shortly after the end of WWI, the 'peace' negotiations of Versailles and Trianon were about what he called the Social Three- fold Order and Cultural Spiritual Freedom (Freies Geistesleben) was at the centre of the Threefold Order, and the founding of the Waldorf School an essential part of 'Freies Geistesleben'!
One of the central attitudes behind Waldorf Education was prompted by questions such as "Do children choose their parents". Thinking about such questions, living with such questions influence the way we bring up children in a positive manner. Other questions are: Does science explain everything in our lives? Aren't we all in a process of development pur whole lives?
I'd like to finish with a quote from Shakespeare (Hamlet to Horatio): "There is more in heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy!" philosophy here including what today we call 'science'.
Most of you here have come for a general introduction to Waldorf Education. The focus this weekend was on Eurythmy with Dana Holečková, Watercolour Painting with Roman Vančura and Foreign Language Teaching. I hope the examples of foreign language teaching methods helped give insights into Waldorf School teaching as a whole.
In the introductory lecture I mentioned that mdern research has shown (but we all feel it) that children are inherently creative, eager learners, healthily curious and learn best without pressure. For most children (and indeed grown-ups, too!) pressure starts when we correct children too often, when we criticize them, when we contradict them, when we say "you are wrong!" en we talk sarcastically (class-four child is late, teacher says "you are early today!"); or when we laugh at them!
I also mentioned children very much need moments of success. This means we teachers must avoid children feeling lost, not able to understand what we are saying. We avoid saying and explaining things but try to help children experience things,
[3-MINUTE EXCHANGE WITH NEIGHBOUR: some best and worst moments in my own schooldays]
[some participants share some rally attrocious experiences of feeling stupid, not-understood, lost and giving up]
Children need to be able to trust their teachers. In the higher classes there's no better way to make them lose trust than to say things like:
- when I was your age ...
- you're not doing this for me ...
- you could've used the break to go to the toilet ...
- I would've expected more from you ...
- everything we've done will come up in the next test ...
- you don't need to play the clown ...
etc.
A teacher needs to be 'de-professionalized', she needs to stimulate and provoke, not just pass on information; a teacher needs to engage the children not teach AT them.
Of course we should know how our pupils are progressing but diagnostic tests should not ne the dominant culture. We facilitate learning, support the learning process. We avoid obstructing it. Otherwise children will lose their creativity, and their interest; and submerge in a culture of compliance.
I said we have four radically different kinds of pupils:
(classes 1-3, classes 4-6, classes 7-9, classes 10-12).
The youngest trust their world to be 'good',
the 10-to-12-year-olds that their world is 'beautiful' (aesthetic);
in puberty, when their world starts to appear as 'logical' the first doubts appear but that's 'thinking' (contradictions, arguing, asking difficult questions starts) and we must never feel offended but take it with a lot of humour and inwardly applaud these first manifestations of thinking!
In 10-12 we try to 'throw the youngsters back on their own resources', allowing them, giving them the freedom to discover things for themselves, to think things out for themselves, alone or in discussion.
Our reactions, our way of teaching, our methods as well as the background content of our curriculum as well as the actual lesson topics all combined may well be the chief determinants of whether our older pupils develop into 'idealists' or 'cynics'. Classes 7-9 are the age in which we must never be dogmatic or try to pass on our private judgements. Youngsters at this age are extremely impressionable as well as critical but they still have to develop their independence.
At this age the youngsters have questions like: Do hospitals only care for the good of the patients or are there financial interests? How free are journalists really to write what they think and see? Is scientific research really free from commercial interests? Do the politicians in the parliaments debating new laws really think about what is best for society? Etc. etc. At the same time these teenagers are often aware of the fact that they might be getting too absorbed by their cell-phones and computers and need to learn how to make really good use of internet media.
And we as parents and teachers ask ourselves: Do government departments and politicians responsible for education really consider what is necessary for the healthy development of the younger generations or are there business-interests here too?
This question was already there in 1919 when the first Waldorf School was founded. And this is why Rudolf Steiner spent a lot of time calling for freedom from state and other interests in the realm of education, the arts, the sciences, medicine etc. Many of his lectures at this time shortly after the end of WWI, the 'peace' negotiations of Versailles and Trianon were about what he called the Social Three- fold Order and Cultural Spiritual Freedom (Freies Geistesleben) was at the centre of the Threefold Order, and the founding of the Waldorf School an essential part of 'Freies Geistesleben'!
One of the central attitudes behind Waldorf Education was prompted by questions such as "Do children choose their parents". Thinking about such questions, living with such questions influence the way we bring up children in a positive manner. Other questions are: Does science explain everything in our lives? Aren't we all in a process of development pur whole lives?
I'd like to finish with a quote from Shakespeare (Hamlet to Horatio): "There is more in heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy!" philosophy here including what today we call 'science'.
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