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 third grade school year in five days brimming with discussions, presentations, and the arts.

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 third grade child in depth as they experience the nine-year change. 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 third grader in a deep and meaningful way. 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 third grade topics as:

• Finding, crafting, and telling stories from the Torah (Five Books of Moses) as well as Indigenous Cultures throughout the world
• Developing literacy
• Expanding arithmetic skills
• Teaching time and measurement
• Ways of approaching farming and house-building
• Cooking as creative connection to culture, family and community. 

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

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 

Elana June Margolis is currently completing her second first-fourth-grade loop at the Brooklyn Waldorf School. At BWS she also holds the seat of grades chair and head of the New-to-Waldorf Teacher Mentorship Program, and is actively involved in the work of Undoing Racism. Prior to joining the Brooklyn faculty, she served as a grades one-four class teacher at the East Bay Waldorf School. A graduate of Hampshire College and the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training,  Elana June is a passionate storyteller, playwright, and performance artist. She is a Queer Jewish teacher, ritualist, and Hebrew Priestess with a particular devotion to cultivating fresh, meaningful, aligned translations of ancient Hebraic texts. For more information about Elana June’s passions and her work, please check out her website.

Elana June told us this about her upcoming course:

“The third grade curriculum has something special to offer not just to the nine-year-old in their time of change, but to the world, as we endure a time of enormous unravel, unknown and existential, political and ecological crisis. One could say there has never been a better time to be a third grade Waldorf teacher!  Through our course work together, we will explore ways the curriculum can support and nourish your students, yourself, and your wider community. 

“Additionally, we will delve into translations of ancient stories that allow us to stay aligned with contemporary values and to begin to vision an ever more Liberated world for all peoples.” 

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

Schedule

This course takes place July 3-8 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: 4.50 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 facilitator-led discussions.

Cost
$600 includes all resource materials, yearlong access to Kelly Beekman’s art portal and your Sunbridge Grade Three 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 out three weeks prior to 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. See registration form for refund policy.