Welcome Back

Dear Members of The Waldorf School of Santa Barbara Community,

We hope everyone had a grounding holiday break. We at WSSB are grateful to be back in harness serving the children.

Noted in a recent all-school ParentSquare post was the hiring of Ben Kenan as our new Games and Woodwork teacher. Ben, already known as "Mr. K," has been warmly received by our children and staff, and has taught his classes this week with grace, joy, and aplomb. An experienced teacher (teaching physical education here and abroad), an experienced woodworker (Ben has his own woodworking business specializing in furniture and Waldorf-inspired handicrafts), and WSSB parent (Ben's daughter India attended our Parent Child circle), Ben's presence is a gift. We welcome him.

We also share good news about our 2020-2021 Annual Giving Campaign. We have raised $39,100 of our goal of $45,500. Now we have $6,400 left to meet our goal. We extend heartfelt gratitude to those who gave. Your gift will support the daily life of your child and her/his classmates.

https://waldorfsantabarbara.org/annual-giving-fund

In gratitude,

The WSSB Admin Team

PS -- The pensée of the week is by the great Barry Lopez who died this Christmas:

"Conversations are efforts toward good relations. They are an elementary form of reciprocity. They are the exercise of our love for each other. They are the enemies of our loneliness, our doubt, our anxiety, our tendencies to abdicate. To continue to be in good conversation over our enormous and terrifying problems is to be calling out to each other in the night. If we attend with imagination and devotion to our conversations, we will find what we need; and someone among us will act—it does not matter whom—and we will survive."

PPS -- The poem of the week is a WSSB verse:

The earth is firm beneath my feet.
The sun shines high above.
Here I stand, so straight and strong –
all things to know and love.