One Year Teaching in a Waldorf School: My Thoughts
Hello summer! Time for teachers to take a break from lesson planning and begin a whole new cycle of lesson planning for the next year! Time to spend time with our families who are part of the normal work force and just keep going to work and are jealous of our new free days.
Honestly, I don’t really know what a normal summer is like for a full-time teacher. Since I’ve always had multiple teaching jobs, I’ve never had the summer completely off where I can continue getting a paycheck. Instead, I’ve still had to continue working throughout the summer; I’ve found tutoring jobs, summer programs, and other random short-term jobs that are refreshing after being cooped up inside a classroom all year.
Anyway, a huge advantage of the summer is for a teacher to relax their brain and review the past school year in a critical and helpful manner. And boy do I have thoughts.
Now, I have to emphasize the fact that I have taught in one Waldorf school, located in Jerusalem, and that is the extent of my knowledge. I know very little about the Waldorf system in general. I’m just reflecting on my thoughts and experiences I had throughout the year.
So, to start: this year for me was extremely rough. I felt challenged, stretched thin, and helpless at times. However, my interactions and relationships with the students I would say were very positive.
Now, part of the reason for my stress was I was in the middle of a huge life change: I was planning a wedding and getting married mid-year. Being an Orthodox Jew, that means moving in with a guy for the first time ever. Boy, was I nervous! Not to mention, planning a wedding is extremely time consuming.
But besides that, starting the school year in a new school in a new educational system is difficult. There’s schedules to get used to, names to learn, and school rules to learn.
But Alana, I hear you asking, Why did you not look into the Waldorf system when you applied to the school?
Well, person who thinks they can ask me questions through an already written blog post. I didn’t think it’d be a whole new system.
The summer before this past school year (May 2022) I had started working at this very school. I was told that I shouldn’t worry about the Waldorf system and just “teach like you normally do.” So, I assumed when continuing working there as a full-time employee, that would apply.
Apparently not.
Waldorf schools are very much like a cult.
It’s a nice cult, honestly. The philosophy of education is very student-based, emphasizing education on the whole person and not on individual subjects. There are many art classes and theater required for each student, as well as monthly performances of singing or dancing. This is very fun for the students, and often taken for granted. I’ve heard students complaining about going to basket weaving class. Like, hello, would you rather have two more hours of math?
However, the thing I hated about this is the teachers were also required to participate in the arts. No, we don’t join the daily classes of painting, but we do spend our teacher meetings breathing in sync or dancing this thing called “Eurythmy” which is both breathing and dancing in this weird way with waving your arms. The teacher meetings happen every week and I just didn’t see myself enjoying this for the rest of my career. To learn more about these ritualistic meetings, I wrote a whole blog post about them here.
The Staff
The English staff at a school really determines your comfort level at a school. I do speak Hebrew (almost fluently) but I don’t have a lot in common with Israeli teachers. Usually my socialization in school is the secretaries and my fellow English teachers.
This year I was lucky to have found a few friends on staff of the Israeli teachers! They are my age, single or newly married, and going through similar things in life than I was. I’ve taught at places when I was 22–23, and everyone else on the English staff was mid-40’s with kids. Talk about strained conversations. However, the English staff at this school was tiny. Just 3 other teachers. And I did not get along with the rakezet. (This job is basically the “head” English teacher who chooses textbooks, sets standards for the students and is largely in charge of the English curriculum).
The other English teacher for Junior High I actually did get along with and greatly respect. He was at retirement age and was delving into English teaching after a career of science education at other schools. However, he, like me, did not stay after this school year.
The Students (and their parents)
Guys, the students at this school were exceptional. Not at academics, but with the arts. Which makes sense as this school emphasizes this. They all are artists, performers and have musical talents. At the end of the year, 8th grade puts on a performance (and doesn’t have class the last few months of the school year). It was amazing. The theme was 1,001 Arabian Nights and they had songs, Eurythmy, and memorized a poetic script. They had live music played by students in the school.
I was astounded and pleased to see that there are schools that emphasize the arts. Yes, some of these students do not do well academically, and many of them have learning disabilities that hold them back from achieving straight A’s. But the fact they can put their talents to use and have many performances throughout the year shows that school is not always just about grades.
The parents, however, were…something else. Most parents are great and are there to support their kids. I also discovered, unhappily, that parents have a say in the curriculum.
“You should teach my daughter Shakespeare,” said one delusional parent of a girl in 7th grade. I’m not saying that no 7th-grade Israeli cannot learn Shakespeare, but I was teaching the lower-level group for students who needed to learn to a) read and b) learn sentence structure.
Some parents complained to the rakezet that the material I was teaching wasn’t relevant to the students’ future. This confused me as I was using the textbook. Apparently, a “real” teacher would make up her own materials and not fall back on the textbook.
A particular student’s mother blamed me for her child’s lack of motivation. “You’re a bad teacher,” she said to me on the phone. “That’s why my child doesn’t like you.”
Thanks, lady.
If I ever said anything negative about my teachers back in the ‘90’s, I would’ve gotten in so much trouble. Teaching in the 2020s sure is different.
Overall, it was a year that I am leaving with happy thoughts. However, I do feel like it was a year I survived, not slogged through like I have felt in previous years. And I hope to one day fly through a year with confidence, but I’m definitely not there yet.
