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A while back I had heard of Waldorf education, but before last weeks travel in Chengdu my understanding of Waldorf was limited only to hearing about it.

I really didn’t have any concept or understanding about Waldorf Education until the training started. The only

Chengdu Waldorf Campus

understanding I had came from bits and pieces on the internet. It was no problem for me to understand the name of this training—“spacial dynamics” separately, but, when combining these two words together I was lost. As a matter of fact, After the morning’s training we were still not clear to what it was exactly was. I can talk about these things later but first I’d like to stop here and talk about my feeling for Waldorf Education.

After a hard day on the 4th April, Mr. Pei and I settled ourselves into a fairly clean place. Mr. Pei is working for Guan Ai Elementary School as a Grade 3 Math teacher, Grade 6 P.E teacher and public health cadre member. When thinking about that day, perhaps as the date number was quite “lucky”, the expected prosperous trip became a mission impossible. After a lot of difficulties, we finally found a place to stay, and crammed ourselves with food. When we got out from that unnamed restaurant I noted it was already 11pm.

We got up at 6:30 a.m., the next morning, it was not because that we were willing to get up early, it was just because that we had forgotten the time for registration. Then, on Saturday morning, we were just like two crazy guys, hanging around the gate for a while, which was guarded by an ‘Iron General’. Later, we were invited by the Master who just finished washing his face to come into school. As the saying goes: “The early bird catches the worm.” At that time in the morning we had nothing to do. So we thought that taking a walk around campus sounded good and it would be a good chance to take in the campus atmosphere before training.

The Waldorf in the morning is peaceful and moving. Seen from the school out-gate, there is an ordinary-looking front-yard. However, on threading our way to the back yard, we could not stop to wonder at the spacious big yard where there were bamboo trees, ponds, pavilions, and houses on the terrace. The main spectacle in this big yard was a throng of ducks drifting on the pond which added vigor to this beautiful scene. Seen from the building, the big yard was a blanket of green, with bird’s singing, which created a harmony between campus and nature. As far as I was concerned, children’s spirits can grow purely in this place and can be spared from the harassment from the outside world.

As we were taking pictures while walking we didn’t realize it was the time for training. There were around 30 students; the majority of them were teachers and students’ parents. There were not many people like us who had come from far away. At 9 o’clock sharp, a teacher from North Carolina, Whitney, turned up, who was 50 years old and in great form. He asked us to stand up and follow her in doing a simple set of warming-up exercises. The lecture later on had lots on about the philosophy of “Sports” integrated into it, and the tutor also mentioned about the interrelation between the “thinking, feeling, and willing”. After finishing the morning’s classes, I was confused by the meaning of “spacial dynamics”, as for me, it was a bit of a “superstructure”. However with that in mind I decided to take things as they come and see what she would do next.

Whitney

That afternoon, things got a lot better and the tutor taught us some very good games. I am very familiar with this section, after all, I have been working in this field for a year, but, today, the tutor presented us in a brand-new view on things. Designing games according to children’s mental development, which we had been vaguely aware of before but were not sure of where to start. For instance, children in Grade 1 and Grade 2 almost don’t have any self-awareness and as a result we must design group play games. As children of this age have quite strong imitative power, tutors don’t have to explain too much and during the course of playing games only have to guide the students through it once. I felt that it was a quite fruitful experience for us, and it also provided us with a significant direction to study and to explore in the future.

As the complete picture of the training was revealed to us we began to feel more comfortable with it. “Spacial dynamics” is only a code word behind which are an abundance of probing, practical experiences and philosophical thought. By means of explanation, gymnastics, form drawing, games and other components, the participants learnt about the conceptual interrelationship between “thinking, feeling, and willing”. Sports is a very good training and performance method: by letting students participate in effective sports, not only can it make them love sports, but they can also practice their abilities in many fields and at the same time can improve students’ inter-class study abilities. We can design students’ sport activities according to their age level and enhance children’s mental growth. One of the key mottos of Waldorf is: when to teach is much more important than what to teach. However, in China, the majority of our schools are still unaware of this idea, and we only focus on the “thinking” cultivation. Among “thinking, feeling, and willing”, some even ignore the “thinking”. It is indeed quite worthy of learning from Waldorf’s ideas, experience and theoretical knowledge.

Of course we learned some other things, such as you can divide children’s characteristics into the fire element, water element, soil element, and wind element. Teachers must get to know well every child and design management theory according their special characteristics. I spoke a lot with teachers, and learnt some experience and control methods to use in class which will be quite precious resources.

The training was over, but the new thinking was brought out. Lots of things that should be done are waiting for us. The burden on our shoulders is heavy and the road is long.

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