A third-grade class uses artistic work to engage in their academic studies.
While their counterparts in public school are preparing for state-required Standards of Learning tests, students at the Richmond Waldorf School are learning to play violin, memorizing Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and practicing their German pronunciation.
Such activities are an integral part of the Rudolf Steiner education principles in practice at more than 250 Waldorf schools around the world. Celebrating its 100th year, Waldorf education began in Stuttgart, Germany, and is built around a holistic development model that engages children’s interests through tactile learning and social interaction. The Richmond school was founded in 1996 as the Spring Meadow Waldorf School in a house on Laburnum Avenue to offer an alternative to traditional public and private schools.
That first class of 14 kindergarteners was the start of an odyssey that would see the school grow to 85 students by 2002, also adding first, second and third grades by that time. Growth prompted a move in 2003 to the Westover Baptist Church in Westover Hills, where it added fourth and fifth grades and changed its name to Richmond Waldorf School. The school spent the next 15 years at that location, adding more classes and graduating its first eighth-grade class in 2009.
By 2016, Richmond Waldorf was looking for a new, permanent home in which it could expand and plan for the long term. At the same time, the Luther Memorial School on Robin Hood Road was facing financial difficulties that would force it to close after 160 years in operation. With the help of a capital campaign and a loan from Virginia Community Capital, Waldorf purchased the building in April 2017 for $1.85 million and opened its new location that September.
“It had just gotten to the point that we were bursting at the seams,” says longtime teacher Katie Bullington.
Bullington acknowledges that the location presented some challenges, such as concerns about fumes from the highway overpass and traffic volume at the intersection of Robin Hood and Brookland Parkway.
“Hopefully, it will get better as we plant green barriers,” she says. Still, Bullington adds, Luther Memorial “left a great deal behind in classroom equipment and technology, so it made the move much easier.” Now the school is working on a capital campaign for renovations to include a new roof, solar panels, LED lights and other sustainable initiatives, according to Valerie Hogan, the school’s marketing and enrollment coordinator. That initial campaign, Building a Greener Future, aims to raise $455,000. It’s the first step of a three-part effort to raise $1.3 million to rejuvenate the aging building.
Middle school students participate in a movement arts class that uses performance and partner work to help them develop spatial awareness, understand group dynamics, and learn how to lead and follow.
Waldorf enrolls nearly 150 students, a third of whom are in early childhood programs, beginning with parent-toddler classes for 18-month-olds and continuing through kindergarten. These programs build on the Steiner principles of active engagement and creativity, with hands-on activities, art and music throughout the day. Hogan says that approximately two-thirds of their early childhood students make the transition to Richmond Waldorf’s elementary and middle schools.
It is in these programs that Waldorf and the Steiner method diverge radically from other schools. Beginning in first grade, students start with a single teacher and a class of 15 students with whom they will progress through the next eight years.
“It created a really great family for us, and you really find the teacher loving them as people and knowing their ins and outs,” says Kristin Caskey, whose daughter is now a junior at Open High.
Megan Nelson, a parent of fourth and seventh graders at the school, says that the single-teacher model has its ups and downs: “It can be really wonderful, but sometimes a reset would be nice.”
Bullington acknowledges that students can feel some fatigue as they prepare to move on to high school, but she emphasizes benefits such as teachers “getting to know the children really well, including their backgrounds” and the opportunity to “build rituals, common memories and centering experiences that give us the chance to create a spiral of learning.”
Second graders learn knitting in a handwork class, which integrates left- and right-brain thinking, strengthens hand-eye coordination, and helps students develop the will to complete a task.
The Steiner method is built around creativity, active learning and arts integration. Students engage in archery, discus and javelin throwing at recess and are required to learn a musical instrument. Olivia Lockwood, a former Richmond Waldorf parent, says she loved that for homework, students are told to “teach your parents what you learned today and practice your musical instrument.”
In the classroom, students are just as likely to be learning Russian and German or how to grind wheat into flour as they are to study eurythmy, a rigorous blend of dance and movement, or world history. The lack of textbooks, grades and tests does present some anxiety for potential parents and students — and means an adjustment when students move on to high school. Parents interviewed for this article, however, said that those trade-offs were worth being part of the community. Moreover, Melissa Bradner says, “The biggest long-term benefits, besides education, are in mental health and the integration of arts as a way to build skills to combat those issues.” Bradner’s son is now a junior at Trinity Episcopal School, and she cited as specific mental health benefits a greater sense of self and reduction of grade-driven anxiety.
That sense of well-being also extends to the faculty. While public schools are struggling to retain qualified, experienced teachers, Waldorf has had a high faculty retention rate. Bullington is a prime example, having joined Richmond Waldorf straight out of graduate school in 2001. Now her two sons are fourth and eighth graders there. The school provides opportunities for “reciprocal mentoring,” where new and veteran teachers work together to improve and expand their teaching.
Asked what she would change now that the school is settled in on North Side, Bullington says, “I wish more people knew what we were offering and how it aligns with cutting-edge research in neurological development and learning.”
A teacher herself, Caskey appreciates how the school brings in experts in their subject areas who broaden the sense of possibility for students. In her daughter’s class, for example, a visiting female engineer taught math and algebra.
“It was really great for kids to see a practicing, strong woman instead of just learning out of a textbook,” she says.
When asked for the best aspect of the Waldorf experience, Nelson answers quickly: “the emphasis on letting kids be kids for longer than they get in public schools really lets kids develop at their own pace, which we really love.”
