Celebrating the 9Th Year of Glenaeon Teacher Intensives
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CELEBRATING THE NINTH Peggy Day Glenaeon Rudolf Steiner School YEAR OF GLENAEON TEACHER Sydney, NSW, Australia TRAINING INTENSIVES Peggy Day is currently the lead writer of the elemental life and so on. Next to it was the Australian Steiner Curriculum Framework, and question- how do I bring this to children? I knew has recently become Coordinator of the one shouldn’t explain it. I had completed a Education Section of the School of Spiritual degree in English and German Literature and Science (Anthroposophical Society for Psychology and decided to become a teacher. Australia). Because this edition 16 of our While doing a post-graduate education Journal is dedicated to Peter Glasby (the former qualification I visited all the alternate schools in coordinator of the Education Section in Sydney in 1979. Australia), it is timely to hear from Peggy as to her connections and contributions to Waldorf The last school I visited was Glenaeon School. I Education over many years. Peggy has also had read several of Rudolf Steiner’s educational volunteered to join me in being co-editor of this lecture series and knew a few parents. I stayed Journal so we thought an interview style of to have a look for a month, not a day as telling her story might be the most appropriate! planned, and then was asked to begin a short NC (ed.) term class teaching contract for a teacher coming out from Emerson in four months, then How did you find your way to Anthroposophy? another four months for a teacher on leave and so it was a wonderful, gentle beginning. The I was fortunate in my teens to have teachers fairy tales, numbers, letters were first and then I who inspired a deep love of learning. Outside jumped to Norse Myths, Human and Animal and school I was able to study the many Local Area. Quite an introduction! This was philosophies of the time. It was the early 70s, a followed by some years in Early Childhood, then time of great searching by youth. A family some time Class Teaching, teaching a High member worked at the Theosophical bookshop School subject and then Teacher Training. in Sydney which facilitated my wide reading greatly. By the age of 21 I was studying at When you first began at Glenaeon, how did you Sydney University by day as well as with four become acquainted with what you had to teach? main people in the evenings. One had been a What was available to learn more about the student of the modern Rosicrucian path for 25 education and study Anthroposophy? years, another was a gifted healer, a third was an Anthroposophist who lectured in Natural There was no training in the Southern Health, and the final one was an elderly man Hemisphere in 1980. Sitting in on classes for a who was a student of the Pythagorean School. month and reading further of Rudolf Steiner’s lecture series as well as Marjorie Spock’s And to Waldorf education and Glenaeon in Teaching as a Lively Art, Harwood’s The particular? Recovery of Man in Childhood, Francis Edmunds and Child and Man extracts - these During that following year I wrote a list of many were small beginnings. What really carries one things I knew had deeper spiritual dimensions is a great love for the children. Sylvia Brose, the e.g. numbers, colours, sound, the word, founder of the school, was a grounded and JOURNAL for Waldorf Education Vol. 16.1, April 2014 25 intelligent guide who left me free while Sylvia Brose who worked with teachers and supporting my early years with study and clear parents, a secretary, bursar and very part-time and open conversation. We read as a faculty; library support. Knowledge of Higher Worlds, Occult Science and Willi Aeppli’s Care and Development of the At what stage of Glenaeon’s development did Human Senses. I was given some sample main the impulse come to become involved in tertiary lesson books and somehow understood the training? Can you tell us a little about your work three-fold work. My earlier studies of the realm in teacher training? of the spirit were actually the great support as Sylvia Brose trained in Edinburgh and London everything of the background spoke to me, but I and when she came back to start the first school had to learn so much still of the teaching in 1957 she soon organised and held informal technique and the arts! In the classroom it was a weekly teacher training which a range of current great help to be an idealistic girl in my early and future teachers attended. She also invited twenties, full of enthusiasm as the children out Francis Edmunds, Ron Jarman, Helmut von responded so warmly to this, which gave me Kügelgen and Edwin Ayer. time to build classroom skills. When Parsifal College was formalising a course, I remember thinking how wonderful it would be if Sylvia Brose and Erwin Berney planned a term for each main lesson there was a folder with key each. The full-time, two-year course grew from background indications for the educational work, there. and for in-depth understanding of the content such as botany or history as well as classic I had written the 1996-7 reaccreditation syllabus poems, suitable verses and inspiring drawings for the Education Year and a Graduate Diploma as a kind of springboard while one learnt their while on maternity leave and then I became way. That is quite interesting of course, given coordinator in 1999. the task that emerged 30 years later on the I lectured in Steiner pedagogy, festivals, Australian Steiner Curriculum. biography, storytelling and early childhood How was the school governed and managed in education. When the Education Year syllabus those days? re-writing was done again in 2004 and 2009, the challenge was to write in such a way that the There was a faculty and a somewhat smaller essence was protected but the language was College of Teachers as well as the School accessible to the university professors who were Council. Sylvia was a clear leader who gave on the accreditation panel. weekly staff development on the curriculum and there was also always one of the arts How did the Glenaeon Intensives begin and undertaken by the staff at this session. The what questions and requests came from outside faculty/college study session was at lunch time your school that inspired you and colleagues to or during a free lesson in two or three groups. begin the Intensives? We had a facilitator, Graham Harvey, with a I was coordinating the full-time course which Social Development training who was at every was our ideal, a full two-year training. Schools faculty and college meeting, study and approached us at the twice yearly Australian mandated group, and quietly supported healthy Rudolf Steiner Schools meeting saying that they processes. The whole school was on one would have two or three new teachers with no campus and single streamed, and, for 400 training or background in Steiner Education at children, the only administration comprised 26 JOURNAL for Waldorf Education Vol. 16.1, April 2014 the beginning of the following year. Could we mandatory curriculum for all schools, which saw not hold a week on the basics of Pedagogy, the writing of an Australian Steiner Curriculum Child Development, what a Main Lesson was, for recognition and we had to meet the Morning Circle, Form Drawing and so on? We integration of this opportunity. Of course schools held one five-day combined course for eight or had diverse curriculum documents and for nine new teachers at different class levels. It Australia it was a time to re-assess where the was pioneering work. The success has been in individual schools traditions had come from, no small measure due to Andrew Hill and Ann sometimes years before, and to look anew at Jacobson who have been key tutors for each the curriculum in essence and in relation to each year level from the beginning, and have taken place, group of children and time. through several cycles as class teachers and undertaken teacher training for well over a And currently? What format and themes have decade. Diane Tatum always carried the developed? Can you tell us something of this eurythmy, child observation and drama. year’s theme - the teacher as a time artist, and developing imagination, Inspiration and Can you tell us about the growth of the intuition? Intensives over the years? I understand that initially there were intensives for specific class We hold Classes 1-7 in the same week. We levels in January, April and September begin each day with singing and then universal holidays? lectures each morning followed by class specific workshops until 5.30. In the evenings are Six years ago registration of teachers in festivals (fire sticks), astronomy sky observation Australia become more formalised and many and trips to the beach for a swim and dinner! long term Steiner teachers who had done in- We now have around 170 class teachers that school apprenticeships or unrecognised training come each year and many have been for 5, 6, 7 retired early and teachers from a mainstream or more years and are on their second cycle. training were being employed to fill the gap. It Some completed two years training with us but was quite a difficult challenge. Holiday courses come back each year to deepen the next stage were an opportunity for teachers, new to Steiner of the curriculum and share ideas and Education, to do an intensive training while friendships.