College of Teachers – Growing with Purpose

“Receive the child in reverence, educate him/her in love, and let him/her go in freedom. . . . Our highest endeavour must be to develop free human beings who are able of themselves to impart purpose and direction to their lives.” 

These words encapsulate Waldorf Education, but what of the teacher? Here too, the aim is to create conditions where staff are able to unfold their potential.

How can College contribute to this? Steiner, like the late poet Seamus Heaney sees a strong role for art in human unfolding. Heaney also talks about the way we live between moments of inspiration and intuition will affect the nature of the inspiration we receive. 

Hence every morning in the primary and in the high school a small group meets to speak meditative verses to orientate themselves and the school to positive energies. 

Also, we do a little art in the College meeting to nurture the soul and spirit- some singing and what in German they call speech formation. This is closely related to eurythmy – a movement to poetry or music. We sometimes do a little of that too, to help the speech to be freer and more expressive. 

The College is also a place to debrief, to share successes, to offer and receive assistance where appropriate and to deepen our experience and understanding of Waldorf Education. So, the College has a study component and this term the focus will be on meditation. The text we will study will be Arthur Zajonc’s book “Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry”. Zajonc is a professor of Physics and a long term mediant – he has been meditating as long as he has been a physicist. 

I have a poem to add from a New Zealand poet and friend.

Tending the landscape of the heart

(i)

It’s taken a while but I‘m tending the landscape

the ground of the heart with its pacing and racing

knowing the virtue of dung as a rung

in the ladder of angels reclaiming the soil

of the cunning of weeds as they mimic the leaves

of the plants that I cherish It’s taken a while

but I’m reading the breeze in the shimmer of grass

and cutting back cutting back unwanted foliage

crowding out saplings that reach for the sun

(ii)

I listen to the bellbird sing

a song I carry deep within

it gives me leave to filter out

the sorry notes of discord.

I plant the seeds that ease the mind

with cadences of contours bright

without the briars to rip the flesh

and fill the blood with rancour

(iii)

Here’s the harvest come and gather

singing songs of earth and bounty

share with kin and care for strangers

home here in the bay of plenty

Terry Locke (Locke, 2019)

Neil Anderson
College Chair,

English, Maths and Geography Teacher