Waldorf High School at Home

Ecology Main Lesson

Next week I begin a 2 week very condensed ecology main lesson with my son and another homeschooled 9th grader. Two weeks is really a silly amount of time for a main lesson like this - but this is homeschooling and we have to compromise, right? Factors that got in the way included a two week cooking block for the boys (what they're doing right now) and then my son's involvement in the school play at the high school he used to attend full time. I somehow forgot that in the last two weeks of school, those students in the play do nothing but the play all day from 8:30 till 3pm (other students do building projects or gardening at this time). I even wrote on my calendar "ecology main lesson" right next to where it already said "Gabriel at school all day"!! Oh well....

 

So - two weeks to squeeze in an ecology main lesson. I had briefly considered skipping this but I really wanted to do it because I want to do botany and zoology with the boys next year. If you look at the Waldorf high school curriculum as it appears in many schools around the world, ecology does not come in 9th grade - it is a culmination of sorts in 12th grade. This puzzles me. Twelfth grade, quite sensibly, is when one finds subjects like "biotechnology", "genetics" and, increasingly, "chaos theory" - topics which need a great deal of life experience, maturity and knowledge to engage with properly. So why is ecology in 12th grade? I shall explore and try to find the answer.

 

My thinking is that ecology is just right for 9th grade so as to prepare for a more detailed look at the "components" as it were, that make up ecology, namely, plants, animals and minerals. I feel this is setting the stage for a more holistic way of looking at these subjects, by starting with a grand sweep of the whole - a bit like the way I did world geography with the 8th grade at our local Waldorf school a couple of months ago. I want to set the stage with a beautiful look at how our Earth is whole and how this whole expresses itself through weather, minerals, geography, plant and animal life. I want the boys to really get how these things are utterly interconnected.

 

I think that this is especially important with a subject like ecology. One might think that there is no way that ecology could be taught in a reductionist way, but it generally is - just get a hold of a biology or ecology text used in your local high school to see. One starts with cells and goes "up" from there. One boils concepts down to abstractions at all times, never giving a sense for the life which should surely flow through a study of - well, of life!

 

Here's what Martyn Rawson, a long time Waldorf teacher says, writing in Paideia, a British journal for Waldorf teachers:

 

When we (move from whole to part) in an artistic, creative way, then the relationship of the parts to the whole is a living one, where the whole somehow always expresses more than the sum of the parts and the identity of the parts is complimented by the whole. This mood far better expresses the reality of ecological relationships within the living world than reductionist building block or jigsaw puzzle models which are also "true" but limited. As long as the child's experiences are open to further, later enhancement then the foundation for an understanding of organic processes is cultivated. A one-sided experience of fixed, merely additive and absolute forms is more conducive to a mechanistic thinking that is suitable for the inorganic world, perhaps, but inappropriate for knowing the living world.

 

Now Martyn Rawson is, of course, speaking about the elementary school grades but I think his point continues to be valid at least as an introduction for life sciences in high school. And I further think that one should not be apologetic about striving to maintain such a living approach throughout high school. It is not as if "living thinking" is synonymous with "poor thinking"!!

 

Anyway.... I will return after our block is finished and give a description of what we did. I should add that we will, actually, go past two weeks as the boys final joint project (on ethanol) is due to be presented to both families a week after the block ends and that our other big project, setting up a 40 gallon warm water fish tank, wont commence until the summer.

 

I leave you with a link to a wonderful article by Craig Holdrege of the Nature Institute, the first place anyone should look when looking for stimulating information and suggestions on creating and working with an artistic, life imbued way of science. This article is the first reading assignment I am giving the boys.

Help with Physics - MIddle Years and High School

I know it's only April, but if you're like me, you're already thinking about next year's homeschooling adventures! And judging by the number of first grade syllabuses and other things we're selling at the moment, there are a lot of you who are in the "plan ahead" camp!

 

Right now I'm thinking about not just next Fall for my will-be 10th grader, but also about how the next years of his high school education might unfold. There are two other Waldorf homeschooled students of about his age here where we live - and we will probably do a number of things together (we already do). Some subjects are easy (for me at least) to teach and organize - others are a bit more difficult. Science is one of the topics which, though I love it, does not thrill my son. It is also incredibly hard to find resources which lend themselves to being used by people struggling to keep at least a bit of a Waldorf approach to science intact!

 

And the same is true for those of you figuring out how to work with science in the middle years. Eventually we will have a wealth of materials which will spell it all out - but we're not there yet and some of you have 6th, 7th and 8th graders next year and need some help.

 

At the moment I just want to talk about physics - the only area of science which fills me with horror! It just does not go in! I love the color experiments in 6th grade and fiddling about with sending sound through a garden hose, but pulling it all together is well, rather a challenge. And to be honest, as brilliant as Roberto Trostli's Physics is Fun book is (this is a highly recommended book written by a Waldorf teacher) it just doesn't really, really convert 100% to the home situation.

 

So for those of you with middle grades students next year, I do recommend our Nature Stories to Natural Science to help you understand the flow of the Waldorf science curriculum and, specifically, what happens in 6th, 7th and 8th grade. There are many book reviews and practical ideas. I also think that getting Eric Fairman's Path of Discovery books (from www.waldorfbooks.org)  for those grades is a must - he does a great job with science - though again.... it's not quite translatable to one parent teacher and one student at home. But they'll definitely help.

 

So I've been gloomily looking through physics websites trying to figure out what might be helpful in my situation. I'm banking on one of the other students'dads doing a lot of mechanics type physics with them.... but that might not happen. My son is interested in astronomy - and he'd like to understand theoretical physics - I can handle that. So we might spend more time than recommended in Waldorf schools reading than doing... but sometimes that's just the way the cookie crumbles.

 

Anyway, here's a physics teacher's website which is somewhat helpful. I like it for a variety of reasons - the positive is that there are some really wonderful lesson plans here which, even if you don't use them as they are (because a) they're for groups and b) they are not Waldorf at all) can be useful in helping one think through various physics concepts and/or inspire you for more Waldorf projects and ideas. The negative reason is that by reading through all the silly, inane and ridiculous lesson plans, I can feel better about what I'm doing, reassured that in public schools they spend an awful lot of time doing things that really are not worthy of the time.

 

The lesson plans on this site range from k through 12th grade.

 

Then there's a funky looking free astronomy and Newtonian physics e-book which I found. The author's credentials look impressive - the material looks great at a cursory glance.... But I don't vouch for it until I look it over before my son and I use it!

 

Lastly, I think I will order a programmable robot kit for Gabriel for this Fall. There are some really sophisticated  (and expensive) kits which use both engineering and computer programming skills to create robots which perform a variety of tasks. You can get these kits from www.homesciencetools.com. Once we get the robot and use it, I will report here how it went!

Cannery Row

We've finished Cannery Row. Both students read it and my son really enjoyed it.  Unfortunately, the other student didn't like it! I'm always shocked when someone doesn't like a book by one of my favorite authors - and I told her so in a playful way. She shook her head "nothing happens in this story" . That's true, I said - and then we launched into a discussion on exactly what Cannery Row is about. Does it have a plot? Not much - but isn't it  a snapshot of life at the low end of society? Aren't Mac and the Boys Everyman? We talked about this for a bit. I shared that the reason I adore this book is because Steinbeck makes the characters so real that one feels like they'll be sitting there looking over your shoulder when you look up from the book! She acknowledged that.... a bit grudgingly...

 

She wanted some plot. I asked her what was a book she really liked and she started off exuberantly praising Cry, the Beloved Country. I had read that in high school and had really disliked it - but my student made it sound intriguing so I said I would read it and let her know what I thought in the next class. The we went back to Cannery Row.

 

Over the last two weeks they had two assignments. One was to write a 2 - 3 page paper on Cannery Row considering the following questions - was it a positive novel? what do the characters represent? what does Steinbeck think of his characters and of people? Do the inhabitants of Cannery Row have a moral code? How do they live by it - or fail to live by it?

 

The second paper was to take a scene in the book and then spin off an imaginary scene. Doc drives off to collect marine specimens - the trip to his destination is described and certain things happen - but his journey back is not in the book - he just returns to Cannery Row. The students had to really live into the character and make a believable scene - and try to imitate Steinbeck's style. This is what my son wrote.

(scroll down to the bottom of the page, after Nina's poetry).

 

And I did read Cry, the Beloved Country - and really enjoyed it. My student and I talked about the wonders of the narrative - Paton's style and the simplicity and power of the story itself. Then I thought about why I might not have liked it when I was a teen - I think I didn't get it. I think the people and the setting were too remote from my experience for me to relate. But now, as a "worldly" adult, I was really moved by this book which is probably no longer considered PC which, if that's true, is just too bad. I think it's wonderful and I shall see if I can get Gabriel to read it over the summer. He knows a bit more about South Africa than I did at his age - I think it will amazxe him that it was written before apartheid really became all pervasive (1946). He knows about Nelson Mandela because he is someone I have talked about a lot - so I think Gabriel will be in a better place to work with this book than I was. I will also find a good book for him from a black South African point of view, to help him with context and with historical change. If anyone has any suggestions, I am open!