How to Find Balance in Waldorf Homeschooling

I love THIS article. Of course it is by one of my favorite Waldorf authors, Roberto Trostli. He speaks throughout the article about balance, he also speaks tenderly about something we all worry about as Waldorf teachers... TIME.  Steiner suggested his teachers teach for two hours a day and have the rest of the time for preparation - of course that doesn't happen, even in the schools, but we can expect to put in 2+ hours for a lesson that may only last for 30-60 minutes. Sounds like a TON - it is.  How do we make this manageable?

Trostli says:
"The amount of time we need for preparation depends on how we go about preparing. If we think of preparation as a process of gathering information, we will probably spend a great deal of time trying to become well-informed, and we will probably never feel sufficiently prepared. If, however, we think of preparation as a process of becoming, a learning process that engenders interest and enthusiasm for what we will be teaching, we may not feel sufficiently prepared, but the qualities that we develop through our preparation will allow us to nourish our students."

He goes on to talk about how just as mother's milk is soul milk or spiritual milk for our babies, we can make the lesson material our own kind of soul milk by making the material our own "so that the students can ultimately make it their own."

I love what he says next... this is IMPORTANT!

"Thoroughly penetrating the material takes time,but not time measured in a linear manner. One might think that the more time spent preparing, the more one will know; the more one knows, the more the students will learn. Education doesn't work that way; it doesn't follow such logic. To truly master a subject, a long enough span of time must pass to allow us to separate the essential from the non-essential, the wheat from the chaff. When we don’t allow such time and try to cram ourselves with information, the material remains undigested in our souls, and we give the students stones instead of bread. Because we have been unable to transform the material, we tend to present it as a set of abstract concepts instead of living pictures."

Oh and this part of the article... really you should just read it, but this part...

"When the prophet Elijah climbed Mount Horeb to stand in the presence of God, the Lord passed by, and a great strong wind rent the mountains and broke rocks in pieces, but the Lord was not in the wind.  After the wind came an earthquake, and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. After the fire came a still small voice. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle, for that was where God was-in that still small voice. That still small voice can tell us a great deal of what we need to prepare ourselves for our teaching, but we must commit ourselves to creating the space and the time to listen. Once we begin to listen to that voice, we gain confidence in the reality of the spiritual world and in the sources of divine inspiration."

The article goes on to talk about some deeper Steiner ideas and even if you don't totally agree with them, they can still be of use in your life.  He discusses the polarization that can happen if we live too much in the world of beauty and art and don't properly ground ourselves.  He uses terms that may catch you off guard if you are new to reading Steiner's actual work - don't let the terms stress you out and don't think you have to agree with it all.  I find it VERY easy to see these polarities in our day to day living. As moms and as teachers at the same time, we have to be very aware of them and use our will forces to balance them and stand in the center.

The article is directed toward teachers in a school setting, but can very easily apply to us as homeschool teachers, working to balance teaching, home and family.

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