Professional development for Waldorf teachers and homeschool parents

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

Under the guidance of an experienced class teacher, you’ll discover ways to enliven your teaching and learn how to approach the blocks so that they may meet the sixth 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 sixth grader in depth as he or she enters early adolescence. 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 be chock-full of such key sixth grade topics as:

• Roman history and the early Middle Ages
• New math concepts, including business math and the percentage
• Geometrical drawing with compass and straight edge
• Geography
• Sciences, including earth science, physics, and observational astronomy

These subjects will be supported by explorations in art, music, and movement, giving you practical tools to take into your school year.

In addition to the 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.

Useful grade-specific resource materials, including poems, songs, stories, and main lesson book ideas, will be provided to you when you arrive on campus.

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

 

You may also be interested in one of these workshops taking place June 29-July 1, immediately proceeding the start of your course: Singing & Dancing Together in Grades 1-6: Musical Activities for Your Class, or (for new, untrained teachers) Waldorf Weekend: Foundations and Fundamentals of Waldorf Education from Early Childhood through High School.

 

Lead Instructor 

Karen Crandall is a class teacher at the Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs, NY, where she currently teaches sixth grade. This is Karen’s third class cycle; she led her first class, grades one through eight, from 1993-2001 and her second class from 2007-2012.  Karen has chaired her school’s Teacher Development Committee since 2010 and sits on the Collegium. A seasoned Sunbridge “Grades” instructor and a facilitator of our pedagogical leadership workshops, Karen holds a BFA from Penn State University and an MSEd from Sunbridge College.

Students who took a previous Grades course with Karen had this to say:

~ The course was very helpful. I loved how Karen adjusted (it) to meet our needs.

~ Karen was very knowledgeable and shared many tips/resources to help us build confidence and have a good starting point.

~ This course was very satisfying and helpful. The study was the most effective study I have ever experienced.

~ I loved Karen’s thoroughness.

~ What heart and knowledge!  Karen is very real and reassuring. Please invite her back!

 

Schedule
Sunday, July 1: Optional campus tour 5:30-6pm; Registration 6-7pm; First session runs from 7-9pm
Monday, July 2-Thursday, July 5: Classes begin each day 8-8:30am and run through 5:30-6pm, with an hour for lunch and short mid-morning and mid-afternoon breaks.
Friday, July 6: Classes begin 8-8:30am and end between 12-1pm, with a mid-morning break.

Fee
$825 (includes all materials and non-refundable $75 registration fee).

Discount Options

10% discounts on subsequent registrations (of equal or lesser value) automatically appear on your registration form when selecting more than one title. (Exception: Waldorf Weekend, which offers an $80 discount when selected as a subsequent registration.)

Currently enrolled Sunbridge program students receive a 30% discount and Sunbridge program graduates receive a 15% discount (not to be combined with any other offering). Discount instructions will appear on the registration form after you answer questions about your Sunbridge background in the Participant Profile section. (Account must be in good standing.) 

Schools registering 11 participants for any combination of 2, 3 and/or 5-day offerings will be rebated one tuition of the least expensive offering. (Rebate to be issued in August.)

 

 

Questions?
Please contact Penelope-Myles Voss, Admissions, Alumni, and Summer Coordinator, at [email protected] or 845-425-0055 x20

 

Sunbridge reserves the right to make faculty substitutions when necessary. See registration form for refund policy.