Saturday, March 4, 2023

Handwork Teacher Training - Spring 2023

Applied Arts Program Cycle 11 at the Fiber Craft Studio, located on the Sunbridge campus (Orchard House), next to Green Meadow Waldorf School

Week One included

    movement with Julia Lieberman
    speech with Barbara Renold
    lecture series with Harlan Gilbert
    curative education lecture series with Sarah Deichmann
    handwork with Nicole Rodriguez


readings


notes from movement

    Monday - games (turtle tag), cooperative exercises (balance beam, human machine)

      favorite stretch: tennis ball spine

      imagine that there is a tennis ball slowly rolling from the top of your head to your tailbone, and wherever it is touching your back, that is the place your body hangs from (like a puppet)

    Tuesday - SNOW DAY

    Wednesday - games (elbow tag), cooperative exercises

      favorite stretch: dinosaur tail

      bend forward and let your head and arms hang down; imagine that you have an enormous dinosaur tail (it's miles long) and slowly swing it back and forth knocking over things behind you

    Thursday - games (fox in the henhouse, ghost train), juggling, tightwire

      favorite stretch: giant porridge pot

      sit cross legged and imagine there is a giant porridge pot in front of you, lean over and stir with big sweeping movements

    Friday - jumprope scope & sequence in lower grades, rough & tumble games on the mat

      best friend bear cub
      kneel across from the other person on the mat, both stay on knees, try to PULL them into your den (the space behind you) while they try simultaneously to pull you into theirs

      farmer & cow
      the cow gets on all fours (facing the farmer) and the farmer tries to PUSH the cow off the mat by the shoulders

      stubborn baby
      the baby gets on all fours (facing away from the babysitter) and tries to crawl away while the babysitter grabs them by the ankles and tries to keep them from leaving


notes from speech

    Monday - names, consonants, The Eagle by Tennyson (here as a PDF)

    Tuesday - To Know the Dark by Wendell Berry

    Wednesday - continue Berry poem, work with a partner to speak and create a corresponding movement for an unknown non-English word (we did not know the language of origin or the meaning), experience the sounds in this way, say the word but keep the movement internal

    we later learned that all of our words meant "tree" (I had Mongolian)

      мод
      mod

    Thursday & Friday - continue with speech exercises from Steiner and the two poems above


notes from lecture series with Harlan

    Monday - grades 3 & 4 curriculum as moral education

      grade 3 themes: moral principles, responsibility, stewardship, community
      relevant blocks: Old Testament Stories (or, he said, one could do Confucius), Farming & Gardening, Housebuilding

      grade 4 themes: inclusion, affirming unity within diversity
      relevant blocks: Man & Animal (Zoology)

    Tuesday - discuss the Steiner lecture 1, begin to talk about grade 5

    Wednesday - discuss how Waldorf education is changing to meet the needs of the modern student, continue to look at grade 5 (Botany)

    Thursday - discuss the Steiner lecture 5, consider grade 5 Botany and Ancient Greece (major themes: expansion & contraction, harmony)

    Friday - grade 8 Age of Revolution


Sarah did the Twelve Senses on Thursday and the Pedagogical Law on Friday. She also recommended


notes from handwork


Reading my quick notes here is in no way a substitute for being in the Applied Arts Program, which is incredibly rich and deep, so please do not think that I am sharing them with that intent. I hope to encourage others to take this valuable training with this glimpse into our amazing work. If you are finding yourself drawn to taking this training, please do consider it.

In fact, they are currently accepting applications for Cycle 13, which begins this summer!!


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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wish my kids were able to attend your program. Do you offer a summer camp type thing? We are in California but would love to visit. I find your notes super helpful, thank you!

Anonymous said...

Hello! Just to be clear, these notes are from what we did in a training I TOOK, not a training I LED. Sorry for any confusion!