A Waldorf Journey Podcast

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My history as a middle school teacher

How our work will change

What we’re doing to set a solid framework

Building Habits

• homework
• Finishing their work
• Engaging with our lessons
• General classroom behavior

Building a Culture of Caring

• we’re good people and we’re working together
• we’re on the same team
• building up an image of each individual as a caring individual
• building an image of the class as a whole being caring
• building a reputation for them to live up to

How Middle School Will Change Things

• less focus on me as the teacher/authority; much more social with each other
• focus on the content
• looking out at the world together
• contrast the morning verses

Links

My substack newsletter

Teaching Children to Care

Facebook group

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Send me an email.

Join me as I make my way through The Growth Mindset Coach — a month-by-month guide for teachers. Each month I’ll record an episode about it and I’d love to hear what you think!

In this episode . . . 

• Audible (affiliate link)
• my curriculum guides
• The Growth Mindset Coach by Annie Brock and Heather Hundley
• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck
• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
• Grit by Angela Duckworth

TARGET from Carol Ames

• Task
• Authority
• Recognition
• Grouping
• Evaluation
• Time

Join me as I make my way through The Growth Mindset Coach -- a month-by-month guide for teachers. Each month I'll record an episode about it and I'd love to hear what you think!

In this episode . . . 

• Skillshare (my affiliate link)
• my curriculum guides
• The Growth Mindset Coach by Annie Brock and Heather Hundley
• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck

Teacher feedback stems

• I noticed how
• Look at how much progress you've made on
• I see a difference in this work compared with
• I admire how hard you have worked on
• I can see you really enjoyed learning
• Could it make a difference if you
• have you considered trying a different strategy to
• You're on the right track here and might consider
• One awesome thing about your work is
• I really like the way you
• One thing that helps me is
• This could improve if
• My favorite part of this was
• I noticed that

Promos
Audible -- Get your free trial by hitting my link.
Skillshare -- I'm loving Skillshare. Free 14 day trial with my link.
My curriculum guides -- I've got a guide that will help you teach and give you just the amount of help that you need.

Things I Talked About This Week

• My bio
• structure and systems in the classroom
• mentorship and evaluation
• my Practical Art of the Waldorf Classroom course
• the importance of the social-emotional curriculum
• skill-building vs. imaginative content
• keeping Waldorf teaching inspiring

Promos
Audible -- Get your free trial by hitting my link.
Skillshare -- I'm loving Skillshare. Free 14 day trial with my link.
My curriculum guides -- I've got a guide that will help you teach and give you just the amount of help that you need.

Content
Things that made me happy in 2020.

• Creating and Enjoying a Life I Love
• Being Productive
• Atomic Habits
• Change
• New Ideas

Stuff Mentioned

• Notion
• Todoist
• Google Classroom
• Superhuman
• Atomic Habits

Home Resource Guide
This free Waldorf-at-Home Resource guide goes through 4 of those basic ideas that can help you create a harmonious Waldorf home, and maybe even realize that you're doing a pretty good job of getting there already.

To get this free guide, just go to awaldorfjourney.com/homeguide and I'll send you the free pdf.

Holiday Gift Guides
To see my Waldorf art gift guide, which gives indications for art supplies that will be useful throughout the grades, just head to www.awaldorfjourney.com/artsupplies.

And to find a list of recommended books, head to www.awaldorfjourney.com/giftbooks

Devices

• MacBook Pro
• external monitor
• 2 webcams
• Apple trackpad
• Varmilo mechanical keyboard
• iPad and pencil
• HP printer/scanner

Furniture

• standing desk from Fully — whiteboard
• hand-me-down chair — next on my list to upgrade
• arm for camera
• the chair I want to get
• a standing stool possibility

Software

• Zoom
• Google Classroom
• Notion

Routines

• sharing my desk — main lesson pages and dictation
• correcting drafts on the iPad
• breakout rooms
• chat, virtual backgrounds, profile photos, etc.

As we enter into the holiday season, I thought it would be a good chance to talk about Waldorf and festivals. I know that the festivals were one of the things that drew me to Waldorf when I first discovered it, and though they are lovely, my thoughts about them have changed through the years. I'm happy to share some thoughts about the festivals with you in this episode.

Waldorf Gift Guides

The holidays are approaching and if your family is anything like mine, the grandparents are asking what they can give the kids for the holidays. How can we give them some direction and request gifts that align with our Waldorf-inspired values, while still remembering and modeling gratitude?

To help with this, I have put together a couple of different Waldorf gift guides, which you can access for free — not even an email address is required by hitting the link in the shownotes.

To see my Waldorf art gift guide, which gives indications for art supplies that will be useful throughout the grades, just head to www.awaldorfjourney.com/artsupplies.

And to find a list of recommended books, head to www.awaldorfjourney.com/giftbooks

Both guides are right there on the website, easy for you to access. The Amazon links are affiliate links, which means I get a small commission, at no cost to you. And if you're grateful for these resources, you can hit the link to send me a cup of coffee right there on the page, or just go to www.awaldorfjourney.com/coffee

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Content
Investigating the why and how of Waldorf festivals.
Three main purposes behind Waldorf festivals (according to me):

• community-building
• creating turning points in the year
• connecting with something higher

Exploring each of these can give us a framework for investigating the festivals and determining how to honor them in a meaningful way. Festivals mentioned in this episode:

• Michaelmas
• Martinmas
• Divali
• Day of the Dead
• Winter Spiral

This week we're going to talk about child development. We've all heard about thinking, feeling, and willing of Waldorf education. This episode is all about where you can find thinking feeling and willing in child development and which aspect you should be focusing on when.

This episode is being brought to you by my curriculum guides, which you can find at my website awaldorfjourney.com/shop. I’ve got a variety of guides throughout the grades -- Whether you’re teaching botany, rocks and minerals, physics or astronomy in the middle school; or consonants and vowels in first grade, I’ve got a guide that can help you out. Homeschoolers and classroom teachers in a variety of settings have found my guides to be helpful, so I hope you’ll check them out. And if you’re just wondering about how to go about setting up your main lesson structure, every guide includes my Main Lesson 101 material, which will break it all down for you. Just this information alone is really valuable, so you might consider purchasing a guide, just to help you get started with your planning. I really recommend either my Astronomy or my Rocks and Minerals guides -- those subjects are just so fascinating and both of those guides give a really good picture of what it’s like to plan a Waldorf main lesson.

Again, you can find all of my guides at my website, www.awaldorfjourney.com/shop

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Content
0-7 -- the willing phase
7-14 -- the feeling phase
14-21 -- the thinking phase

More information about my course The Practical Art of the Waldorf Classroom.

An image of the Waldorf approach to human development, sometimes called "the cosmic bathtub."

This week we're talking about one of my secret weapons for making this Waldorf teaching work so much easier. It took me awhile to figure it out, but having a structure and a set of systems will make this job so much more sustainable. This week I'm going to talk about some of the rhythms I've established in my teaching and how you can keep a balance between new, exciting inspiration and regular routines and rhythms.

This episode is being brought to you by my new course, Feedback and Record-Keeping for Waldorf Teachers. I've offered this course in the past, but it's been updated and brought over to my own platform so it's more available.

I strongly believe that providing feedback and keeping parents, students and administration updated on student progress is a place where Waldorf teachers have fallen short in the past. We want our students to feel good about their work and not have to face criticism. But monitoring progress and having those sometimes difficult conversations helps us keep our teaching relevant and can help inspire confidence in parents and administrators.

This course walks you through a process for providing feedback in a way that is age-appropriate so it will inspire your students to achieve and let them know that their work matters. With audio and written content and 8 lessons pertaining to the different types of feedback you'll provide, I'll talk you through the process. And the course includes all the templates you'll need, wherever you are on the journey.

You can sign up for the course at awaldorfjourney.com/recordkeeping.

Content
Yearly Rhythms

• creating templates
• my template for providing feedback in 4th grade

Monthly Rhythms

• planning at the beginning of a block
• my block plan template

Weekly Rhythms

• a blog post about our dictation rhythm

Daily Rhythms

• a blog post about my daily review planning
• Don't forget to prep your story every day -- it wouldn't be Waldorf without it!

This week we're talking about Waldorf Parenting. I've got some pretty strong opinions (they maybe even a little controversial) and some basic ideas to help you create an intentional Waldorf family life for yourself and your children.

This episode is being brought to you by my ebook The Waldorf Home. If you’re interested in reading ideas, suggestions and tips for making your home more aligned with your children’s waldorf education, check out my book at www.thewaldorfhome.com.

Also, if you’re a homeschooling parent or a teacher, check out my curriculum guides at www.awaldorfjourney.com/shop. There you can find my first grade bundle where I go through how to introduce the consonants and vowels through the fairy tales. It’s one of my most popular guides, so I hope you’ll support the podcast and check it out.

Content

• Rant about "Waldorf enough."
• Connect
• Work
• Create
• Explore

Email me: [email protected]
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