NOTE: This course is nearing or at capacity. Our registration form will indicate if it has sold out.  If so, we encourage you to sign up on our waiting list.

This course will be taught remotely in real-time. Details here. 

Professional development for Waldorf teachers and home school parents

This course offers you an invaluable opportunity to focus entirely on your upcoming first grade school year in five days brimming with discussions, presentations, and practical activities.

Under the guidance of a master class teacher, you’ll discover ways to enliven your teaching and learn how to approach the blocks so that they may meet the first grader in a lively and meaningful way. With the insights of anthroposophy, gleaned through a daily look at child development focusing on your class’s age group, you will get to know the first grader as they cross the bridge into elementary school. There will be time and space to consider and hone your skills in such practical matters as main lesson books, block planning, projects and activities, and classroom management.

Your course will include such key first grade topics as:

• Finding and telling the right fairy tales and nature stories for your class
• Introducing the first steps of literacy
• Qualities of numbers and the four processes in arithmetic
• Teaching form drawing, painting, drawing, modeling, and singing

In addition to inspiration and guidance which will support your teaching throughout the year, you’ll gain many invaluable opportunities for building connections among a community of parallel colleagues from across the country, to carry with you into your teaching.

Grade-specific resource materials useful for your year, including poems, songs, stories, and main lesson book ideas, will be provided to you electronically.

NOTE: This course is taught with the expectation that you have a background in Waldorf education. 

Lead Instructor

Elizabeth Doshi is a faculty member at the Ashwood Waldorf School in Rockport, Maine, where she has taught grade one for the last four years, either as a stand alone class or a combined grades one and two class. Before coming to Ashwood, she was a grades three-six class teacher at Cape Ann Waldorf School (now The Waldorf School of Moraine Farm), taught grades two, three, and four at the Lexington Waldorf School, assisted in grade four at Pine Hill Waldorf School, and, at the Waldorf Steiner School in Singapore, taught parent-child classes, parent education workshops, and enrichment for grade one. She completed her training at Antioch New England Graduate School and has a daughter who attended Waldorf schools from kindergarten to eighth grade.

Elizabeth told us: “I am looking forward to sharing with Sunbridge the ways that I have ‘gotten to the heart of things’ with my students by leading them to moments that speak to their experiences as young children. I am passionate about teaching young children the practice of being emotionally present even during conflict. It is through heart language that we learn that everyone has needs and that communicating these needs is an important, human deed. I am eager to share some tools that will allow my fellow teachers to unpack these hidden gems.”

Your course also includes sessions in art with Kelly Beekman and music with Monika Sutherland.

Schedule

This course takes place June 26-July 1 in a synchronous online classroom.

Sunday evening: 7-7:30pm technical check-in; first session starts promptly at 7:30 and ends at 9
Monday-Thursday: 4.5 hours of formal instruction delivered between 10-4:30
Friday morning: Last session runs 10-12
ALL TIMES LISTED ARE EASTERN (NY) TIME ZONE

NOTE: Participants should be prepared to work on course-related assignments outside of their regularly scheduled instructional sessions (including some that may be assigned in advance), as well as to be available to attend (optional) late afternoon and/or evening instructor-led discussions.

Cost
$600 includes all resource materials, yearlong access to Kelly Beekman’s art portal and your Sunbridge Grade One Google Classroom, and a $60 non-refundable deposit. See main summer page for discount options.

NOTE: Participants will be expected to procure some materials to use during their course. A materials list will be sent to you in advance of your course start date.

Questions?
Please contact Barbara Vitale, admissions and summer coordinator, at [email protected] or 845-425-0055 x20

Sunbridge reserves the right to make faculty substitutions when necessary.