Education

Waldorf Education, University Education, My Education.  I have a lot to think about lately.  Right now, I thrive on thinking.

Meetings.  Centered around "Student Success".  I think a lot about what works for students and what doesn't, about different learners and about motivation.  About why my students are where they are.  I love meetings.  I find myself talking a lot.  Yes, I'm that annoying person.  After a couple of years of house arrest I am stretching in all directions and it's hard to stop.

I think about my educational history from my sister teaching me reading and math before I was school aged to attending my Professional program in education.  Ironically, it was that program that squelched my love of school.  I found myself not really wanting to teach in public school and, although I loved elementary and middle school, recalling the abyss of highschool.  I still haven't embraced the public school system, mostly instructing in alternative systems.

I love the job I have found myself in.  I finally had my break and although it is a temporary position I will do whatever I can to retain it, including going back to school.  Something I would like to do anyway.  (Not to learn to write in complete sentences, I'm taking creative liberties and the phrases are intentional.)  I think about a direction of study.  I'm still considering the Master's in Adult Education and Global Change, but also graduate work in Biology.  I would love to get right into the brain.  Right into it's inner workings, into chemicals and receptors and brain plasticity and why some people stay calm, relaxed and happy and others slip into depression.  I would love to live to 150 and go to medical school, perhaps deliver babies or get into cancer research, or just on to teaching undergraduate students.

Although it was fine for me, I consider the multiple reasons why the public school system didn't work for my students.  It was fine for me but it could have been more.  The light in Anneka (and in little Halle) are what is missing.  I want those little lights to keep sparkling, I want that joy to keep shining through.  I love that Anneka loves little things, that every rock is special or magical, a treasure to be admired if only for an hour.  That we can't come back from a walk without bouquets of grasses, leaves, rocks and sticks. I love that she counts every mushroom in a cluster in a specific order, I love that she digests her world.

Watching Halle is even more fascinating.  How she inspects the label on a blanket, how she turns bits of food she has scavenged from the floor over and over in her hand, inspecting and feeling.  I want my girls to continue to digest their world, to take their time, to live and breath what they learn.  To know it, to experience it.  We are trying out Waldorf school - I just came from a parent meeting which is why this is on my mind.  We are having a great experience with preschool and I am becoming more and more interested in the later years.

Fun-loving, humorous, imaginative, inquisitive, talented, creative and patient.  We are having to hire a nanny for January - three days a week.  I have been a bit sad at the prospect - sad that I won't be with my children for much of the weeks and that I will turn the most important job in my life over to someone else for a while - concerned about giving up some of the control of how they are raised, and sorry for myself about missing out.  But, now I realize I can also look at it as an opportunity.  My children have the opportunity to learn from someone else and be loved by another person.  I have the opportunity to hire someone wonderful.  To hire someone talented.  Maybe someone that can play an instrument or sing or act or paint.  Maybe someone that loves to tell stories or go on adventure walks.   I am on a Quest to find a Waldorf-style nanny.  He or She is out there, waiting to play with Anneka and Halle.