September & Michaelmas News
Michaelmas News - September 2020
Next Friday (September 25th) is Michaelmas, and will be a 12:30 dismissal for all of the school, including no after care that day for the Kinderhaus or Grades students. Due to Covid restrictions, there will not be the normal celebration for the wider community and we will miss you all! We are so sorry that it must be this way.
So that parents may have some insights into the day, our Community Development Department will be creating a short video of the assembly that will be available for viewing within 72 hours of the end of the event. As said previously, school will end at 12:30. Pick up will commence at that time and buses will depart by 12:40.
The celebration is one based on the tradition of warding off the impending darkness that we will all face as fall and winter descend upon us. It is a time of recognizing one's inner strength to face the changes coming upon us, and certainly at this time in the world, we need to perhaps dig deeper than we have in a long time. Questions that are sometimes raised at this time might be something in the order of these posed by one of my esteemed colleagues:
• How can I work inside myself to lighten this load?
• What can I do everyday to let myself know I am loved by myself and living my best life as the best version of myself?
• Can I invite myself to sit quietly and search around in the dusty corners of myself and shed light into the places that need a little housekeeping?
Each class will be providing a very small presentation just for the students and faculty. The 8th grade will present theirs with Eurythmy and the 6th grade will "re-imagine the traditional dragon" for their part of the day and presentation. Some classes are also considering making soup just within each class for lunch, rather than the community soup that has been a tradition for the community. Your class teacher will be in communication with you about lunch on that day and any other details.
9-18 Update Latest COVID guidance regarding when to stay or be sent home from school
Cases of Covid are getting closer to our immediate school community. Early childhood programs in Aspen and Basalt have recently had to close for quarantine. Some of our students are in quarantine due to contract tracing requirements of the County. We have no known cases in our immediate community, and our intention is to keep it that way.
Your help is critical to keep WSRF open for in-person education. We ask each family to be extra vigilant with hygiene and safety protocols in the coming months. Please be deliberate and thoughtful about what activities you choose for your children, knowing that it could end in-person learning for our entire school.
As fall activities and sports start up, your student’s participation increases their risk of exposure and potential need to quarantine should a case develop within an extracurricular group. We practice the 4w’s in effort to prevent any infection within our school. Thank you for your vigilance at home in screening for symptoms and keeping students home who are showing any signs of illness.
In that regard, here are the latest guidelines from Garfield County:
If you are planning to travel for the fall break or Holidays, please be reminded of our quarantine policy:
Are students and teachers who have recently traveled to “red zone” states or internationally required by the school to quarantine prior to being back in school? YES! According to the CDC, “Travel out of Colorado increases your chance of getting or spreading Covid-19. Staying at home is the best way to protect yourself and others. You can get Covid-19 during your travels. You may feel well and not have any symptoms, but you can still spread Covid-19 to others. You and your travel companions (including children) may spread Covid-19 to other people including your family, friends and community for 14 days after you were exposed to the virus.” Accordingly, we require that after you return from travel to “red zone states” or an international destination, you must remain at home for 14 days upon return. Please report your travel destinations to Administrative Council and a determination will be made if quarantine is required based on the most current data regarding incident rates.
An update, we are now tracking data by County rather than State, using this data source.
https://www.garfield-county.com/public-health/garfield-county-covid-19-cases/
Introducing: The Waldorf Curriculum Spotlight Series!
We are excited to launch a new newsletter series, highlighting and introducing core elements of Waldorf Curriculum over the course of the year ahead. We’d like to begin with storytelling.
Why do we tell stories?
Waldorf Education works deeply with the power of storytelling. We see value in oral traditions that have been used throughout the majority of human history as a way to spark imagination, curiosity and wonder in the world around us and within one’s self. You’ll find stories woven daily into the curriculum from Kindergarten through eighth grade as one of the ways students engage with new ideas, perspectives and knowledge while laying a foundation for understanding. An understanding that begins with limitless potential and deep internal activity. In Waldorf Education, we believe storytelling serves as an invaluable stepping stone to knowledge that reaches the level of knowing, not just remembering.
The depth and range of how storytelling takes place in Waldorf Curriculum can't be captured in a single collection. However, we’d like to share a small window from WE nurture if you’d like to explore more. If you are an adult listening, we suggest taking time to listen deeply and paying attention to the images in your mind sparked by the stories. Acknowledging this rich internal activity taking place will give you a glimpse into how a child’s imagination comes to life in full force when introduced to stories through oral lore. We also love this collection to share with children at home when appropriate. The recommended age ranges are included on each story and the full collection can be found here.
Parent Child Program Update
Our Parent Child programs with Ms. Holly have kicked off and we are thrilled to have new parents with young children ages birth to four years back on our campus, playing, singing and tumbling into rhythm once more.
The first sessions for all of our programs are full but a limited number of spaces are available in upcoming sessions. Please don’t wait to register, spaces go quickly! Visit our website to learn more and please feel free to invite families who might be interested in exploring Waldorf Education with their young children.
Faculty News
We are a community blessed with incredible people. I have often quoted Mark Finser who eloquently said that our campus —eco-friendly, built with volunteer strength and dedication, on 13 acres along the Roaring Fork river— is our crown. Our teachers and staff are the jewels in our crown!
As the Board of Trustees President, I primarily see my role as being champion of the Administrative Council. I have been fortunate to work alongside these talented, intelligent and heart centered people for the past nine years.
Tim is a heartfelt and genuinely kind, compassionate member of the Administrative Council. Alongside Anne White and Larry Smith, Tim has led the pedagogical realm since 2018. Tim has decided this will be his final year as Faculty Administrator. After 30 years in Waldorf education as an administrator and teacher, he is ready to dedicate his passions to new endeavors.
We are in great hands for the 20-21 school year with our Administrative Council, and we are also blessed to have an incredible search committee who will help the Board find our next Faculty Administrator. Trustee Frances Lewis, who has served our school as administrator and class teacher in the past, will lead the search .
We will soon be posting the job opening and look forward to reviewing incredible candidates from the Waldorf community to carry us forward in our school’s continued success, thriving and growth.
For the Aspen Waldorf Foundation Board of Trustees,
Valery Kelly, Board President
We are excited to formally announce that Kinderhaus Assistant, Katie Workman, will be begin maternity leave on September 28 as she and her husband, Sherman, prepare to welcome their fourth child into the world. Addie Jane, Sherman and Nolan are pleased as well to have a new sibling. While Katie is away through the Winter Break, Mandy Scott, will take over her duties working alongside Ms. Stephanie and Ms. Heidi. Mandy is a Colorado credentialed elementary school teacher and mother of Braden who attended the school and was in Ms. Chanthy's class, and son, Micah. Mandy comes to us highly recommended with her qualities of kindness, empathy and love for childhood. We feel very fortunate to have her in the Kinderhaus and continue the professional and ever friendly gesture of the faculty.
News From the Classroom
In the First Grade ...
Though there are many challenges to this unique school year, there are also amazing blessings. One blessing is the incredible gift of our outdoor classroom! Our need to be outside as much as possible has allowed me to stretch myself as an educator and to deepen the 1st Grade’s learning experience more than I ever thought possible.
For example, as the 1st graders and I sing our morning song, “Rise and Shine,” we can now look up at Father Sun, at our expansive mountain sky, and at the geese flying overhead. As we recite the Morning Verse, we get to take in the beauty of our special mountain home as we say the lines, feeling even deeper gratitude. As we work on clearly speaking a tongue twister faster and faster, the 2nd graders walk by on their daily silent stroll and our delighted by our fun!
Where do we learn exactly? The 1st grade can be found in a number of outdoor locations on campus. You’ll find us in “Toadstool Town” (our white tent right outside our classroom with stumps and comfy pillows on top which look like toadstools!) during Main Lesson, Handwork and Spanish, but then look for us in our beloved “Woods” for Music, Thursday Tea, snack and lunch, and during our recesses and Creative Play periods.
We are also out and about in our wetlands and by the Roaring Fork for Main Lesson and for Nature Exploration. We are just finishing up a monthlong study of reading and spelling during which the children heard nature stories and fairy tales. Images from the stories lead us to discover an abstract letter. Stories are linked to the seasons, the animals around our school, and the social-emotional lessons that the students might be in need of.
Along with printing practice, letter-sound games, and memory reading activities, we also venture out in nature to connect Language Arts with our eco-literacy studies. For instance, this past Tuesday we went on an Initial Sound Hunt through the Kinderhaus Garden and down along the pond road with clipboards and bags of crayons in hand so that the students could record their discoveries of natural objects.
We have also been blessed to have Ms. Lichatz, our Movement and Outdoor Education teacher, who leads us on our Nature Exploration twice a week. Our studies have begun with learning about our wetlands - wading up the creek to learn about riparian environments and taking silent walks to listen and see the animals and plants more consciously. This week we created bubble solutions and used horsetails we found near the Roaring Fork River to blow bubbles.
The children are developing resilience as they learn outside, experiencing icy cold, intense heat, cold rain, and blustery wind. They are developing their senses of well-being, self-movement, balance, and touch as they sit on uneven stumps, traverse through muddy, mucky paths, dig in the hard earth for “treasure”, and build and balance on logs, boulders and big stumps.
The children are also developing an enduring love of learning by being immersed in nature. Not only are we teachers formally teaching them but we are also giving them the time to wonder, inquire, perceive and imaginatively play in their local surroundings. The woods, the wetlands and the river provide wonderful inspiration for imaginative play. Sticks become magic wands, saws, pencils, and tools for building. Trash they find as they are digging are unique gifts to them. At the base of a tree may be a small hollow but to the 1st graders it is the entrance to a gnome’s house. And we are surely blessed when Mrs. Tittle Mouse peeks out of her home underneath the sun porch as we are learning our letters and each child is given the time to quietly get up from their toadstool to see her.
The children ask many questions about the mysteries we come across each day, and the reply, “What do you think?” leads to exceptional discussions. “Why are the Canada geese traveling in a different direction today?” “Hmm, I wonder.”
This attitude of openness nurtures new thoughts, new discoveries! The children are inspired to think “out of the box,” the most needed thinking for us all to engage in!
One of the unique aspects of the Waldorf approach to eco-literacy is the emphasis on the students’ direct experience and connecting all their learning to their feeling life. Rather than explaining the seasonal changes and teaching vocabulary words, the 1st graders recite verses and listen to stories about how the animals are sensing a shift in the weather or of the Perseid meteor showers that let us know that Autumn is coming! The children not only hear about these changes, they get to see these changes with their very own eyes, and they get to discuss these changes, and artistically express them. They so deeply take them up in hearts, their minds, and in their hands as they translate their knowledge into their own books as they are so happily and deeply immersed in imagination.
What a gift this kind of science learning is! It teaches not just the important rhythms and wisdom of our planet, but also allows the children to develop a reverence and love for her beauty and mystery. It is my great hope that these feelings of care and respect will be a blessing for these dear children and for their children and their grandchildren for years to come!
Community Notes
Invitation to providers
In the spirit of assisting our community in staying healthy as well as supporting our local businesses, we are putting together a directory of providers to include all levels of health— mind, body and spirit. If you have a healing service or product and would like to be included, please email Ann O’Brien at annobrien@rbox.co. Please include:
1. Your name or business name.
2. Your contact info.
3. A brief description of your offering.
4. Any discount or gift you’d like to offer the WSRF community.
Thank you,
Ann O'Brien