Today my students and I worked on packing and cleaning up the classroom. It was a nice reminder of how good it is for them to have the care and maintenance of the classroom be a part of our work together. They were so inspired to pull things apart, take everything off the shelves, scrub the woodworking, and dust in places that have been long forgotten about. They found composition books from last year that we’d been saving just-in-case and they loved going through — seeing their old handwriting and drawings. They realized how hard it is to clean dried paint off of their painting jar holders, and I know at least one of them will be much more careful to avoid spilling in the future.
These are the kinds of things that remind me that education in a Waldorf school is a whole-life education. We are working with so many different aspects of our students’ development, though it is so easy to get pulled into focusing just on the academic. I love that I have the opportunity to get to know my students in so many different ways, and to help them learn so many different things.
Thanks for the great article. I really enjoyed reading about how you let the students participate in cleaning. I think this is so important!
I also wrote a bit about cleaning up for the end of the year. I thought you might enjoy my post: http://luria-learning.blogspot.com/2011/06/packing-and-cleaning-up-your-room.html
Sacha