A Waldorf Journey Podcast

Festivals are one of the most beautiful and memorable parts of Waldorf education. They bring us together, connect us with the rhythms of the year, and create moments of reverence that can be hard to find in everyday life.

But how often do we stop to ask why we celebrate the festivals we do?

In this episode, I'm revisiting a conversation from the archives about the role of festivals in Waldorf education. I share some of my earliest experiences with Waldorf celebrations, along with the questions I've come to ask over the years about tradition, inclusion, and what makes a festival truly meaningful.

We'll explore three important purposes that festivals can serve:

• Building community: How celebrations like Michaelmas bring families, teachers, students, and alumni together.
• Marking the rhythms of the year: How festivals like the Martinmas lantern walk help us experience the changing seasons.
• Creating moments of reverence: How experiences like the winter spiral connect children with something larger than themselves.

I also share how my school reconsidered some longstanding traditions, including Santa Lucia and Saint Nicholas, while making room for celebrations like Diwali and Día de los Muertos.

The goal isn't to abandon tradition, but to approach it with greater awareness and intention. When we understand what we're hoping to create through our festivals, we can find ways to make them even more meaningful for the children and communities we serve.

I'd love to hear from you: What festivals are especially meaningful in your school or family? Are there traditions you've reconsidered or new celebrations you've embraced?

As we move into the autumn and winter festival season, I hope this conversation inspires you to look at your own celebrations with fresh eyes.

Links & Resources

• A Waldorf Journey
• Original episode and conversation
• Buy me a coffee

By October, the honeymoon phase of the school year may be wearing off—and you might be noticing some classroom habits that could use a reset.

In this episode, I revisit ideas from one of the most popular posts on A Waldorf Journey, 4 Reasons Why Your Students Aren’t Listening. We’ll look at a few things we do as teachers that can unintentionally encourage students to tune us out, including talking too much, repeating instructions, and second-guessing ourselves.

I share practical strategies for using rhythm and routine, giving instructions that students actually hear, reinforcing expectations, and using your voice more intentionally.

Read the original post: 4 Reasons Why Your Students Aren’t Listening

I’ll continue the conversation on Substack this week—come share the classroom management strategies that work for you.

Want more info about the content in this episode? Here's where to find it.

• A Waldorf Journey on Substack
• My curriculum guides and resources
• The Creativity Comeback article
• A Waldorf Journey on Instagram

There’s plenty of anxiety about artificial intelligence and what it might mean for education, creativity, work, and our relationships with one another. But the more I’ve actually used AI—and the more I’ve watched the culture around it change—the less worried I’ve become about whether it can replace the things that make us human.

In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if AI is making those things more valuable.

In this episode, I’m sharing some observations from my own experience with AI—not as an expert or researcher, but as an educator, writer, creator, and parent. I’ve been noticing a growing return to analog experiences: knitting, journaling, drawing, gardening, reading physical books, making things by hand, and spending time together in the real world. Even online, content seems to be becoming more casual, imperfect, and unmistakably human.

And, of course, all of this brings me back to Waldorf education.

Waldorf education is deeply rooted in relationship. Yes, the curriculum is remarkable—but the curriculum is also the medium through which children learn to listen, collaborate, navigate differences, exercise judgment, imagine, create, and build relationships with other human beings.

As AI becomes more capable and synthetic content becomes more plentiful, those human capacities are becoming more important than ever.

• The “creativity comeback” and renewed interest in analog experiences
• Why using AI has actually made me less afraid of it
• The shift toward imperfect, obviously human-made content
• Why I've been podcasting more
• What I'm noticing about technology and my own Gen Z children
• Why human relationship is central to Waldorf education
• The difference between the Waldorf curriculum and what we're ultimately developing through it
• Why judgment, imagination, collaboration, and authentic connection may become even more valuable in an AI-shaped world

I'd love to hear what you're noticing. Are you feeling more drawn toward analog experiences or human-made content? If you're a teacher or parent, has the rise of AI changed the way you think about what children need from us?

I'll be continuing this conversation in my companion article on Substack, and that's a great place to share your thoughts and join the discussion.

You can also connect with me on Instagram or email me at [email protected].

And if you're a Waldorf teacher looking for curriculum resources, you'll find those at A Waldorf Journey.

Thanks for listening!

There’s something deeply comforting for children about rhythm. Knowing what comes next—at bedtime, at breakfast, throughout the week—creates a sense of security and makes everyday family life run more smoothly.

But if rhythm is the structure of life with children, the seasons are the spark.

In this episode, I’m exploring why seasonal life can be so meaningful for children, and how daily rhythm and the larger rhythm of the year work together. Seasonal traditions don’t need to mean elaborate festivals, complicated crafts, or a perfectly curated Waldorf home. Often, the most meaningful seasonal experiences are woven right into the things we’re already doing.

I also talk about how differently children experience the passage of time. While adults tend to think in terms of calendars and months, children experience time through their senses: the smell of sunscreen, the taste of freshly picked apples, the feeling of moss underfoot, the return of a familiar candle at the breakfast table. These experiences give children a sense of anticipation and help them recognize the comforting pattern of things coming around again.

In this episode:

• Why strong daily and weekly rhythms are the foundation for seasonal life
• How the seasons bring interest and delight to an otherwise dependable routine
• How children experience time through sensory experiences rather than the calendar
• The importance of anticipation and the feeling that something familiar is “coming around again”
• Why your child’s experience of the seasons might look very different from your own
• Moving beyond the idea of the “perfect Waldorf festival”
• Simple ways to weave seasonal details into things your family already does

The goal isn’t to manufacture a magical seasonal childhood. Instead, we can keep the structure of everyday life simple and dependable—and let the details change as the year turns.

Free Fall Guide

I’ve put together a free fall guide with songs, poems, and ideas you can bring into your life with children as you move into the season.

Get the free download.

I’m also exploring the idea of seasonal life through the lens of child development—how our approach to the seasons might change as children grow. If that’s something you’d like to hear more about, I’d love to know.

In Part Two of my conversation with Janet Langley, co-author of Roadmap to Literacy, we move from understanding the stages of literacy development into the practical question every teacher eventually asks: Okay, so what do I actually do?

Janet walks us through the kinds of classroom experiences that support children as they move through the emergent, phonemic awareness, pattern, and syllable phases of literacy development. We talk about everything from helping first graders hear words and individual sounds, to introducing consonants and vowels, explicitly teaching phonics, working with sight words, and giving children meaningful opportunities to practice.

We also get into some of the Waldorf traditions that Janet calls “sacred nothings”—practices that have become so established that we may continue doing them without stopping to ask whether they actually serve the children in front of us. Our conversation touches on long morning circles, introducing uppercase and lowercase letters, and the importance of being willing to examine inherited practices while still preserving what is essential about Waldorf education.

And finally, we talk about one of my favorite practices from Roadmap to Literacy: kid writing. I share what this has looked like in my own classroom and the remarkable difference I’ve seen when children are given the tools and confidence to use their developing phonemic awareness to put their own thoughts on paper.

In this episode, we talk about:

• “Theory of word” and helping children recognize sentences, words, syllables, and individual sounds
• Rhyming and what difficulty with rhyme can tell us
• Choosing and introducing consonants
• Why English-speaking Waldorf teachers need to think differently about introducing vowels
• Short vowels, CVC words, digraphs, silent letters, and other early phonics skills
• Using stories and imagination alongside explicit literacy instruction
• Making practice periods actually about practice
• The pattern and syllable phases of literacy development
• Why spelling instruction needs to continue well beyond the early grades
• “Sacred nothings” and questioning inherited Waldorf practices
• Introducing uppercase and lowercase letters together
• Sight words and how they support reading fluency
• Memory reading through familiar poems and songs
• Kid writing and the transition from copying to independent composition
• Using children's writing as both practice and assessment
• How teachers can combine a clear literacy progression with creativity and responsiveness to the children in front of them

Janet and her colleague Patty Connolly have gathered extensive resources for teachers and homeschoolers at Waldorf Inspirations, including activities, curriculum resources, and support materials that complement Roadmap to Literacy.

If you haven't listened to Part One yet, I recommend starting there for Janet's explanation of the different phases children move through as they learn to read. Together, these two conversations offer a much clearer picture of both how literacy develops and how we can intentionally support that development in the Waldorf classroom.

Resources Mentioned:

• Waldorf Inspirations
• Roadmap to Literacy
• Waldorf Inspirations Literacy Workshops
• A Waldorf Journey: First Grade Language Arts

This week, I’m reaching back into the A Waldorf Journey archives to revisit a conversation that feels especially worthwhile as we begin a new school year.

In this episode, originally recorded in 2019, I talk with Janet Langley, co-author of Roadmap to Literacy, about what Waldorf teachers need to understand about how children actually learn to read—and why literacy is one area where class teachers need to become specialists rather than generalists. 

Janet shares the story behind Roadmap to Literacy, including the realization that Rudolf Steiner’s original indications for teaching language were developed for German, a much more phonetic language than English. We talk about what that means for English-speaking Waldorf teachers and why intentional, systematic phonics instruction can still be deeply imaginative and completely at home in a Waldorf classroom. 

We also dig into the process children move through as they become readers, including:

•  why some children seem to “just learn to read” while others need much more explicit instruction 
•  the role of phonemic awareness and systematic phonics 
•  how practice helps build automatic word recognition 
•  the predictable phases children move through on the path toward fluent reading 
•  why teachers should teach to the phase rather than simply to the grade
•  the 80/80 guideline for deciding when a class is ready to move forward 
•  why spelling instruction needs to continue long after children become competent readers 

One of the things I appreciate most about this conversation—even years after we originally recorded it—is the way it takes some of the mystery out of learning to read. Rather than simply waiting for the moment when a child magically “cracks the code,” understanding the developmental progression helps us recognize where a child is now, what they need next, and how we can support them in getting there.

Resources mentioned:
Roadmap to Literacy by Janet Langley and Jennifer Militzer-Kopperl

Waldorf Inspirations

This is Part One of my conversation with Janet. In Part Two, we turn toward practical activities teachers can use to support literacy development in the classroom.

In this episode, I’m kicking off a new series exploring the different components of the Waldorf main lesson, starting with one that can be easy to overlook: the recall.

We’ll look at why reviewing yesterday’s lesson is so much more than simply going over old material. A thoughtful recall helps students transform something they’ve heard into something they truly know—and become more conscious of their own learning.

I share practical ideas for keeping recall lively and engaging, including:

• Asking specific questions rather than retelling the entire lesson
• Inviting students to return to a particularly vivid image
• Using movement, gestures, writing, diagrams, and sequencing activities
• Making sure quieter students engage independently with the material
• Saving a little “nugget” of new information to enliven the review

I also explore how recall connects with the other two parts of the lesson—new content and doing/book work—and how these three elements work together through the three-day rhythm to refine and deepen students’ learning.

Review. New. Do. When all three are present, the lesson becomes a much more satisfying and complete learning experience.

Subscribe to A Waldorf Journey on Substack for weekly reflections, practical teaching ideas, and additional resources for paid subscribers: awaldorfjourney.substack.com

This week, I’m taking a break from all the back-to-school planning talk to remember one of the best parts of being a Waldorf teacher: the curriculum itself.

I’m sharing three blocks I really love to teach—and what makes each one so well suited to the children at that particular age.

We’ll talk about:

• The first block of first grade — establishing the rhythms, habits, and expectations that will carry you through the year.
• Fifth grade botany — the beautiful meeting of science, art, imagination, and biography.
• Sixth grade geometry — discovering beauty, structure, order, and lawfulness with compass and straightedge.

I also share some practical thoughts about planning these blocks, including why it helps to keep specific students in mind as you prepare and how biography can bring even the most factual content to life.

Mentioned: The Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe by Michael S. Schneider.

Is there a Waldorf block you’d like me to do a deep dive on? Send me a note at [email protected]. Or subscribe on Substack.

In Waldorf education, we talk a lot about bringing lessons through pictures—and about the importance of children creating their own inner pictures as they listen to a story.

But what about the child who doesn't experience stories that way?

This week's episode was inspired by a listener who asked about aphantasia, a condition that makes it difficult or impossible to voluntarily create images in the mind's eye. Her question got me thinking more broadly about what we really mean when we ask children to "picture" a story—and whether creating a vivid mental image is really the only way to engage imaginatively.

Because children connect with stories in all kinds of ways.

Some may see an entire movie playing out in their minds. Others might connect deeply with a character, feel the suspense of the story, hear the rhythm of the language, notice movement and sequence, or make connections with their own experiences.

In this episode, I explore what it means to truly "live into" a story, and why imaginative teaching can be valuable even for children who don't easily form mental pictures.

I also revisit an idea from Waldorf teacher training that I haven't thought about in years: the polarity of the cosmic child and the earthly child. Looking at these two different ways of meeting the world gives us another way to think about the dreamy child who easily lives in imagination—and the practical, physical child who wants to build, move, touch, and do.

And, most importantly, how we can help both children move toward balance without treating one way of experiencing the world as better than the other.

In this episode:

• What a listener's question about aphantasia made me reconsider
• What we actually mean by "creating pictures" in Waldorf education
• The many ways children can connect with a story
• Why a child doesn't need a vivid mental movie to benefit from imaginative teaching
• What I've observed about different kinds of listeners in the classroom
• The cosmic child and the earthly child
• Why these Waldorf frameworks should be lenses rather than labels
• Meeting children where they are rather than asking every child to experience a lesson in the same way
• Supporting dreamy children with grounding, physical experiences
• Helping practical, "earthly" children enter imagination through movement, drama, drawing, and doing

Keep exploring with A Waldorf Journey

For more reflections on Waldorf teaching—and companion posts that go deeper into many of the topics I discuss on the podcast—subscribe to A Waldorf Journey on Substack.

And if you're preparing for the school year and looking for more concrete support, you'll find curriculum guides for grades 1–8 at A Waldorf Journey. They're designed to give you a strong starting point while leaving plenty of room for your own creativity, imagination, and connection with the students in front of you.

The beginning of August makes the new school year suddenly feel real. Whether you've already begun planning or are just starting to think about it, this podcast is for you.

In this episode, I share the three areas I would focus on this week if I were preparing for a new school year. What are three things you can do to help make sure you're starting your lesson planning on the right foot? I encourage teachers to begin with the relationships that make your teaching possible: your relationship with your students, your students' families, and yourself as a teacher.

Remembering these three categories in everything you do will help you start the year with a solid plan that is founded upon the things that really matter. 

In this episode, we discuss:

•  Why planning should always begin with the children. 
•  A simple exercise for reconnecting with each student before the school year begins. 
•  How thinking intentionally about families can strengthen your classroom community. 
•  Supporting parents as partners in your work. 
•  The importance of rhythms and systems that sustain you throughout the school year. 
•  Practical ways to prepare your future self before the busy months begin. 

Mentioned in this episode

•  Subscribe to the A Waldorf Journey Substack for a companion article each Wednesday, plus bonus resources for paid subscribers. 
•  Have a question or an idea for a future episode? I'd love to hear from you! Reach me at [email protected]. 

If you enjoyed this episode, I'd be grateful if you subscribed, left a review, or shared it with another Waldorf teacher who is preparing for the new school year.