Celebrate Spring!
Dear WSSB Community,
This week of spring has been almost dizzyingly eventful here at WSSB. In addition to the everyday genius of the Waldorf curriculum, we gratefully received Carmen Sandoval, a Chumash teacher (who enriched us with her reverent and various learning); we watched the 5th/6th Grade spiritedly perform Tom Sawyer; we heard a strings performance (Grades 4 through 8 performing); we witnessed the post-trip joy of the 7th/8th Grade (they just returned from a glorious trip to Mount Shasta); we practiced our dancing around the Maypole; and we hosted two happy school tours. John Ruskin said there is no wealth but life. Indeed!
Speaking of tours, today we had a visit from parents from Bali. They toured WSSB as they hope to move to California because of a job opportunity. They are set on a healthy education for their son, and see Waldorf as that sort of education. Notably, they're also set on a screen-free education for their son (and a screen-free home life). They told us that even in Bali, a place faraway from many trappings of modernity, children are troublingly lost insofar as gadget use. A sea change has happened in the last few years around the world. Children are living differently. Schools, because of screens, are radically different places. And more and more, parents come to learn about our unique school as they're feeling bewildered and battered by these changeful seas.
With gratitude,
The Admin Team
PS The Thought of the Day is from Jack Kornfield:
"In the mandala of wholeness we are called to the practice of forgiveness. We must especially find a forgiving heart with family and those close to us. Only then can we bring it to the world. Whether we practice through Buddhist meditation, or as Jesus taught by 'turning the other cheek,' or by finding 'the mercy of Allah,' we must learn to forgive ourselves and others. Booker T. Washington said it simply: 'Don’t ever let them pull you down so low as to hate them.' Forgiveness is the heart’s capacity to release its grasp on the pains of the past and free itself to go on.
There is so much to learn about letting go and loving. Family becomes the ground for this wisdom to flower. I have heard countless grateful stories of a family member saying, 'I finally called my mother and told her I love her before she died,' or, 'After all these years of pain I finally reconciled with my brother.' Forgiveness offers the heart’s mercy that our hurt and fear have withheld for so long.
It is in tenderness and tolerance that our path is made whole. It is in reconciliation and love of those closest to us that the spirit of our human family grows, to widen and fully embrace our true family: all that lives. We awaken as a part of one another’s family."