It’s time to let the wholeness of the child engage with the wholeness of the world.
WHAT IS
AND HOW DOES IT WORK?
To the extent that we narrow the purpose of schooling to what can be measured, we fail to
engage those sides of children that must be developed in order for them to pull learning
from life. We also increase the likelihood that
they will be bored, question the value of school,
and in some cases even drop out.
Instead of starting with the questions “How do we prepare kids to compete in the 21st century
global marketplace?” or “What will insure that graduates all have command of basic skills?”,
suppose we start by asking what qualities we want to encourage in children as they grow toward
adulthood.
Guilford Elementary
Guilford, VT
Guilford Central has an outdoor classroom for every grade level, pre-K through 6. Students engage in a farm to school program, learning about nutrition, and spend a large part of every day outdoors.
East Kingston Elementary School
East Kingston, NH
East Kingston illustrates what can be achieved at a rural school that is small enough so that each child is known well and with whole child practices can grow and be nurtured to reach his or her full potential.
OUR
RESOURCES
Educate the Whole Child expects to offer a graduate level 12-credit certificate–Teaching the Whole Child. It will consist of four online courses that may be taken as a series or independently. See details here.
Whole Child Education
The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) convened a Commission on the Whole Child in 2006. It subsequently issued an important report and has resources at its whole child website.
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The Recovery of Man in Childhood
A. C. Harwood, The Recovery of Man in Childhood, 2nd edition provides the best in-depth introduction to child development and education from a Waldorf point of view in one volume.
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