Children's Voices on the Playground

Dear Members of The Waldorf School of Santa Barbara Community,

We are happy and relieved to have the 7th/8th Grade back on campus under Ms. Nelson's live, in-person, and loving guidance. They have grown taller and have made, as one teacher quipped, the 1st Grade appear shorter. Reuniting with these older children is a cause for celebration.

Another cause for celebration was our recent Professional Development Day wherein we -- WSSB faculty and staff -- shared stories from our lives, worked with clay and did watercolor paintings with Ms. Caverly's help, wrote poetry, ate lunch together, took time to celebrate each other and our work, and open up about our grief over the challenges we collectively face. It was medicinal and renewing, allowing our souls to catch up with our bodies in the hurly-burly of this time.

Last night Ms. Marla held a meeting for the Kindergarten parents regarding the Six-Year-Old Child. While parents sat in a circle in the Great Room and ate homemade bread, Ms. Marla spoke caringly and insightfully about discipline, referring to books by Kim John Payne and Joe Newman, and invoked this touchstone of a phrase: "loving authority." Ms. Marla also stressed the need for humanely-held boundaries and doing one's own inner work to show up well for the children. Afterwards, a lively, warm, authentic discussion followed.

Regarding discipline, Waldorf teacher Lauren Hickman, echoing many of the nuggets Ms. Marla shared, says this: "Consistency and follow-through are two important traits of an effective teacher or parent. Children (and adults) want clear boundaries, predictable consequences and order in their lives. Trust in an authority requires that they do what they say they are going to do, and that they demonstrate resolve. This can be one of the most difficult duties of an authority figure, and many people in our culture are reluctant to embody this role. We must find a way to be leaders without being dictatorial. Leadership is contextual, a job that is assumed when there is a need, and in the role of parent or teacher, it is crucial. Setting limits and saying no are essential gifts that every child needs to grow into a balanced and responsible adult. A central life lesson is that we can’t always get what we want, that we aren’t the center of the universe, and that restraint is essential to getting along with others, and the planet."

With heartfelt gratitude,

The WSSB Admin Team

PS -- The poem of the day is by Rainer Maria Rilke:

Winds, Woods, Water

I was there with the first poet-singers and monks
who conjured your stories, traced your runes.

But now, after so long, I finally see you:
winds, woods, water,
burning at the edge of our frantic consciousness --
earth long-buried in mind's darkness.

I want to speak you. I want to draw you
not with lapis or scarlet or gold
but with rough colors
made of bat wings
and apple bark.

There is no art my hand could make
your actuality would not eclipse.

I want simply
to say the names
of things.

PPS -- The pensée of the day is by Reverend Carol Kelly (a writer for the Waldorf Today publication):

"If I could offer the children of today one gift, it would be the feeling of security. That feeling that they are being carried and held by people and powers above them who are tending to everything, who are attentive to them. How joyous is the sound of children's voices on the playground! They are free and yet they are held."