by Suzi Banks Baum ©

It all started with a shower gift from a lawyer friend of Jonathan’s. We were childfree, though very pregnant, living in our one room studio in Manhattan. You Are Your Child’s First Teacher was the book.

The gift was the message within the book, which took us both reading it to glean.

We are both children of teachers. We are familiar with teaching, with the importance of teachers in children’s lives. We’d grown up with education being highly valued in our homes.

But here, in this book there was a very different perspective on how, as parents, we shape and contour the lives of our children. It was here that we learned about Rudolf Steiner and Waldorf Education. We learned about silks and homeopathic remedies and over stimulation and the onset of the first teeth as that event relates to the right time for kids to start learning to read.

So, this book, curious and strange in its new approach to parenting had an impact on us. Equally curious and at times strange, Waldorf Education has had a major impact on our lives.

I could tell you about the journey of our 17-year-old son, now a student at the Great Barrington Waldorf High School. I could also tell you about the journey of our daughter Catherine, about to graduate from her 8th grade class this coming June. Instead, I will tell you about my journey, because that has made all the difference.

Sitting in the beeswax scented early childhood building across from Miss Becki Rozhon in the Rose Room of Great Barrington Rudolf Steiner School was where we began. Since moving to Hillsdale, New York from Manhattan, we had met a few families affiliated with the Hawthorne Valley School. We had a baby sitter, then a senior at HVS, who we both liked. Her manner with us, her ease with baby Ben, and the wealth of joy in creating that she shared as a babysitter made us curious about where she had been educated. When we moved from Hillsdale to Great Barrington, Ben enrolled at Gail Mullen’s in-home day care with a few other children who were to become his life long friends. Ben held his new baby sister Catherine up for his day care mates to see, standing in front of Gail’s beautiful handmade Advent calendar and the impression on me in that moment was wanting both of our children to be held in this gentle, colorful, grace filled way of Waldorf education.

So, we enrolled Ben with Miss Becki. He spent one semester at GBRSS, until Miss Becki left to start her own Waldorf kindergarten, Kinderhof, in North Egremont on a small farm in the woods.

It was there that I sat around the short legged wooden table and knit, felted, embroidered, make Advent lanterns, crocheted, peeled, sanded and polished things to be used by the children in the days they spent on that small farm. They played out in the woods, answering Miss Becki’s singing with their chorus of voices along moss lined paths, with horses and a fine set of chickens making days for them that I could never have created on my own.

I was called upon as a parent to not only support the school but to learn about how our children were learning and what we could do to enhance that experience at home. Miss Becki and Mr. Terry expanded what we learned in that first book and created a setting for our whole family to flourish.

When Mr. Sansone came to visit Ben’s class, the big kids of the Kinderhof, I was sure that Ben would be finely set for first grade at GBRSS. We made the transition to the grade school with ease and found that bigger community quite welcoming. Now, our skills were called on in bigger ways. Jonathan joined the Board of Trustees and offered his legal skills to the administration. We both took the training in Non-Violent Communication skills and Consensus Building. We helped build the maple sugar shack and made stuff for the Little People’s shop. We did all the things we were asked to do because it was so obviously valuable to support this school that so well supported the lives of our small children.

This journey holds so many chapters. I gardened with Ben’s class for 7 years and learned about biodynamics and seed saving. I learned about threshing grains that we’d grown and to make healing salve that we then sold. I learned to harvest calendula and dye our Michaelmas silks with the blossoms. I took on leading the Parents’ Association for 3 years, co-leading with Adrian Alcala for two of those years. I led the Parent’s Education committee creating a lecture series and special events for the parents. I wanted for others to enjoy the learning I was engaged in. The wealth within the school can be accessed at so many points, whether through working at the Fair or participating with Paul Marguiles’ study group or attending the Morris Men’s Solstice gatherings.

Everything I did had a direct impact on my mothering. My needle skills, already strong from my years doing couture and theatre work in NYC, were completely enhanced by sitting next to inspiring knitters at meetings, knitting squares for the Fair quilt and by offering increasingly excellent items to the Silent Auction at the Fair. As my children progressed in the grades, so my willingness grew.

To list all that I did, the lectures and workshops I attended would be dull. But this quote, above all the learning I have done in these 17 years of exposure to the Waldorf way of learning, captures it all:

“Enthusiasm is the light wings that carry us.”
Margaretha Eichenholz, Waldorf Handwork teacher

I have met the enthusiasm of my children’s teachers, Becki and Terry, Andrew Sansone and Tracy Brennan, with gratitude and been inspired by all they have offered my children. I have felt my own enthusiasm for Waldorf Education flourish as my learning expanded and my skills increased. How good it is to make things, to do these things well, to understand the wider implications of history as it relates to human development. What a joy to see a plant and see in that plant, the cosmos. What a blessing to celebrate the rituals of the calendar year with appreciation for the human qualities that they honor.

This journey has not been all joy and golden silks. There has been significant pain and loss. You enter in to class when the children are small and precious and move through periods of growth that are confusing and hard to navigate in a community. And, as each class is a family, you also suffer the losses of others and learn to hold and honor them as a community. Prayer shawls and food chains, phone trees and car pools connect us, but it is that enthusiasm that carries us through.

Not only have my skills been enhanced by this 17 yearlong journey, but my heart has learned many things too. I have stepped in to leadership and learned the grace of stepping out of it. I have grown to love people for the gifts they have offered me and my children in the way a family learns to love and accommodate members who are not your favorite, people who call out parts of me that I’d rather ignore.

None of this deeper learning is possible in a community with loose ties and low expectations. I don’t learn when all I am asked is to show up for parent teacher conferences once a year. I do learn when I am asked to accompany a class to the Egypt exhibit at the MET in NYC and spend hours sketching ancient eyes. I do learn when I am challenged to let go of ways of being that are not harmonious with what my child is learning in school.

When I look back at that book by Rahima Baldwin, I hold it as I hold a key to a kingdom. I hold it in gratitude for the world it led me in to. I hold it in sadness for all I could not do to make things better than I did. I hold it in grace for this key is now firmly settled in to my children’s way of being, they are now the children I admired 17 years ago- tall, upright individuals who can look adults in the eyes and offer their hands in greeting.

Enthusiasm has carried us thus far in our lives as parents of Waldorf educated children. It has carried us as members of this community. And it has carried us as a family who share songs and grace, celebrations and ways of being we could never have learned anywhere else. This kingdom of childhood grows and expands with every year, offering stunning new vistas without and within.

Blessings on this day.

Published in the Spring 2012 Mosaic Newsletter of the Great Barrington Rudolf Steiner School (PDF).