for waldorf/rudolf steiner education

Vol 22, November 2020 ISSN 1178-136X print ISSN 2703-3333 online

For Waldorf/Rudolf Steiner Education

Trauma-informed teaching in Steiner education: Dr. Tom Brunzell

Healing Trauma: Dr. Mariane Judd

Guiding Thoughts to Support Trauma-informed Practice: Barbara Baldwin

Working Together with Colleagues: Valentin Wember

Social Renewal: Paul Martin

College Talks: Robert Martin

Pedagogical Section Report: Peggy Day

Book Reviews:

The Inner Life of the Waldorf Teacher

Developing Judgement Competence: Manfred von Mackensen

Brigid of Iona: Diane Tatum

Calendar

Journal for Waldorf/Rudolf Steiner Education Vol. 22, November 2020

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EDITORIAL October 2020, Sydney, Australia

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the 2020 Australia/New Zealand Journal for Waldorf/Rudolf Steiner Education.

This year has been one that has required the charting of steps into new ways of being, under challenging circumstances and we dedicate this journal to all teachers in Australia for their striving and their devotion to the children. The teachers truly are the heart centres of our schools. Dr Tom Brunzell writes out of his strong dedication and many years of experience working with trauma-affected children in the USA and at Berry Street, Victoria. His advocacy for these children and his perception of their needs has led to a deep understanding of approaches and strategies that empower them to have the freedom to engage in a rich education and relationship with others and the world. He invites us to courageously work together to integrate our Anthroposophical understanding and diverse modalities in service of the children. In this light we have included Dr Mariane Judd’s lecture from the Extra Lesson Trauma Conference April 2020 with a focus on the twelve senses and the therapeutic strategies used in Extra Lesson to heal disturbances to the four lower senses with a special consideration of the relationship between the lower and higher senses as indicated by Rudolf Steiner. The building of relational attunement to the child to allow for co-regulating and healing is also emphasised here. Barbara Baldwin, a curative education consultant and trainer, after reflecting on some of the repercussions of schooling at home during the pandemic, gives us a window into the research and work of Bernd Ruf, looking at theories of holistic stabilisation and post-traumatic growth as well as reminding us of Rudolf Steiner’s indications based on the Pedagogical Law and the 4-fold human being. Valentin Wember’s lecture in January at the Class Teacher Intensives, dramatically engaged us in living pictures of what active inner work with another human being might look like through elaborating his own experience with colleagues, Rudolf Steiner’s deep considerations and the lives of Schiller and Goethe. Here we see how healing conflict can be an inner, creative deed of the human being. Each of these approaches clearly identifies the importance of the teacher’s own inner life and thus we are privileged to bring three college talks from the Melbourne Rudolf Steiner School which through human connection and sharing of inspirations helped support teachers’ well-being during the pandemic. Paul Martin brings insights into social renewal and the presence in history of counter movements that arise. Robert Martin shares his experience of being aware of the beneficent presences that accompany one’s consciousness when one works with loving thoughts and goes on to review the distinction between hierarchical beings named in spiritual traditions. These talks can be a contemplative resource and we use both our finer perceptions and common sense to reflect on them. The Pedagogical Section Report hopes to provide glimpses into the often-invisible work of those in the initiative circle. While fully embedded in the world’s tasks, a special cooperation and dedication allows deep collaboration amongst these colleagues in service of the work, the children and the teachers. Peggy Day, Editor, Pedagogical Section Coordinator, Australia


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Finance: Enquiries re. distribution lists and finance, contact Peggy Day: [email protected]

Copy Edit: Fiona Campbell

Peer reviewers: Thank you to our peer reviewers. Those interested in joining the editorial team please contact the above email.

Published by: The Initiative Circles of the Pedagogical Section in Australia and New Zealand

Disclaimer: Responsibility for articles and illustrations lies with the authors and views expressed are not necessarily the opinions of the publishers, the Initiative Circles of the Pedagogical Sections of Australia/New Zealand.

Cover: The Caduceus with Roses, painting by Vanessa Snaith, Sydney. Rudolf Steiner mentions forming an inner imagination of the protective image of the shimmering and shining of the astral body newly enlivened each morning. (Steiner, R. (2006), Esoteric Lessons 1904-1909, CW 266-1, p. 393)

Next copy deadline: 1 April 2021. Contributions to the Editor, Peggy Day: [email protected] How to submit

Authors should submit their articles or reports as Word-documents attached to an email to the Editor.

Article preparation:

Title, name(s) of the author(s), the affiliation(s) of the author(s)

Please use Footnote Style: a number in superscript format placed in the text of the essay, indicating the relevant footnote. A footnote lists the author, title and publication details of a work and subsequent citations are given in a shortened form.

A full bibliography using APA referencing style of all works cited must be provided at the end of the article.

Body text: Calibri 12 Article Headings: Calibri 14 Author: Calibri 12 Line spacing 1.0 Mid or dark blue font.


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Resistance, Reconnection, Re-engagement: Trauma-informed Teaching in Steiner Education

By Dr Tom Brunzell, Director Education, Berry Street

The world now requires our collective efforts towards trauma-informed education. Our children are contending with levels of adversity that we could not have predicted. They are now continuously and vicariously exposed to the escalated reactions of adults trying to understand COVID-19, environmental devastation, systemic racism, and other pressing community concerns. Further, our expectations of what we thought schools should be and could be, have been continuously disrupted.

In this time, it is helpful to recall that in the wake of the human and social devastation of the First World War, Rudolf Steiner perceived the need for increasing consciousness of the therapeutic role of new methodologies in general education as well as an increasing role for the provision of curative interventions for children with special needs. He conceived of these as seed ideas for social transformation and healing more broadly—from individuals’ continuing self-education and healing through to ideas and initiatives for the renewal of the sciences (medical, agricultural etc.), the arts and the re-organisation of commercial and political life. It is undeniably positive that when encountering simultaneous systemic concerns, people are looking toward trauma-informed responses within the community and specifically the responsibility of schools to become trauma-informed to offer the restorative leadership our families require. The teachers we work with are witnessing compounding concerns with students’ resistance and weakening capacities to mitigate the negative impacts of adverse childhood experiences including abuse, neglect and family violence, vicarious exposure to community trauma, the negative impacts of technology—specifically social media—and the understandable need of parents and carers requiring support to raise their children. All schools have a choice to make: inclusion versus exclusion; education for some—or for all? We often hear this concern in our research with teachers struggling to meet the needs of students in their class groups: I’m

doing my best, but, at this point, I’m here for the kids that want to be here and are ready to learn.1 A helpful concept arising from the literature is unpredictability = risk which emerges as a theory which explains that in an uncertain and unpredictable world, we will do things to make the world feel less risky.2 These actions take the form in healthy and unhealthy, helpful and unhelpful behaviours. When some people perceive the world as unpredictable, they consciously turn towards predictable interactions such as connecting to loved ones and adhering to their own healthy life rhythms. However, when some people perceive the world to be unpredictable, they sway into unhealthy behaviours such as coping strategies trying to contend with life’s adversity. Our children are coming to learn that all stress is bad—and something to eradicate, deny or overcome. They are self-diagnosing their stress and feelings leading to anxiety and comparing themselves unchecked to false social media generated ideals. Left unmanaged, their thinking styles are being locked down in a cycle of catastrophising rumination. The opposite of this is for students to experience developmental resilience in which they are given a developmental challenge in the right ways at the right time.3

1 Brunzell, Stokes & Waters (2018), pp. 116-142. 2 Brunzell, Norrish, Ralston, Abbott, Witter, Joyce, & Larkin (2015a). 3 Brunzell, Norrish, Ralston, Abbott, Witter, Joyce, & Larkin (2015a).


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We want children to learn resilience strategies and know that they are capable of taking on life’s challenges with (1) flexible and accurate mindsets and (2) the ability to meet their own needs in healthy ways. Stress, therefore, can be managed as an opportunity to mobilise the body’s resources to learn from adversity and challenge. However, we are certainly aware of the acute needs of children who now have a stress-response on continuous high alert operating at a new baseline of hyper-vigilance, constantly looking for threats and opportunities to survive. The child receives the world through their senses; and this inner self-perception directly impacts (positively and negatively) on the child’s growing sense of moral understanding about the world and within the world. Given this, what then for children who in their first seven years have sense perception disrupted by violence, neglect, and developmental delays that present needs that are left unmet; and for children who cannot integrate sensory input because of their own complex unmet physical, energetic, thinking, and self-concept needs? The contention in this article and in trauma-informed research and practice development aiming to address these needs is guided by action research questions:

1. How can we reach and teach students who resist learning and require re-engagement to

themselves, the classroom, and their community?

2. How can trauma-informed teaching empower children to proactively seek support to meet

their own needs?

These two questions guide our work because we know our classrooms have students who cannot effectively listen to lessons; they are not benefiting from learning; they do not feel part of and resist the classroom community and healthy classroom relationships; and they feel that they are carrying their burden on their own, feeling shame, embarrassment and not feeling psychologically safe enough to proactively seek support throughout their day. The Increasing Frequency of Trauma-Affected Students

Trauma-aware teaching can be a helpful lens through which to see therapeutically-informed education.4 Once teachers learn the impacts of trauma and adverse childhood experiences on childhood development and on learning, they can apply this new awareness in their values and in the strategies they choose to employ within their classroom. Trauma-aware teaching is both an individual approach (i.e., everyone gets what they need to succeed) and a systems approach (i.e., our community is strengthened when we all understand the community impacts of childhood

adversity). Trauma is often defined as the overwhelming belief that the world is no longer good and safe. While adverse childhood experiences (i.e., trauma from abuse and/or neglect, violence, the loss of a loved one, mental illness in the family, etc.) occur for over 60% of all children, not all of these children are traumatised; rather a child can be referred to as trauma-affected if they experience the ongoing and unresolved negative impacts of adverse childhood experiences.5 We know that trauma is stored within the body6 and for families experiencing intergenerational trauma, the negative impacts can be severe from in utero to intergenerational impacts within a family’s genome.7

4 Brunzell (2019), pp. 3-5. 5 Cook, Spinazzola, Ford, Lanktree, Blaustein, Cloitre, & Mallah (2017), pp. 390-398. And National Child Traumatic Stress Network (2020). 6 van der Kolk (2017), pp. 401-408. 7 Brunzell et al. (2015a).


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Teachers may often see trauma-affected behaviours such as aggression, bullying, melt-downs (i.e., acting out behaviours); they can witness shutting down, resistance, withdrawal (i.e., acting in behaviours), and for many students who have complex unmet needs, teachers will witness both. Teachers will immediately recognise children who are developmentally unable to regulate their own stress responses (i.e., going from 0 – 100 in two seconds). They will also recognise students who are unable to separate feeling unsafe and worried about their identity in the online world and then unable to manage themselves in the classroom as a result of this preoccupation. In the Australian context, we must also recognise the disproportionate and devastating impacts of intergenerational trauma and racism upon Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families to understand the systemic reasons why Aboriginal education outcomes are far behind the rest of our country.8 If developing a healthy life sense means experiencing “how you feel” and developing a healthy sense of one’s constitution wherein you experience your body’s own wellness, then the opposite is sadly true.9 In our work, we explain that the vulnerable child is often seeking healthy power, empowerment and control. These are students who do not feel a connection to their own bodies. The impacts of hypervigilance and the body’s hyperaroused systems lead to a new baseline of stress tolerance within them. If a healthy life sense includes the effective balancing of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, then our work with escalated children is to create environments that support the effective regulation of sympathetic nervous system responses.10 Often, these students want what they want right now because they are looking to control the situation, their classroom, and their world. Their attempt to meet their own needs looks maladaptive to us. This makes sense when we consider that these children control very little of their world outside the classroom. They do not choose where they live, what they eat, where they go to school—so when they enter the safe and supportive classroom, they are looking to exercise their own power. This also makes sense when we realise that all of us are looking to exercise our own power in daily, effective ways. As adults striving for health and wellbeing, we called it ‘empowerment’, and we know how to seek empowerment and self-control in healthy ways. However, the children we are most concerned about are looking to dominate others because they have been dominated, or they aim to get the classroom escalated to their own hypervigilant frequency, or they are looking to exercise their power in the safest environment they know—the classroom. It is counterintuitive to teachers new to these ideas and often, we hear, “Why is he treating me like the enemy? I am trying to be the most supportive teacher he’s ever had…” To recall, unpredictability = risk. Often, children struggling with dysregulated behaviours are trying to create their own (maladaptive) rhythms and break the teacher’s rhythms as a form of grabbing attention and control in the classroom because these behaviours are meeting their needs—the only way they know how. Bottom-up & Top-down Regulation: An Integrative Approach From the field of traumatology, when meeting the needs of a trauma-affected young person, we now know that helpful and effective clinical and education supports are successful when learning environments facilitate the integration of bottom-up regulation with top-down regulation.

11 Trauma disrupts life rhythms and thus the body’s rhythms. Within trauma-informed practice, bottom-up regulation refers to the physical systems working together in the human being to regulate body temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, and the body’s responses to stress (the foundational

8 Australian Government (2020). 9 Soesman (1990), p. 20. 10 Soesman (1990). 11 Schore & Schore (2008), pp. 9-20.


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regulating capacities which allow us to be co-regulated by a nurturing adult in utero and in early childhood). Bottom-up regulatory approaches refer to the body and refer to the need to ask teachers to consider the body as a rhythmic being. We literally exist incarnate in the living beat of our heart rate’s rhythm, and when intervening with struggling children, it can be helpful to position the heart’s rhythm within the healthy rhythms of the classroom body in the lesson, the day, the week, the season and the year. Give that the physical body’s rhythms originate from our heart, we must see the heart as the place of intervention. In this heuristic model, life forces are generated from the heart, bottom-up, to regulate our responses and our thinking. A well-regulated body allows for clear, deliberate thinking to in turn regulate the body with the top down (thinking). In healthy, well-regulated children, their bodies do what their mind asks them to do: Sit still. Listen to the teacher. Wait for your turn. Participate in morning circle. The ability to think clearly in this heuristic model (when the child can follow the directions they are telling themselves) can be reframed as top-down regulation. Healthy development requires the capacity to think about and develop their capacity to learn as a child crosses the Rubicon into the middle years of their learning. Learning successfully is the integration of thinking capacities with regulatory capacities. Our growing understanding of child neurological and biological development confirms that indeed, approximately 10 years of age marks the beginning of adolescent brain maturation, a critical period when successful bottom-up and top-down integration must be nurtured.12 We are concerned when teachers, unaware of these ideas, attempt to address student dysregulation through top-down approaches for students who do not have the capacity yet to reflect and make better choices. Because trauma and chronic stress disrupt both bottom-up and top-down regulation, we must be even more aware of what our interventions are attempting to do. For instance, when a child has not made a good choice, a top-down approach dictates, the child

has clearly not made a good choice and thus requires a more effective or more restorative

conversation on good choices. A bottom-up approach suggests, the child made the best choice

his body allowed him to, and thus we need to provide more opportunities and healthy rhythms to

regulate the body for successful top-down integration—so that the next time we talk about good

choices, he’ll actually be listening. Although intervention with children is never as simplified as the aforementioned two pathways, the bottom-up/top-down approach has proven helpful for many educators. A Practical Strategy Approach through Bottom-Up Integration

Children who struggle in the classroom require both pre-emptive universal wellbeing approaches for the whole class and then targeted strategies aimed at their specific unmet needs. In the language of behavioural intervention for multi-tiered systems of support.13

Tier 1: Universal interventions for all students including future prevention strategies and opportunities to nurture wellbeing Tier 2: Additional targeted interventions that are appropriate within the class group for at-risk behaviour Tier 3: Requiring specialist support and requires individual planning and systems for specific students of concern

Although it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss Tier 3 interventions (which also require specific assessment and comprehensive knowledge of the student, their history and their school community), it is useful to propose opportunities for educators to understand the possibilities of

12 Arain, Haque, Johal, Mathur, Nel, Rais, Sandhu & Sharma (2013), pp. 449–461. 13 Victorian Department of Education and Training (2020).


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what they can do to provide Tiers 1 and 2 interventions for children who require deliberate strategies to enable safe and supportive classroom communities strong enough to support them in moments of escalation, dysregulation and fear. When considering Tier 1 classroom strategies from a bottom-up approach to instil and maintain healthy regulating rhythms, teachers should consider these strategies.14

• The role of breathing (i.e., breathing fast as a community in singing, games, play; and breathing slowly together in rest and quiet moments for learning).

• Co-regulation through side-by-side de-escalation (i.e., when students escalate, we must be aware of our own escalation to breathe with children and for ourselves).

• Patterned, repetitive, rhythmic and sensory integration movement activities (i.e., Eurythmy, craft, brain breaks, circle activities, singing, poetry).

• Helping students notice their own bodies in times of calm and times of physical escalation • Identifying with students what strategies they can do within the classroom to de-escalate and

return to the learning task. Our goal is to help struggling children proactively come to the adults in their life to recognise the signs of escalation in their own body and seek support before trying to meet their own needs in unhealthy ways. Tier 2 interventions can include (1) deliberate routines designed with specific students in mind (entering and exiting the lesson/classroom/school), (2) processes when the student requires extra behaviour support and cannot learn with the group and (3) strategies for learning (Extra Lesson). In our research and practice, successful Tier 2 strategies must focus teacher and student on individualised de-escalating strategies that the student can do, given the teacher’s permission (i.e., proactively seeking support before giving up, going to the sensory corner in the classroom, going for a walk with an administrator, keeping hands busy with craft while listening to a story, developing their own personal strategies to self-regulate and return to the group to continue learning).15 A Journey Towards Wellbeing for Struggling Students

Educators must recall that what makes a child successful is often obscured by the child’s daily struggles. As we consider and intervene with children, we must be careful to not have a fixed mindset in our own expectations by focusing only on the areas of developmental unmet needs. In the midst of identifying, understanding and providing strategies for students to successfully meet their own needs in the classroom, we must not forget: When is this student learning well? When is this student at her best? When is this student in the flow of learning? We must understand when the student is succeeding so we can recreate the conditions that empower the student to set higher expectations for themselves. Our hope is that as children and young people develop bottom-up regulation, they can indeed begin to learn about themselves and the world around them. At Berry Street16, our trauma-informed research and practice helps teachers to support students through five domains of practice that we have named the Berry Street Education Model.

17 Each one of our practice domains contains teacher strategies based-upon the emerging evidence from trauma-informed

14 Brunzell et al. (2015a). 15 Brunzell et al. (2015a). 16 Berry Street is one of Australia’s largest child and family welfare organisations including education

services and the Berry Street School, a multi-campus therapeutically-informed school in Victoria. The students at the Berry Street School have histories of educational disruption, complex unmet learning needs and often live in out of home care arrangements. www.bsem.org.au

17 Brunzell et al. (2015a).


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practice 18 wellbeing-informed practice positive psychology 19 and positive education, 20 and strategies for learning.21 Listed below, our practice domains each contain a mosaic of strategies that teachers can learn. Domain 1 – Body: Strategies to help students understand their own body’s responses to escalation including strategies for self-regulation, de-escalation, and mindful focus.22 Domain 2 – Relationship: Strategies to increase teacher capacity to nurture classroom relationships within the micro-moments of classroom management; developing co-regulatory strategies and creating healthy rhythms to create safe haven and secure base for relationships.23 Domain 3 – Stamina: Strategies to build incremental stamina for struggling learners to stay in learning tasks when encountering speed bumps in learning; to learn with a growth mindset24 and resilience25 along with emotional intelligence—particularly heated and confusing emotions.26 Domain 4 – Engagement: Strategies to increase willingness and engagement with learning.27 Domain 5 – Character: Strategies for students to identify and practice their own character strengths—and acknowledge “what is right with me”.28 Every year of a child’s struggle is yet another year their neurobiology makes their own body a dysregulated ‘other’ and thus requires additional intervention to create new pathways of learning and hope within the child. In our work to specifically support trauma-affected and stress-impacted children, regaining personal power is about empowerment. Struggling students are often the recipients of dominator values and dominator communication. We don’t behave like that here. If you don’t change your

behaviour, we can’t let you out to the yard today. Our job is to introduce a new kind of power, empowerment and freedom—one that allows students to make choices that they want to make, not ones they feel compelled to make or forced by their dysregulated body or fear of punishment. When working together through an intervention approach, Selg29 asks us to consider Steiner’s ways of observing children and “enter lovingly”, to deepen our own insight through love, when centring the child in our conscious awareness. Arising from the field of therapeutics, a helpful attitude to bolster our loving approach is ‘unconditional positive regard’30 wherein we as educators remember that a child is not defined by their resistant behaviour, but is a human being on a journey to wholeness; and it is up to us to provide the nurturing environment the child requires to cross through the threshold of developmental gates that have been missed or unprovided for, until our collective care. The practice and research presented in this article is an open invitation for fellow educators and allied systems professionals to work together to integrate and forward the values and aims of Anthroposophy, trauma-informed education, therapeutics, neurobiology and wellbeing. Together,

18 Brunzell, Stokes, & Waters (2016), pp. 218-239 & Brunzell, Stokes, & Waters (2019), pp. 600-614. 19 Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi (2000), pp. 5-183. 20 Kern, Waters, Adler & White (2015), pp. 262-271. 21 Witter (2013). 22 Brunzell et al. (2015a). 23 Kim, Woodhouse, & Dai (2018), pp. 1319-1332. 24 Dweck, (2007), pp. 34-39. 25 Seligman, Ernst, Gillham, Reivich & Linkins (2009), pp. 293-311. 26 Goleman (1996). 27 Brunzell et al. (2015a). 28 Peterson & Seligman (2004). 29 Selg (2008), p. 21. 30 Rogers (1961).


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we are renewing a journey that many of us know is needed in this time for our young people—and we must courageously work together.

Dr Tom Brunzell (MST, EdM, PhD) has experience as a teacher, school leader, researcher and

education advisor. Currently he is the Director of Education Services at Berry Street, and

Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne Graduate School of Education. He completed

Anthroposophy Foundation Studies at the Brooklyn Steiner School, NY, and completed his

Steiner teacher training at the Melbourne Rudolf Steiner Seminar, Warranwood, VIC. Tom

presents internationally on topics of transforming school culture, student engagement, trauma-

aware practice, wellbeing and positive psychology, and effective school leadership. His research

at the University of Melbourne investigates both the negative impacts of secondary traumatic

stress and the positive impacts of wellbeing on teachers and leaders working towards educational

equity in their communities.

References

Arain, M., Haque, M., Johal, L., Mathur, P., Nel, W., Rais, A., Sandhu, R., & Sharma, S. (2013). Maturation of the adolescent brain. Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment, 9, pp. 449–461.

Australian Government (2020). Closing the Gap Report retrieved from https://ctgreport.niaa.gov.au/

Brunzell, T. (2019). Trauma-aware teaching: Strengthening teacher practice so all of our students can learn. Teacher Learning Network Journal, 26(2), pp. 3-5.

Brunzell, T., Norrish, J., Ralston, S., Abbott, L., Witter, M., Joyce, T. & Larkin, J. (2015a). Berry Street

Education Model: Curriculum and Classroom Strategies. Melbourne, VIC: Berry Street Victoria. http://www.bsem.org.au Brunzell, T., Stokes, H. & Waters, L. (2016). Trauma-informed flexible learning: Classrooms that strengthen regulatory abilities. International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies, 7(2), pp. 218-239.

Brunzell, T., Stokes, H. & Waters, L. (2019). Shifting Teacher Practice in Trauma-Affected Classrooms: Practice Pedagogy Strategies Within a Trauma-Informed Positive Education Model. School Mental

Health, 11, pp. 600 - 614.

Brunzell, T., Stokes, H. & Waters, L. (2018). Why do you work with struggling students? Teacher perceptions of meaningful work in trauma-impacted classrooms. Australian Journal of Teacher

Education, 43(2), 116-142. DOI: 10.14221/ajte.2018v43n2.7 Cook, A., Spinazzola, J., Ford, J., Lanktree, C., Blaustein, M., Cloitre, M., & Mallah, K. (2017). Complex trauma in children and adolescents. Psychiatric Annals, 35(5), pp. 390-398.

Dweck, C.S. (2007). The perils and promises of praise. Educational Leadership, 65, pp. 34-39.

Goleman, D. (1996). Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. New York, NY: Bantam Books.

Kern, M. L., Waters, L. E., Adler, A., & White, M. A. (2015). A multidimensional approach to measuring well-being in students: Application of the PERMA framework. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 10(3), pp. 262-271.

Kim, M., Woodhouse, S. S., & Dai, C. (2018). Learning to provide children with a secure base and a safe haven. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 74(8), pp. 1319-1332.

National Child Traumatic Stress Network. (2020). Understanding child trauma and the NCTSN. Los Angeles, CA: National Child Traumatic Stress Network. Accessed on 31 August 2020 at https://www.nctsn.org/sites/default/files/resources/factsheet/understanding_child_trauma_and_the_nctsn_0.pdf

Peterson, C., & Seligman, M.E.P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. New York: Oxford University Press & Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.


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Rogers, C. (1961). On Becoming a Person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Schore, J.R., & Schore, A.N. (2008). Modern attachment theory: The central role of affect regulation in development and treatment. Clinical Social Work Journal, 36, pp. 9-20.

Selg, P. (2008). The Therapeutic Eye. Great Barrington, MA: Steiner Books.

Seligman, M.E.P., Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Special issue on happiness, excellence, and optimal human functioning. American Psychologist, 55(1), pp. 5-183.

Seligman, M.E.P., Ernst, R. M., Gillham, J., Reivich, K., & Linkins, M. (2009). Positive education: Positive psychology and classroom interventions. Oxford Review of Education, 35, pp. 293-311.

Soesman, A. (1990). Our Twelve Senses. Gloucesterchsire, UK: Hawthorn Press.

van der Kolk, B. A. (2017). Developmental Trauma Disorder: Toward a rational diagnosis for children with complex trauma histories. Psychiatric Annals, 35(5) pp. 401-408. Victorian Department of Education and Training. (2020). School-wide positive behaviour support (SWPBS). Retrieved from: https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/management/improvement/Pages/swpbs.aspx

Witter, M. (2013). Reading Without Limits: Teaching strategies to build independent reading for life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.


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Using The Lens of The Extra Lesson To Understand Ways Of Healing Trauma

Healing Trauma By Dr Mariane Judd, Educational and Developmental Psychologist, Extra Lesson Practitioner

This article is an edited transcript of the webinar I gave for The Extra Lesson Institute conference on healing trauma. The theme of the conference was ‘The importance of attachment and respectful

relationships in nurturing a foundation of resilience

across the lifespan’. I've used Extra Lesson as the foundation of my work for over 30 years as an Educational and Developmental Psychologist. The Extra Lesson is a neuro-developmental approach that involves the recapitulation of the first seven years of a child’s development. Audrey McAllen, who developed The Extra Lesson, talked about the structural physical body as involving the bones, muscles, and nerves and the constitutional physical body as the functioning of our organs, as the awareness of the inner physiological state. Attachment is the emotional bond formed between people. It is considered of primary importance for an infant to form an attachment with at least one caregiver. Allan Schore,31 a researcher in the area

of attachment, states that ‘attachment promotes self-regulation to allow new and more complex resilient relationships between individuals and the social environment’. Our nervous system, through our senses, is designed to detect threat32 and its development is very vulnerable to trauma or adverse life events. Traumatized children experience a disconnection from their physical body 33 and this can result in developmental delay or immaturity.

In the Extra Lesson, through the re-education of the child’s sensory system, we're building body geography and spatial awareness as the basis of the child’s faculty to learn, to adapt to and manage their environment. Body geography is the sense of our body, our limbs, our trunk, our head given through what we experience via our sensory system from outside, and also the inner experience of our body. These two experiences come together as the foundation of a stable awareness of our individual body and a sense of self, of ourselves as individuals and it is the basis of our ability to be able to respond to and to have a sense of the other as a person and to engage with others.

31 Schore (2018). 32 Porges (2001). 33 Ruf, (2013).

Figure1:ArtworkbyDeborahHarriswithguidancefromIrisYve(fromTheCalendaroftheSoul)


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Spatial awareness of the three dimensions of space and where we are situated in that space is formed from our sensory experience of our body in space and develops in parallel to the perception of our body geography. It includes the sensory information from our tactile system, movement, balance, visual and auditory systems. We build spatial awareness of above, below, left and right, forwards and backwards and we also experience rotation. Spatial awareness develops in relation to gravity in the three-dimensional world. If we didn't have gravity, we wouldn't know where our body was in space as there would be no point of reference for orientation. When astronauts come back to earth, they're disorientated as they lose their sense of direction, having lived without gravity in space for extended periods of time. In the Extra Lesson, with the recapitulation of the first seven-year period of early development, we observe and work with the child using Steiner's concept of the 12 senses. The 12 senses

This is a diagram that sets out the 12 senses as envisaged by Rudolf Steiner. The first four, the sense of touch, life, movement, and balance are the physical senses or the lower senses. These senses are the starting point in our work in the Extra Lesson, as they form the foundation for the development of body geography and spatial awareness and facilitate the growth of the child’s faculty to engage socially and to learn. The next four are the middle senses, to which we respond subjectively, through our feelings. These are the senses of smell, taste, vision (as in the perception of colour) and warmth. Then, the higher senses, the cognitive senses, or social senses. These are the senses of hearing, word, thought and ego. The sense of hearing is the perception of sound or tone. The sense of word is the meaning of a word. The sense of thought is perceiving the intended meaning of the thinking of another. The sense of ego is the ability to recognise the other as an individual person – not to be confused with the Freudian term ‘ego’, which is more centred on oneself.

Figure2:CopiedwithpermissionfromLutHermans:


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The Sense of Touch

Firstly, the sense of touch is primary to our social engagement with others and the exploration of our environment. It provides the experience of a boundary between self and other. When a baby is firstborn and for quite a long period afterwards they feel one with the environment around them. They're absorbing all the sensory experiences around them as they don't have a boundary or a way to shut out sensory experiences, they cannot stop sensory impressions coming in and can become overwhelmed. This means, for example, if there is too much noise, too much light, rough or intrusive handling then the baby or young child is bombarded and becomes dysregulated. As adults, we need to be mindful that little children need adult assistance to manage their environment, the boundaries, as they can’t do this for themselves. Something as simple as having a stroller that faces the adult pushing it, can mean that the adult by co-regulation through non-verbal and verbal engagement helps the child stay in a regulated state and limits the amount of visual information coming at the child. Healing Applications

Holding and rocking a child, if a child is feeling overwhelmed, can often help them feel safe and calm them. Touch can be used as a way to calm and quieten a child. Deep pressure can be used as a therapy to help the child have a more regulated tactile system. If you have ever had a massage, you'll know that often after a massage, you can feel really calm. Starting from birth and through our lives, we all need our experiences of touch to be respectful as it provides a sense of caring and safety in our physical body. For the child, it builds their body geography so they can orientate in the physical world around them. Research34 has shown that the sense of touch is connected to vision and sound by poly-sensory neurones in the brain. Also that our sense of touch radiates out further than the edge of the physical boundary of our skin. Graziano proposed that when somebody picks up a pencil it then becomes an extension of their body. This is analogous to the concept of the etheric body permeating the physical body and extending beyond the limits of our physical body. Some children are very, very sensitive and we often say they are ‘drawn out into their senses’, drawn out of the boundary of their own physical body, and they find it hard to know where their boundary ends and somebody else begins. They can be very sensitive to the environment around them and can easily be overwhelmed by sensory impressions. Our sense of touch is also the foundation of starting to build a sense of our body geography (based also on the sense of movement) and having a sense of "this is me", a sense of self. Gentle, respectful touch plays a primary role in establishing secure attachment at birth and in early childhood. Our sense of touch is influenced by the culture we live in and in turn, is influenced by what is learnt by the child through the social interactions and experiences of their biography. Trauma, adversity or abuse in childhood or throughout their life, can disrupt the sense of touch and create barriers to social interactions and relationships. Allan Schore states that attachment is a ‘bodily based situation’35. He identified that the mother's right hemisphere, lights up the child's right hemisphere, when the baby is born and both the baby and the parents have very high levels of the neurotransmitter oxytocin, it is said they all ‘fall in love’. Oxytocin is a neurotransmitter produced by the body that is associated with social bonding and sometimes called the ‘love hormone’. The right hemisphere is involved in nonverbal communication. During that first 18 months to two years of development, the right side of the brain is developing much more rapidly than the left hemisphere. By two years of age, the left side of the brain starts to come online and develop rapidly, and that's when language starts to be expressed and have more meaning to the child. This means that early attachment is based on nonverbal communication through touch, proximity, shared gaze,

34 Graziano (2018). 35 Schore (2018).


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vocal intonation and loving care before language becomes part of social bonding and engagement. Secure attachment is a result of co-regulation through the parent/caregiver sharing joy and excitement with the child then bringing the child back into a calm state. It is important also for the child to experience co-regulation if they feel unsafe through the adult using nonverbal cues, which includes soothing touch, proximity, shared gaze, rocking and prosody of voice. This is conceptualised by Dan Siegel 36 as the ‘window of tolerance’ of the child or the ability of the child to tolerate varying degrees of dysregulation. Through secure attachment and co-regulation the child’s window of tolerance is opened and the child can adapt more flexibly to a wider range of sensory experiences, intense emotions and changes in regulation. The other significant part of secure attachment is that the child experiences repair after a disruption of the attachment in the relationship through co-regulation with a caregiver. Play is an important way for children to develop skills in co-regulation37 and to learn how to repair attachment. Play starts as early as three months old,38 is a non-verbal interaction and brings joy to the caregiver and the child alike. The Sense of Life

The sense of life is mediated by the autonomic nervous system (ANS). It is the sense of our own wellbeing, as in I am hungry, thirsty, tired and we usually only sense it when we're feeling unwell. Most of the time when we are feeling well, we're full of a sense of wellbeing. The sense of life involves the vagus nerve, which innervates the major organs of the body including the heart, lungs, kidneys, liver and gut and is 80% sensory, bidirectional between the brainstem and visceral organs.39 Stephen Porges has researched the vagus nerve and developed the Polyvagal Theory, which focuses on what is happening in our body and the detection of safety or threat and how that affects our behaviour. In addition to the usual concept of the ANS as being comprised of the sympathetic (fight/flight pathway) and the parasympathetic (homeostasis pathway), Porges has reconceptualised it in terms of its adaptive reactions and included another function of the vagal system as supporting social engagement linked to the muscles of the face and head, including the auditory system through the concept of the vagal brake that supports homeostasis. However, this vagal function brings about immobilisation in extreme circumstances, such as in some traumas or life-threatening situations. The Polyvagal theory (which states that if we have unresolved trauma, we may live in a state of feeling unsafe, or easily feel threatened) has informed many approaches to understanding the effects of trauma on a person and ways to promote healing and can also be applied to understanding ways to engage a person in therapy or learning or into understanding the physiology that underlies a person or child’s behaviour. One aspect that the sense of life is giving us feedback about is the health of our gut. Our gut function is absolutely vital as it determines the health of our brain and body. Our health is especially important for our behaviour, our learning, our ability to attend to and connect with others, socially and emotionally. Part of having a healthy gut function is having a healthy biome or gut flora, which is the basis of our immune system. Our healthy immune system tells us whether the food I eat is self or not self. This is me, or it's not part of me. It can be part of me, or it can't be part of me. In the digestive process, we break down the food until it is unrecognisable as something separate. If your gut function becomes dysregulated, it starts to not be able to break food down properly to build the physical body and some untransformed food substances then become seen as ‘other’. The immune system becomes dysfunctional and cannot use the undigested food to build the physical body. The response to trauma or

36 Siegel (1999). 37 Porges (2020). 38 Schore (2018). 39 Porges (2017).


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adversity can dysregulate the gut and organ system and many people who have experienced trauma long term, develop a compromised immune system and consequent health problems. The sense of life is supported by eating healthy food, preferably organic (to avoid toxins), regular and sufficient sleep, and a predictable daily life with regular exercise. Research has shown that children that have regular routines, sleep, and rhythms in their life, have increased resilience.40 So why would that make a difference? Well, if you think about it in terms of the Polyvagal Theory. A child whose food's predictable, has a regular sleep routine, even to be guided about what is acceptable behaviour, able to be socially engaged – as their vagus is sensing safety and this promotes a calm state – their sense of life can just keep on functioning uninterruptedly. Whereas children who live in unpredictable homes, schools or environments are on alert for ‘danger’ and physiologically their body tells them they are unsafe as their sympathetic system goes into flight or fight. These children may become over-reactive in many situations, have disrupted sleep, may develop food sensitivities due to the disruption to their digestion as their physiology is defensive and constantly assessing if their environment is safe or not safe. Many children who are developing atypically show many of the same defensive reactions that children who are experiencing or have experienced adversity in life or trauma and consequently their sense of life is disrupted. Another question is, why do we need sleep? We need sleep because it's the time when our bodies repair themselves and we process all the sensory experiences we have had or that have been coming to us during the day. It is similar to an inner digestion of our experiences of that outer world. A lack of sleep means these sensory experiences cannot be ‘digested’ and in trauma, this can be experienced as flashbacks of trauma events, or certain situations become triggers for dysregulation as the memories of the experience have not been processed and placed in memory as a past event and surface in their present consciousness. Regular uninterrupted sleep is vital on a daily basis for children and adults for us to stay physically and emotionally healthy. So it's healthy attachment, regular routines, respectful and caring relationships, which build the foundations of a healthy sense of life and as a result, also of resilience. The Sense of Self-Movement and Balance

The development of the sense of self-movement is the antecedent of the sense of balance so there is some overlap here. In the Extra Lesson we review the child’s early movement development through the exercises we do, both within the session and as part of a daily exercise program. Movement starts in utero as the neurological system is developing and the first movements of the foetus are automatic movement patterns called primitive reflexes. These reflexes are the blueprint for the formation and development of the child's nervous and movement system and it is interesting to note that the first reflex is a withdrawal response. Primitive reflexes are mediated through the movement of the head to the limbs, which initiates the development of muscle tone. As the foetus grows in utero it has less and less space to move around and the pressure against the uterus increases muscle tone in the later stages of pregnancy. The sense of touch is also activated, that is the sense of a boundary. While the baby is still in utero, there's no gravity, they're just floating in a fluid environment, so the sense of balance is activated after birth. Although there is sensory input through the movement of the head that will move the fluid in the semicircular canals and the saccule, which are part of the developing vestibular system, and which becomes the basis of the sense of balance. After the baby is born the primitive reflexes provide the baby with a response to threat through the auditory, visual, tactile and vestibular system, responding by flexing the body, extending the limbs and crying to alert the caregiver. This response activates the sympathetic nervous system and if the threat is prolonged or intense then the child can go into withdrawal, then immobilisation and shutdown. After birth, the baby further develops their sense of balance through their movement experiences in relation to gravity and build their spatial orientation to

40 Ferretti (2014).


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the three dimensions of space. During this time the primitive reflexes facilitate movement and these repeated patterns of movement are the basis of later conscious and purposeful motion as the automatic primitive reflex movements are suppressed in the brainstem and higher centres in the brain become myelinated and functional. Postural reflexes, which keep the body aligned and are triggered by the effects of gravity on the body, are life long and also develop during early childhood so that we have automatic reactions to maintain our balance, posture and a stable visual field as well as orientation to left/right, above/below and forward/backwards. We use our eyes to know where we are in the front space and our auditory system to be aware of the ‘back’ space. The sense of balance, through the vestibular system, provides us with our verticality and receives information from our vision, auditory information, touch (feeling where our body is), with information coming from the bones, the joints, and from the tendons as we move. It gives us spatial orientation towards what's above/below, left/right, forwards/backwards in reference to our vertical orientation, which is one of our unique human characteristics and gives us the freedom to use our hands. The semi-circular canals in the inner ear are an inner physical manifestation, of this outer spatial orientation. Now, what happens if we're out of balance? We feel anxious. Thus anxiety starts as a bodily experience, and then other feelings of anxiety are associated with the sense of losing our balance or orientation to the world. Referring back to the Polyvagal theory, movement can be a child or person’s way to manage sensory overload or feeling threatened in the environment and to keep them out of shutdown or immobilisation. Distressed people and many children on the autism spectrum repeatedly pace back and forth for the same reason. Therefore, movement can be used to help people cope with anxiety. The lower senses can be used as a path to healing when used in a safe and caring environment. An example is from the Extra Lesson trainees in Japan at the time of the tsunami. The general consensus was that by understanding ways to bring children into movement and to engage them in movement games was of great value. As the children were brought into movement, they could forget their situation for a short time and just experience the joy of movement and play. In my practice, many children with learning difficulties, behavioural issues or a diagnosis such as Autism Spectrum Disorder feel unwelcome in their school environment or defiant as a way to protect themselves but as trust is restored and the child engages in therapy, they become more confident being in their own body, moving, playing and over time laughing. The rhythm and routine of sessions become reassuring over time. The Senses of Taste, Smell, Sight and Warmth

Now, the feeling senses; taste, smell, the sense of sight and warmth. The sense of sight means perceiving hues, the tones in colour. Warmth is physical warmth and the warmth of another. And I'm not going to go into these sense as it's a little bit outside the scope of this article, however they do provide us with ways of experiencing the world around us. The Sense of Hearing

The higher senses, however, the cognitive or the social senses as they have been described, start with the sense of hearing in relation to processing what we perceive through our auditory system. We hear through both air and bone conduction. The auditory system starts to function in utero from 18-20 weeks because sound vibrations reach the cochlea through the bone surrounding it. Which means their body is sensing sound through bone conduction. When they're sensing through bone conduction, they can't actually block out sound. At birth when the ear canals drain of fluid then the child starts to hear through air conduction and the middle ear muscles over time get exercised and learn to tense to assist in attenuating loud sounds and focussing on the sounds in the speech range of the language spoken to them. Over the first five years, the child's auditory system is developing and as the perception of words and


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then language comes on board there is a concurrent shift with the air conduction becoming especially attuned to the human voice and bone conduction providing more information about tone of voice or sounds in the environment. If we reflect back to the attachment in early childhood, it is the non-verbal cues of prosody (emphasis and rhythm) and tone of voice that are the first form of social engagement. With the secure attachment that the parent or caregiver’s prosody of voice provides, the non-verbal cue helps the child remain in a regulated state through co-regulation. A securely attached child has experienced the caregiver sharing joy and excitement and helping to calm them through co-regulation. When the child is fearful or upset the caregiver has again helped the child come back into a calm and regulated state through co-regulation. The caregiver uses their voice, rhythmic movement such as rocking, touch through a cuddle, which brings the child back to a sense of safety. Returning to the Polyvagal theory that means the child senses safety through the social engagement function of the vagus system, through the sensory system. Now, in children who are experiencing trauma, you can guess what happens! Bone conduction stays more sensitive as the child needs to be alert to threat, to the high and low frequencies, as language alone often does not reveal the level of threat, only the tone does that. The child becomes hyper-vigilant and can get stuck in always looking for threats. Those little middle ear muscles are not going to be able to tune out the background noise and tune into the voice. Then they have problems with auditory figure-ground, listening to a person speaking when there is background noise. That's a very common problem with lots of children that I see with learning problems and they struggle with phonics. They have auditory processing problems and they struggle with phonics. Another source of auditory processing difficulty is if the sense of life is not supported with healthy nutrition and the child suffers from ear infections or an excess of fluid in the middle ear. This means that the child has periods of only hearing clearly through bone conduction and their air conduction experiences and middle ear muscle development is compromised, and they miss out on much of the classroom instruction. Additionally, if they do not have the opportunity to develop a secure attachment with at least one consistent caregiver in early childhood, during the developmental phase when air and bone conduction come into a balanced relationship, the child is left with oversensitivity in bone conduction, particularly in the lower and the higher frequencies as they relate to sounds that are alerting or threatening to the auditory system. So they're often hypersensitive to sound and easily overwhelmed by it. Therefore, calming needs to be brought about by means other than through talking and reasoning – speaking rhythmically with calming inflection will be more effective. These children need their auditory system to be tuned up, to have the middle ear muscles exercised and their perception of sound re-patterned so they can feel safe to engage socially and to enjoy communicating through language. Practitioners have used sound therapy for auditory retraining and as a path into the vagal system to promote calming so that the child can; tune into communication, benefit from co-regulation, and decrease those hypersensitivities. Then they can feel; calmer and safer, learn in a classroom and participate with more ease in social relationships. The Sense of Word and Thought

Once we can perceive and process sound, then we can access words in language. Words are how we name the world around us and then words start to be able to be put together, to verbally transfer thoughts along with gesture and the non-verbal parts of communication. The sense of thought is also telling us about the integration of the left and right hemispheres. Remember the mother's right hemisphere lights up the baby’s right hemisphere and that's to do with non-verbal communication. By around two years of age, the language centres of the brain start to develop. At this stage, verbal and non-verbal communication continue to develop simultaneously in the sense of thought. The integration of the two hemispheres continues and


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is reflected by the level of consciousness seen in the phases of child development – seven to fourteen years, fourteen years of age into adulthood. Research has shown that the two sides of our brain are still integrating up to 24 years of age or more. By recapitulating early neurodevelopment in the Extra Lesson, we facilitate the integration of the hemispheres through the sense of self or ego. The Sense of Self or Ego

The sense of ego, the sense of the other as separate to self, is another social sense. Firstly, we build a sense of ourselves as an individual, a sense of self, and then we can recognize the other person as an individual. We go through a process of sympathy/antipathy in meeting the other person. We feel our way towards a person, to merge with them, a sympathetic gesture. The sense of word and sense of thought work here also as we understand their thoughts and their gestures. And then we come back to ourselves, an antipathetic gesture to make sense of it. It is a process of expansion and contraction, going back and forth as we establish and maintain our own sense of self. If we are over sympathetic to somebody, we lose the self in the other, and if a child can’t make that expansion, but remain caught up in themselves, then they cannot make connections. If the boundary is too weak, they lose themselves, if it’s too strong, they cannot get beyond themselves. In both cases, they can’t develop their sense of ‘I’ and the awareness of ‘other’. I think you see this very strongly in children and adolescents accessing social media and being influenced by people they have no real relationship with. Or perhaps a child has been in an environment where there's been too much sympathy shown to them, or too much antipathy or disinterest in them as individuals, both situations mean the child often struggles with boundaries and/or fitting in with others. The give and take of social interaction is difficult for them to participate in. With trauma or adversity, the fear that has been experienced makes the person withdraw or feel defensive in social interactions. With the current Covid-19 situation there is a feeling of fear behind it. Therefore we really need to think about children and how they can re-establish trust and a sense of safety in the social environment and what type of support they're going to need from us as adults to feel safe again. Many adults are also going to need help and understanding as well. The basis of the sense of self is developed during early childhood through the lower senses especially the sense of touch, so we find our own boundary and where the other starts. This is the foundation of the pure perception of the other as an independent entity from ourselves. The work of establishing the physical boundary through the sense of touch in early childhood and consolidating it through various exercises as the child grows, ensure that the child can hold their space spiritually and experience the other as a separate spiritual being. The sense of touch and self-movement is also the foundation of body geography and then the acquisition of spatial awareness through movement and balance, supplemented by vision and auditory perception. All these areas of awareness involve the muscles, bones and nerves, that is the physical structural body that the Extra Lesson is focussed on. To quote John Ratey,41 “mounting evidence shows that movement is crucial to every other brain function, including memory, emotion, language and learning. Our ‘higher’ brain functions have evolved from movement and still depend on it”. The lower senses of touch, life, self-movement and balance are the basis of the higher senses of ego, thought, word and hearing. The sense of touch lays the foundation for the awareness of the other through the sense of ego, for us to be social beings; the sense of life provides the foundation for the sense of thought, to understand the meaning of the words and gestures of others; the sense of self-movement is the basis for the sense of word, naming the world, the

41 Ratey (2001).


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start of language; the sense of hearing and the sense of balance are very closely linked and being in balance allows us to come to stillness in ourselves to listen to others. If we can be adaptable to our environment, then we can feel comfortable in our own self. Feeling safe in the external environment means that we feel safe inside and engage socially. This gives us a stable sense of self and a sense of mastery of our physical body. Allan Schore talks about the greatest period of joy in early childhood is when the child first learns to stand up and walk because their whole world opens up, and they experience the freedom of movement. The child experiences verticality and the freedom to move and orientate to the three dimensions in space. In addition, their hands and upper body are free to move. The child has experienced their first step in the mastery of their physical body. Basic body geography and spatial awareness are key to developing their will forces or capacity to accomplish tasks, an inner sense of ‘I am able to do things’. This is a vital step in having purposeful actions that forge a strong sense of, “I'm able to engage with others in purposeful tasks… I'm worthwhile… I am a valuable member of my community… that gives me meaning in the world”. Research has shown that people who do things for others have a greater sense of, inner happiness, inner wellbeing, than people who just care about themselves. The theme of this conference was ‘The importance of attachment and respectful relationships

in nurturing a foundation of resilience across the lifespan’. What is resilience? My definition is that resilience in people is the sense of being able to ‘flow’ with others, engage in life and be able to maintain a sense of one's own individuality and worth, even in times of adversity. This in turn strengthens the capacity to flow with the situation and to be adaptable. Allan Schore42 actually states that “attachment promotes self-regulation, to allow new and more complex resilient relationships between individuals, and the social environment”. This is a wonderful quote to find because it's just saying that through attachment, we can experience coregulation. Co-regulation helps the development of self-regulation and participation in respectful relationships that promote resilience in our social engagement with others. We all might use different language in anthroposophy or neurophysiology, however, when we work through it we find a commonality. We're all human beings, and we're all trying to find a way to have social engagement with others because that's what makes us human. We all need to feel safe within our own body, to have a sense of self; to have an awareness of others. When you think about what happens in trauma; a person gets dislocated from feeling safe in their physical body and loses their sense of themselves as an integral self. That can be shattering and they need help to bring things together again. Why is the Extra Lesson relevant? The Extra Lesson is working with a developmental picture. Each child goes through the same developmental sequence in their own time and in their own environment. The child’s experiences either support or hinder their development. This means that it can be helpful for some children to have the opportunity to recapitulate the early developmental phases. Due to neuroplasticity the child can have a second opportunity through this recapitulation to develop their will and complete some of the stages of development, to re-educate the sensory system and rewire the development of the structural physical body. The newly acquired sense of their own physical body and subsequent spatial orientation allows them to have a greater feeling of safety in their own physical body, to develop more adaptability towards the environment and engage more socially and in purposeful activity and to be able to develop sustained attention. The other part of Extra Lesson is the value that's placed on relationship, connection and attunement to the individual child. As practitioners we observe, we're curious, and then we reflect, to try to understand each child and what is behind their behaviour or actions. Dan Hughes,43 who works in trauma as a therapist talks about using PACE. Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity, and Empathy.

42 Schore (2017). 43 Hughes (2018).


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Through using these four qualities in his interactions in therapy, Dan Hughes gradually helps the child to feel a sense of safety with Dan and in a session will move from withdrawn or disconnected to being engaged. In that safety zone, the child can actually cry and acknowledge some of their very, very hurt feelings. With the adult providing co-regulation and a sense of safety, social engagement can take place and the child can let some of their feelings see the light of day and it allows the child to be a little freer. If the child experiences that sense of safety repeatedly then they can be more resilient and more able to adapt to their environment. Being curious means that we ask ourselves the questions, ‘who is this child? How can I understand this child?’ If we're well-regulated ourselves, then our curiosity allows the child to feel safe enough to show a little of themselves and they might feel, ‘maybe this person is a little bit interested in me’. Remember that from three months, the baby starts to be able to play and through play they learn to deal with positive and negative emotion through co-regulation. Curiosity allows the child to experience co-regulation through the adult holding them through the sense of ego and to feel accepted for who they are, the way they are. Storytelling can be another way to provide an opportunity for children to safely experience and manage different emotions as a form of co-regulation through the storyteller engaging the child. In the Extra Lesson, we use co-regulation as a way of being with the children and being playful is often an important part of the process. Often children that have experienced trauma seem restricted in their ability to join in play with others. These children need to be helped to feel safe enough to play, have fun and develop their imagination. I was told by the Japanese Extra Lesson trainees after the tsunami in Japan, that one of the things that became really helpful for the children was to move, to play movement games, fully engaging their bodies, so that they could just be in movement. When that happened, they could just forget their situation for a little period of time and be children.

Summary

The Extra Lesson may be applied to help children recapitulate their early developmental process to reconnect with their bodies, a fundamental experience which may have become disconnected, through trauma. Through specific exercises they may find that their bodies can be a safe place from which to experience and explore the world; to re-educate their sensory system so they can safely process the information coming from the outside world; to feel recognised as an individual through attunement and to experience co-regulation. Just as importantly, for parents to feel understood, to feel hope and be helped to understand their child’s needs. Healthy attachment in early childhood provides the child with safe relationships from which to grow and explore the physical and emotional world around them. As adults when this has been lost through trauma, we can provide the child with a sense of being safe within their own bodies, through working with the lower senses. We can rebuild their sense of safety and confidence in their capacities, if they have been damaged, by building on the lower senses as a foundation for the higher senses and cognitive social functioning so that they can become resilient individuals and find joy in their lives.


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References:

Baylin, J., & Hughes, D. (2016). The Neurobiology of Attachment-Focused Therapy. W.W Norton & Company, USA. Ferretti, L. K., & Bub, K. L. (2014). The influence of family routines on the resilience of low-income preschoolers. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 35(3), 168–180. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2014.03.003 Fleury, T., & Barthel, K. (2014). Conversations with a Rattlesnake. Influence Publishing, USA. Graziano, M. (2018). The Spaces Between Us: A Story of Neuroscience, Evolution and

Human Nature. Oxford University Press, USA Hughes. D., (2018). Building the Bonds of Attachment: Awakening Love in Deeply Troubled

Children. 3rd Edition. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, USA. Porges, S. (2001). The Polyvagal Theory. International Journal of Pychophysiology42, 2001. pp.123-146. USA. Porges, S., (2017). The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory. The Transformative Power of

Feeling Safe. W.W. Norton & Company. USA Ratey, J. J. (2001). A User’s Guide to the Brain. Penguin Random House Books. USA. Reilly, E. B., & Gunnar, M. R. (2019). Neglect, HPA Axis Reactivity, and Development. International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience. Ruf, B., (2013). Educating Traumatized Children. Waldorf Education in Crisis Intervention. Lindisfarne Books. Schore, A., (2017). The Allan Schore Reader: Setting the Course of Development. Taylor & Francis. GB Siegel, D., (2020). The Developing Mind, How Relationships and the Brain Shape Who We

Are. 3rd Edition. Guilford’s Publications. UK. Van Der Kolk, B., (2015). The Body Keeps the Score. Mind, Brain and Body in the

Transformation of Trauma. Penguin. UK. Stories about trauma:

’Boy Swallows Universe’, Trent Dalton ‘Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia’, edited by Anita Heiss ‘The Bone People’, Keri Hulme ‘The Eye of the Sheep’ and ‘The Choke’, Sophie Laguna ‘Welcome to Country’, Marcia Langton ’Too Much Lip’, Melissa Lucashenko ‘Salt’ and ‘Dark Emu’, Bruce Pascoe ‘That Deadman Dance’, Kim Scott ‘The Yield’ and ’Swallow the Air’, Tara June Winch ‘The Shepherd’s Hut’, Tim Winton


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Some Guiding Thoughts to Support Teachers to Implement Trauma-Informed Practice in The Classroom

By Barbara Baldwin, Curative Educator, Teacher Trainer, Adelaide

Introduction

2020 has been like no other year. We are flooded with information, yet we are unsure of everything; we are isolated and we long to, yet fear to connect; we feel healthy, but we almost don’t trust our health. The world is topsy-turvy and many just want everything to go back to some sort of normal, and yet, it is an amazing opportunity for change. In our classrooms we have children who have been isolated from their grandparents, relatives, friends and their daily routine; children who live close to nature are suddenly being asked to do their schooling online; teachers who have stood for minimal technology in classroom and homes are suddenly forced to use technology to teach, and fear is the dominant factor. Fear, news we no longer trust and an uncanny sense of unknowingness exist on the surface of our awareness. One could say that we are a traumatised society, because nothing is as it has been. There is no continuity from the past to the present; there is no surety from the present to the future. We may be forced to make decisions to do things against our better judgement. We’ve been trying to teach children at home through a medium which is alien to us and to them and when they return to the classroom after a time of homeschooling, we have to deal with children who have missed the classroom and their friends, have longed (maybe in some cases dreaded) to return to school, and yet they are changed: they are not the same children that we knew before. There is a subtle change. Some parents are very grateful for the work they now know we do and its depth and artistry. On the other hand, we deal with parents who previously trusted us, yet now a few have perhaps seen what their children couldn’t do and judge us for ineffective teaching practices. They may feel they now know how to teach, so start making suggestions. We stand on thin ice here. And our leaders, principals and guidance officers are often as much at sea as we are. Where to start to fix this situation? The best starting point would be to ask children, parents, colleagues, how they are, what was their greatest loss, what was their greatest learning. Find out where they are right now, open your senses to their situation and start with an open mind and an open heart, knowing that we can’t continue from where we were before, but that we must orientate ourselves to a new point in time, a new point in space, a new point in relation to ourselves and to those around us. Questions are always a good starting point – as is meditation. Here is a meditation given by Rudolf Steiner that I’d like to share, which I first came across while working and teaching curative education in China.44

44 Given by Rudolf Steiner to Ita Wegman, 1920. Translated by Gerald Karnow.


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The human being is a bridge

Between the past

And future existence.

The present is a moment

Moment as bridge.

Spirit grown to soul,

In matter’s husk,

Comes from the past;

Soul growing to spirit

As seed encased

Journeys toward the future.

Grasp future things

Through what is past;

Hope for evolving things

Through what has evolved.

So grasp existence

In evolving growth.

So grasp what will be

Through what exists.

Differentiating Trauma Situations

When dealing with trauma, we have to begin with distinctions. What is the difference between trauma and grief? What is the difference between natural trauma, which affects a whole people, a whole city, where thousands are afflicted, there is no help, but we are not alone; or trauma in the home, within our four walls, where you as an adult, you as a child, are alone, unsafe, with those who should be there to protect you? What is the difference between loss through a natural disaster, a pandemic or financial disaster, where the collective world has changed forever, and loss of a child, a spouse, a sibling, a parent – the invisible loss, in which our personal world has changed forever, but is invisible to others? Differentiation and distinction is our first task when dealing with trauma. Trauma is generally seen as the sudden loss of everything we knew as it was, something massive has struck us and changed our lives and it will never be the same. But a person can also be traumatised by a long-standing situation of adversity: abuse, loneliness, misunderstanding, discrimination. So, in our classrooms we need to look at the distinction between trauma as an event or trauma as an ongoing situation, one is acute, the other is chronic. In both cases, the child has been traumatised. But their situation is very different. In our classrooms, we generally will have few children who have experienced sudden, intense trauma. We are more likely to have children who are in the process of being traumatised, maybe through bullying, through being misunderstood, or simply not understanding what is


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being taught… where they are… what is expected… And then there is also a group of children who have suffered from neither and have no understanding for either of these situations.

The Teacher’s Task

The overt task of a teacher is to teach, and we are trained to teach content. But in actual fact, the task of a teacher is to enable learning and to create situations for the unfolding of learning and the development of social discernment and social understanding. So, for those children who are not directly traumatised, our task is, among other things, to teach them empathy, understanding and how to be friends to those who have been through deep trauma. That’s not what teachers have traditionally been trained for. Thus we not only have children suffering from trauma we also have teachers who are traumatised by these new expectations, for which they neither planned nor have the coping strategies. Some teachers have taken this new aspect on board, while others struggle with these challenges of meeting the diverse needs of the children they teach, and the expectations placed upon them.

Educational Principles

In all these cases, it is useful to start from and apply certain basic educational and therapeutic principles. In this case, I’d like to suggest contemplation of the following through the quotes below: 1. Salutogenesis, seeking the source of health and wellbeing; 2. The basic principles of Steiner/Waldorf Education expressed in the four-fold approach; 3. The Pedagogical Law, which brings whatever we do into a focus of potentiality.

1. Salutogenesis – seeking the source of health45

“… Salutogenesis came into being as a concept in the 1960s in English-speaking

countries. Aaron Antonovsky (1923–1994), the father of the salutogenic paradigm,

investigated the health of elderly people in Israel and developed criteria for measuring

both physical and emotional health. To his great surprise, he found that some of the

healthiest older people were individuals who had survived the Holocaust.

Abraham Maslow (1908–1970) – a founder of humanistic psychology and

psychotherapy, along with Carl Rogers and Erich Fromm – also made surprising

discoveries in his research into emotional health. He studied healthy individuals to

establish criteria for mental health. Those found to be healthiest had all had inner

breakthrough experiences, such as out-of-body events, spiritual encounters with God,

or other mystical experiences. He found that there is a healthy centre in every

emotionally sick soul. If that core can be strengthened in the right way, patients can

learn to master their problems and can participate more fully in their human

environment.

Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) stated firmly in a lecture to medical professionals that

physicians must consider the well-being of all humanity if they want to help individuals.

Why? Because each human being is part of the whole, consciously or unconsciously

influencing it in one way or another by his or her way of relating inwardly to the self

and outwardly to others… To become sound, healthy and ‘whole’ is a process of

integration. Illness always results from isolation or disintegration of individual

45 Glöckler (2002), pp. 326-336.


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processes, functions or substances in the organism. We are thus challenged to involve

ourselves in the great goals of humanity in even the small things we do and to make

sure that we do not lose sight of them.

Resilience46

Another aspect of Salutogenesis is resilience research. Heredity and environment are

found not to be the only determining factors in human development. A third factor that

has been neglected is the centrally important matter of human relationships. The

essential elements in a personal relationship are:

• Honesty, truthfulness and uprightness

• Love

• Respect for the autonomy and dignity of the other person even if the individual is a

young child or utterly dependent.

A child who has experienced such a good relationship – even if it was only with one

individual and for one period of time – can develop in a healthy way even if conditions

are otherwise poor, even in extreme circumstances, if the child is beaten every evening

and not cared for properly during the day. In France, the book, Plus Fort Que la Haine

(by T. Guenard) is a good example of this. “Stronger than Hate” describes the love and

compassion experienced by a three-year-old child who had been severely traumatised

and neglected before spending three precious months with foster parents. This positive

experience set the tone for the rest of the child’s life, making it possible to identify with

the good and with a loving heart…

Coherence47

At the soul level, it is important in terms of Salutogenesis to develop a sense of

coherence, a sense that all things are related to one another. We need to find our place

in the grand scheme of things before we can discover the meaning of our lives.

How does one develop a sense of coherence? Antonovsky says, very simply: Children

should have an education that gives them a satisfying philosophy of life. They must be

able to learn that the world is:

• Comprehensible

• Meaningful, significant and of value, and

• Manageable48

Resilience in Mind and Spirit49

The third vitally important but hardest thing people have to learn is to develop powers

of resistance, resilience in mind and spirit, by putting their trust in the progress and

meaningfulness of human development – especially today. Think of how many people

grow depressed today because they have lost confidence in evolution, God and

humanity. The cruelties, violence, corruption, wars and disasters which we hear about

46 Glöckler (2002), p. 327. 47 Glöckler (2002), p. 333. 48 Glöckler (2002), pp. 328-333. 49 Glöckler (2002), p. 336.


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all the time, are beyond the limit of what many people can bear. Sickness and abuse

of drugs or medicines are the consequence – or acts of desperation and terror, also

suicide. Here we must develop a philosophy of life that helps us to understand and

work through things that are negative and destructive, so that meaning can be found.

2. The basic principles of Waldorf Education expressed in the four-fold approach

Trauma Education50

‘Trauma changes the lives of children profoundly and lastingly. Children who have

been through a traumatic event need special support and affection. Alongside

psychological methods, the concept of using educational approaches to overcome

trauma, has been developed in recent years. “Trauma education sees itself as a

(special) educational approach that aims at stabilising and supporting traumatised

children and youngsters..51

Holistic Stabilisation52 The holistic stabilisation of traumatised children comprises four levels and is a

crucial foundation for any therapeutic interventions that may be required later.53

The four levels are:

• Physical stabilisation. The first essential step in emergency education is to make

the affected child feel safe. For this they need a place where they feel physically safe.

The children need to reconnect with their own (physical) body. It is therefore a priority

that any physical injuries or ailments receive medical attention.

• Somatic stabilisation. The functions of the life or ether body need to be supported

and strengthened so that the etheric wounds and injuries can heal, and congestions

and blockages can be resolved. This allows children to experience their body again as

a whole entity and a place where they can feel safe and develop a sense of continuity.

• Psychosocial stabilisation. Reliable networks of relationships need to be

established, that can convey protection and safety. Establishing relationships means

building up the necessary trust in the environment in order to strengthen the child’s

soul or astral body. Especially when children are severely traumatised or suffer from

comorbid disorders, it is essential that they are psychologically stabilised before any

trauma therapies are attempted. Suitable methods of stabilisation at this level include

artistic educational approaches such as painting, drawing, modelling, play and drama;

movement (sports, walking, gymnastics, eurythmy); resource-based processes (diary

techniques, body-oriented techniques, imaginative techniques, etc.) and behavioural

therapy (anxiety-management, assertiveness-training, etc.). The overall aim is to

strengthen children’s weakened self-esteem in relation to their environment.

• Mental-biographical stabilisation. Trauma can cause developmental retardation or

blockages and destroy the victim’s confidence in their ability to shape their own

biography. The reason for this is that the human essence (the ‘I’) is prevented from

incarnating in the right way. Mental-biographical stabilisation means that negative

traumatic experiences are corrected or replaced by positive life experiences. It

encourages trauma victims to actively take hold of and shape their life again.

50 Ruf (2013). 51 Kuhn (2009), p. 26. 52 Ruf (2013), pp. 66-68. 53 Landolt (2004), p. 88 ff. and Hausmann (2006), p. 92 ff.


29

Psycho-educational instruction has also been effective at the psycho-social level of

stabilisation, but it needs to be age-appropriate if used for children. Trauma victims who

understand what trauma is, how it evolves and how it may manifest, will suffer less

physically and mentally and are not in danger of thinking of themselves as mentally ill.’

Crisis can become a pathway toward growth

Those who have attended my courses, workshops and lectures will know that I often refer to the ‘challenging children’ in our classrooms as an opportunity to move our pedagogy into the 21st century. These children are not in our classrooms by chance. We draw these children into our classrooms, with an unconscious ‘knowing’ that we have (or can develop) the resources to meet their needs and in so doing, are fulfilling conditions of our karma. Haven’t you noticed how some teachers get more of these children than others? Some, because they ‘just get them’, they seem to accept and understand and deeply respect these ‘difficult’ children, and they are often criticised for their calm and trusting approach; and others because… Well, ask them to look into the deepest regions of their souls. There was a time when my courses were constantly interrupted by particular participants, who felt the need to illustrate various points I was making, with traumatic events out of their lives – to the extent that I often didn’t get through my content. Until I realised that I needed to change my approach to them. Once I did that, the problem vanished. But it took me quite a while to realise what was needed. Both sets of teachers are challenged and are often at their wit’s end. Both can grow. And both require the unreserved support, respect and understanding from the school leadership and their colleagues.

Crisis as Opportunity54 Just as our physical organism can grow strong by overcoming an illness, we can grow

inwardly by mastering crisis situations. Each developmental threshold in our biography

is a moment of crisis which, if we manage to overcome it, can help us mature. Many

people who have successfully resolved traumatic experiences speak of their “true inner

growth”55

and if we look at our own biography we might find that the life crises and

strokes of fate we have been through helped us grow…

For a long time trauma research concentrated almost exclusively on the

psychopathological effects of extreme stress, but more recently the positive effects

trauma can have once it has been successfully resolved, have moved into the focus

of scientific enquiry.56

A “Posttraumatic Growth Inventory”, containing 21 questions on

various areas of life, has been developed to assess post-traumatic growth57

but

unfortunately the study results available so far relate only to adults – holocaust

survivors, victims of natural disasters, former cancer patients, survivors of myocardial

infarction, and rape victims. But while the same scientific evidence is not yet available

to us for children and adolescents, clinical evidence suggests “that positive effects

have been observed also in children who successfully processed traumatic

experiences”.58

Initial scientific studies have revealed “that threatening events do not only result in an

increased risk of psychological disorders but offer victims the opportunity for personal

54 Ruf (2013), pp. 184-186. 55 Hausmann (2006), p. 156. 56 Tedeschi, Park & Calhoun (1998). 57 Tedeschi & Calhoun (1996). 58 Landolt (2004), p. 106.


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development and inner growth”59

This means that trauma can change lives also in

positive ways. ”Real post-traumatic growth can mean that the relationship we have

with our self, with others and with the world and life in general changes.60

The following positive biographical effects of resolved trauma relate to “five dimensions

of post-traumatic growth”61

– human relationships, outlook on life, personal growth,

religion and spirituality, and the validation of one’s own life. We have added one entry

taken from the “Post-traumatic Growth Inventory” for each of the five dimensions:

1. Deepened relationships: “I know now that I can count on other people in times of

need.” We often observe that relationships, especially within a family but also

beyond, improve once a trauma has been successfully resolved. People

communicate more openly and find it easier to establish relationships. Their

sensitivity toward others has become enhanced. Clinical experience shows that

the successful resolution of trauma in children leads to deepened relationships,

especially with family and friends.

2. A new outlook on life: “I gained new interests.” People’s outlook on life can

expand when they have mastered crisis. They may discover new interests and

goals. They take hold of their lives again by setting new goals and developing a

new outlook. People foster relationships more than before and deal with things in

a different way.

3. Personal growth: “I know that I can cope with challenges. People who have

resolved their trauma successfully often gain more trust, self-confidence, maturity

and emotional strength. They become stronger individuals. “The knowledge that

we have coped successfully with a challenging situation gives us trust that we will

cope with future challenges too. We gain self-confidence”.62

4. Enhanced validation of one’s life: “I think differently now about priorities in life.”

After overcoming stress people tend to find it easier to set priorities and

differentiate between what is essential and what isn’t. They begin to live more

consciously and value their life more.

5. Spiritual-religious deepening: “I have a better understanding of spiritual and

religious things now.” People who have come close to death often develop strong

religious and spiritual feelings as a result of their extraordinary experience. Trauma

can lead people to develop a deeper interest in existential questions and topics.

Helping yourself so that you can help others63

Mental healthcare not only benefits the health of the helper. It is a necessary

requirement for professional competence in working with traumatised children and

adolescents. It is no coincidence that flight attendants in their emergency

announcements instruct passengers that they should, in case of a sudden drop of

cabin pressure, first put on their own oxygen masks and then help children and other

people in need to put on theirs. Adults need to be stable themselves before they can

give help to traumatised children and youngsters.

As emergency workers (and teachers [ed.]) we must therefore be aware of our own

emotions in stressful situations. We must first find our own centre, using tools that help

us feel grounded and focussed again, so that we are really present when a child needs

59 Ibid. p. 104. 60 Hausmann (2006), p. 156. 61 Landolt (2004), p. 104 ff. 62 Landolt (2004), p. 105. 63 Ruf (2013), pp. 182-3.


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our help. Our own calmness will be transmitted to the child. We help trauma victims

release any excess energy created by the traumatic shock by speaking to them calmly

and in a quiet voice and by adopting reassuring body language, etc.64

Helpers need to

be stable, centred and calm. If we look after our own mental health, we help ourselves

to help others.

3. The Pedagogical Law which brings whatever we do into a focus of potentiality We can read the words below that outline this important foundation of the teacher’s role given by Rudolf Steiner in the second lecture of the Curative Education course.65 They are extracted below as a guiding thought.

Here we encounter a law, of the working of which we have abundant evidence

throughout all education. It is as follows. Any one member of the being of man is

influenced by the next higher member (from whatever quarter it approaches) and only

under such influence can that member develop satisfactorily. Thus, whatever is to be

effective for the development of the physical body must be living in the etheric body —

in an etheric body. Whatever is to be effective for the development of an etheric body

must be living in an astral body. Whatever is to be effective for the development of an

astral body must be living in an ego; and an ego can be influenced only by what is

living in a spirit-self. I could continue, and go beyond the spirit-self, but there we should

be entering the field of esoteric instruction.

What does this mean in practice? If you find that the etheric body of a child is in some

way weakened or deficient, you must form, you must modify, your own astral body in

such a way that it can work upon the etheric body of the child, correcting and amending

it. We could, in fact, make a diagram to demonstrate how this principle works in

education:

Child Teacher Physical body

Physical body << Etheric body

Etheric body << Astral body

Astral body << ‘I’

‘I’ << Spirit-Self

The teacher's etheric body (and this should follow quite naturally as a result of their

training) must be able to influence the physical body of the child, and the teacher's

astral body, the etheric body of the child. The ‘I’ of the teacher must be able to influence

the astral body of the child. And now you will be rather taken aback, for we come next

to the spirit-self of the teacher, and you will be thinking that surely the spirit-self is not

yet developed. Nevertheless, such is the law. The spirit-self of the teacher must work

upon the ego of the child. And I will show you how, not only in the ideal teacher, but

64 Levine & Kline (2008), p. 39. 65 Steiner (1998), p. 41 ff.


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often in the very worst possible teacher, the teacher's spirit-self — not yet in the least

consciously — influences the child's ‘I’. Education is indeed veiled in many mysteries.

What concerns us at the moment is that the weakened etheric body of the child must

receive the influence of the teacher's health-giving astral body. How is the astral body

of the educator to be “educated” for this purpose? Self-educated too, as it needs must

be today! For Anthroposophy can at present do no more than give suggestion and

stimulus; we cannot right away establish colleges and arrange courses for all the

necessary branches of training. The astral body of the teachers must be of such a

character and quality that they are able to have an instinctive understanding for

whatever debilities there may be in the child's etheric body. Say, the child's etheric

body is weak and deficient in the region of the liver. As a result, we shall notice that

the child stops short at intention, he cannot get beyond it; it constantly happens that

he has an impulse of will, but the impulse comes to a standstill before the actual deed.

If the teachers can feel their way right into this situation (where the child's will ought to

push through to deed), if they are able to feel the stoppage that the child feels, and

able at the same time out of their own energy to evoke in their soul a deep compassion

with the child's experience, then they will develop in their own astral body an

understanding for the situation the child is in, and will gradually succeed in eliminating

all subjective reaction of feeling when faced with this phenomenon in the child. By

ridding themselves of every trace of subjective reaction, the teachers educate their

own astral body.

Let us say, the child wants to walk, has the will to walk, but cannot. This can become

a pathological condition, can become quite conspicuous; it may even happen that at

last the child comes to be described as “incapable of learning to walk”. But we will

suppose that the condition shows itself in only a slight degree. So long as the teacher

meets the situation with any kind of bias, so long as it can arouse in them irritation or

excitement — so long will they remain incapable of making any real progress with the

child. Not until the point has been reached where such a phenomenon becomes an

objective picture and can be taken with a certain calm and composure as an objective

picture for which nothing but compassion is felt — not until then is the necessary mood

of soul present in the astral body of the teacher. Once this has come about, the teacher

is there by the side of the child in a true relation and will do all else that is needful more

or less rightly. For you have no idea how unimportant is all that the teachers say or do

not say on the surface, and how important what they themselves are, as teachers.

With these thoughts we are hoping to begin a conversation on the approaches available to us within Steiner/Waldorf education to meet these challenges of our times. We welcome your contributions as we know that many teachers are researching and applying innovative methodologies and approaches.


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References Glöckler, M. (2002). Education as Preventive Medicine; A Salutogenic Approach. Rudolf Steiner Press, Forest Row. Guenard, T. (1999). Plus Fort Que La Haine. Presses de la Renaissance. Hausmann, C. (2006). Einfuhrung in die Psychotraumatologie. Vienna Landolt, M.A. (2004). Psychotraumatologie des Kindesalters. Göttingen Levine, P. A. & Kline, M. (2008). Trauma-proofing your kids: a parent’s guide for instilling

confidence, joy and resilience. Berkley Ruf, B. (2013). Educating Traumatised Children: Waldorf Education in Crisis Intervention. Lindisfarne Books. Steiner, R. (1998). Education for Special Needs; The Curative Education Course. Rudolf Steiner Press, Forest Row. Tedeschi, R. G., Park, C. L. & Calhoun, L. G. (1998). Posttraumatic Growth: Positive

Changes in the Aftermath of Crisis. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, New Jersey. Tedeschi, R. G. & Calhoun, L. G. (1996). Trauma and Transformation: Growing in the

Aftermath of Suffering. Sage Publications Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi


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Working Together with Colleagues66 By Valentin Wember, Germany

Good morning, dear colleagues. The night before my ninth birthday, I was afraid to die. I had taken an ink cartridge from my older brother and when he came into the room, I was so scared that I put the cartridge into my mouth and accidentally swallowed it. I didn't dare confess to my parents what I had done because I was embarrassed at the theft and I was filled with the fear of dying through poisoning. In my evening prayer to God, I told him that I would accept death because, from my point of view, it was a just punishment. I only asked him to allow me to live for one more day for my birthday. The birthday came but during the night, my stomach and my gut had made a decision. It was that the cartridge would leave undigested. I suspect that this decision was made without a debate, a debate among various organs about what to do with the ink cartridge. The stomach and the gut were responsible for such cases. They had what in aviation is called the pilot's emergency authority. All other organs knew that the stomach and gut would make the best decision. In any case, I think it's unlikely that the lungs would have objected and said to the gut, “Oh, dear God, couldn't we try to integrate the cartridge?” Our organs, our vital organs cooperate perfectly. All organs know each other, but each individual organ has its own well-defined area of responsibility and the decisions are made in this area. The liver decides how much protein is to be provided or how much bile is to be produced. The pancreas decided on insulin output and the gut decides the fate of an ink cartridge. All organs can be confident that each organ makes the best decision for the whole organism. Dear colleagues, if we could work together like our organism, there would be no complaints and no gruelling arguments, we would have created the right organs for all necessary tasks in our organization. And these would fulfil the tasks assigned to them with great wisdom and in the best sense, for the whole and to the satisfaction of us all. But it is not like that - ideal and reality diverge. We are far from the perfect cooperation of our vital organs, our life organs, and we are far away from the wisdom of our own bodies. Why? The life organs of our body have a huge advantage over the social organs created by us humans. They don't have an ‘I’. If all my colleagues were always in agreement with how I see things, and especially if they were in agreement with what I want, then a lot would be much easier. And if the others had only such impulses and initiatives that I also find good and not those that I am annoyed about, it would be twice as easy. But it is not like that. I want things that others don't like, and they stand in my way. How could you stand down colleague A? That's completely inappropriate though there's ‘method’ in it. Or the other way round, why didn't you send a warning to colleague B as often as he didn't do his supervision? Why do you measure different colleagues with two standards?

66 Delivered at the Glenaeon Class Teacher Intensives, January 2020


35

It would be so easy if we agreed. Instead, we suffer from the real impulses of others. We suffer from their perspectives and actions and they suffer from my point of view and my impulses. And that is exactly what often makes our working together difficult. So, I have to confess that it was a great relief for me personally when I came across the following text by Rudolf Steiner. So this will become our first large quotation, a demanding quotation. Fasten your seatbelt:

Man as he is born today is necessarily full of prejudices; that is the nature of present-day

man. And if we remain as we are born we carry these prejudices with us through life; we

live in one-sidedness. We can save ourselves only by having inner tolerance, by being

able to enter into the opinions of others even when we think them wrong. If we can bring

a deep understanding for the opinions of other souls even when considering them

mistaken, if we can take what the other thinks and feels in the same way as we take what

we think and feel ourself, if we adopt this faculty of inner tolerance, we may overcome

these prejudices due to the human cycle in which we were born67

.

Dear colleagues, before I continue reading, I have to make a personal interim comment. I was brought up Christian. Later, I left the church because I did not agree with the church, but I tried to get a better understanding of the Christ impulse. So I differentiated between Christianity and the impulse of Christ. I share this because I want you to understand why the following sentences of Rudolf Steiner were so important for me and my life. But if someone is disturbed by the word Christ, he or she can replace it with the words, “the essence of the human being”. So now I continue the quotation:

We then learn to say: What you have understood in this the least of my brethren, you have

understood of me. For Christ did not speak to men in this way only at the time when

Christianity began, but has made good His word “Lo, I am with you always even unto the

end of earthly time”. He still continues to reveal Himself. Once Be said: “Inasmuch as ye

have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren ye have done it unto Me”.

Today He tells men: What you understand with inward tolerance in the least of your

brothers, even when he is mistaken, you have understood of Me, and I will let you

overcome your prejudices when you convert those prejudices into tolerant reception of

what others think and feel68

.

Dear colleagues, I think you can imagine that these words were important to me since I was brought up as a Christian. These words may not be important for you, but for me they were important. In modern words, they became a ‘game changer’ in my life, in my school life. For me, they made working together much easier. I started to empathize with other colleagues. I started to empathize with other colleagues’ opinions instead of fighting them.

An Exercise

Please visualize one of your colleagues and try to recall, to remember his or her outer appearance.

67 16.II.1919, Dornach (GA189) https://wn.rsarchive.org/GA/GA0189/19190216p01.html 68 Ibid.


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And now secondly look at her or him in the mode of Reverent Wonder. All right. Thank you. Now we already go to mode four. Visualize that person and ask him or her, what would it mean to love you? What should I do for you? From a loving perspective. I personally applied that exercise every day and I took interest in colleagues of our College every day, every morning before I went to school. And you can easily imagine that that was a game changer for me and my working together with colleagues. But that alone is not enough. I would like to come back to the cooperation between our organs. I already know that the individual organs don't have an ‘I’, but they all are organized and permeated by a higher principle. This higher principle is the idea of freedom. The human body, from my perspective, is an expression of the idea of freedom. All human organs are orientated towards the fact that man can be a free being. In Western philosophy, in the Western world since Descartes, we have differentiated between mind and matter. I learned a different perspective in China. Mind and matter are not two totally different things. I learned matter is nothing other than a different appearance of mind. So let me give an example, can you see the idea of freedom with physical eyes? Most people would say, no, you can't. You can only grasp an idea mentally. Now I see it differently. Look at the human body. In the human body, you see the idea of freedom that has become physically visible. And what I want to say is that the cooperation of the human organs works so well because they are all permeated by this higher principle. I have learned a lot from this. I asked myself, what is the higher principle that permeates us together? Only if there is such a principle that pervades us as the principle of freedom permeates the human organs only then we will be able to work together as well as our organs do. So, in a Steiner school, each of us is like a single organ. What is the higher principle that is able to permeate each of us? I think we could say the principle is striving to understand human nature more and more deeply in order to get the right inspiration, as to how we can support each individual child. I have therefore been looking for how each of us teachers can come into closer contact with this pursuit of spiritual knowledge of the human being. I tried a lot. And last Summer, I did a hike in the Alps with a College. We hiked together from hut to hut, from cabin to cabin, in the high mountains. And at night after dinner, we listened to the first lecture of The Study of Man. We did not discuss it. We listened to it like doing a Beethoven Symphony, the first movement. And after breakfast, we listened to the second movement. That means the first lecture of Practical

Advice to Teachers. And then we hiked and climbed. And during the noon break, we listened to the Discussions with Teachers. And then we hiked to the next mountain hut. And after dinner, we listened to the Second Symphony by Rudolf Steiner and we didn't discuss it. We just listened. And so on for seven days until we ended up with symphony number seven, Beethoven's best! So during the hike, we talked about what we heard, or we studied the medicinal plants that we found along the way. And this experience really united us. We all came in contact with that higher principle. We came in contact with a spirit; the real spirit of the world of education, and we could feel physically that this spirit permeated and united us like the idea of freedom permeates the organs of our bodies.


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Could we improve our cooperation through this? Yes, a little. Did all conflicts end? No, but we were better able to deal with the conflicts. We will therefore hike in this way every Summer for the next seven years. Always in different areas of the Alps. And then we'll see because it took, I think, thousands of years to incorporate the idea of freedom into our organs. That did not happen in one day, so it will take decades, maybe centuries, maybe thousands of years to incorporate that spirit of education we are longing for and which really unites us. So we can start with that project. And that's just a cool feeling. We are pioneers. And we get that shine. We got the chance to work on that project, to incorporate in our own bodies, you know, our own selves, that new pedagogy. And that means to strive for a deeper and more profound understanding of the child's nature from a spiritual perspective because without a spiritual perspective our insight is one-sided and not complete. By the way, all participants testified that this single week was the most relaxing week of the entire summer vacation. They ended, finally, full of strength, because somehow, we all were filled up with spiritual content and we had many more red blood corpuscles in our bodies because we were hiking at high altitude. And so that was a huge impulse for the coming school year. Summary. First, train tolerance, train empathy on a daily basis and train understanding the opinions of others, even if they are in error. Secondly, coming in contact with a higher principle that unites us, otherwise, we will never be able to work together like our vital organs are able to work together. And thirdly, I learned a third approach in order to improve cooperation by my beloved heroes, Goethe and Schiller, the German poets. And today, these two poets are always mentioned together. If you say, Goethe, at the same time you have in mind Schiller. And if you say, Schiller, at the same time you have in mind Goethe. They are united, at least for us Germans. I have to tell you that at the beginning they were not only opponents, they were enemies. They were also enemies. When Schiller published his first drama, called The Robbers, Goethe was utterly annoyed. It was disgusting for him; the drama, and then he wrote a letter. If Schiller continues in such a way, I have to leave Germany. I can't stand it - it is either him or me, but not we two together. His impulses are totally different from what I consider to be the right path for literature in Germany. He spoils Germany with drama like The Robbers. That was Goethe’s opinion. Now, do you have a colleague you'd think of in such a way? He spoils our school. He spoils my pupils. My students. Do you have such a colleague? With Schiller, it was even worse. One letter he wrote to a friend in Canada: I really hate Goethe’s spirit. I could kill Goethe’s spirit. It is unbelievable, I have never thought I would like to kill the spirit of my colleague. So that was really heated stuff and even worse, he wrote, he is like a proud and prudish woman that I would like to make into a child in order to humiliate her in the eyes of the world. Oh, thank you very much. Unbelievable! Then it happened that Goethe, made his journey to Italy, he disappeared. All of a sudden, he disappeared. And in southern Italy, he made his breakthrough regarding understanding the plant, the archetypal plant. And when he returned from that journey, he published his collected works. Schiller bought it, although he was poor and read every single volume and was deeply, deeply disappointed because there was not a single new work, not a single new glimmer. It was just transformed and brought into verses and so on. But not a single new work. But when Goethe returned from Italy, he met his later wife, Christiane Vulpius. She was a simple girl who sold flowers and she loved dancing and they danced all night together.


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They lived together. And it was the gossip of the city of Weimar. Unbelievable. That famous Goethe and that simple flower selling and dancing girl. But now their first son, called August, was born in 1790 and Schiller worked through all the volumes of Goethe’s collected works. Unfortunately he linked them in his review with a humiliating sexual innuendo, so you can understand that these two men were enemies and then they became friends. Unbelievable. They weren't only opponents, they were enemies. And how did that come to happen? Well, there was a conference on plants in Jena and Goethe and Schiller both attended that conference. In a break, it happened that, unfortunately, Schiller ran into Goethe. So he helped him up and now he had to talk and had to improvise. And he said, Oh, this last lecture was totally boring. Isn't there any better approach, a livelier approach to speak about plants? This single question hit Goethe like lightning, and he forgot everything because that was the question of his life, the core question of his life. He immediately answered, yes, there is a possibility. And then he sketched that archetype plant, he had discovered in Italy and Schiller looked at this sketch. Yes, Herr Goethe but this is an idea, not a perception. Goethe got angry. Oh, I didn't know that I have ideas without knowing it and that I could even see them with my physical eyes. Goethe himself did not understand that, of course, he only grasped that idea, that archetype of all plants in his mind but in such a strong and lively way that he thought he could see it with his physical eyes. So they checked it and they went out of the building and went through the streets of Jena. Finally, they ended up in front of the door of Schiller’s house and Schiller lured him into his house and went up the stairs to Schiller’s little cabin and there they chatted again and again and again and finally, they left. That was a breakthrough. And now the most important thing happened. Schiller took up, for the first time in his life, Goethe’s scientific papers and worked his way through them. For the first time in his life, Schiller could really understand Goethe’s mission by reading his science papers on plants, on animals, on stones, and then he wrote this unbelievable birthday letter dated from the 23rd of August in 1793. He wrote to Goethe: I followed up your mind for decades and I now understand your mission. If you were born as an ancient Greek person you would have perceived the deities in bush and tree, in the rivers and in the clouds, but since you are born as a modern person, you had no choice but to extend your thinking, to shift your thinking to a higher level in order to grasp the lively spirit in nature again. And when Goethe read these sentences he felt deeply understood. For him, it was as if an angel had seen him and from that moment on, he forgot everything of what happened before and he wrote back and he invited Schiller, too, to come and to live with him in his house. Schiller immediately answered; Yes, I would like to come, but you have to know that I am seriously sick. I suffer from lung diseases. And that might be a huge problem for you. Goethe couldn't tolerate sickness. He was not able to adjust, even when his wife got pregnant and he immediately left his home and went on a journey. Terrible. Really terrible. Yes and now he had to cope with Schiller's lung disease and Schiller was also a late sleeper and Goethe got up very early in the morning. Then he had this Schiller, snoring, Schiller in his guest room. But for the first time in his life, he could stand it. Goethe’s constitution changed by becoming friends with Schiller. And Schiller’s constitution changed as well. Goethe testified to this and said:


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My impression was that Schiller became younger and younger and younger. Day after day after day. So finally, they worked together on different projects, and that opened the heavens for lots of people. Schiller died ten years later. So they had only that period of ten years. And when Goethe was reflecting on his life in the 1830s, he said, Yes, I have to confess that the best of my life was the time of the friendship with Schiller. And I think this was unique in human history, that for the first time in history enemies became friends. We know a lot about famous friendships in history. But that enemies became deep friends - that was totally new. And when I came across that historical fact, I was deeply touched and I felt immediately, I have to – we have to – copy this model. What Goethe and Schiller did is a model for the future, and I want to learn from that model. So I started learning from that model. I picked up my colleague in our College. Although a similar feeling, we didn't humiliate each other. He acted against me behind my back and that I didn't like, so I decided in those days that I will never collaborate with him again. Now the idea was so strong that an inner voice said I want to work together with him once more. Please, dear God, give us a chance to work together. It felt crazy to say but I had a longing of working together with such a person and so I went to him the next day. And I said to him, Dear Mr So-and-so, would you give me a second chance? Would you like to work together with me, and could we work together with the 12th graders? And his answer was, “Give me one day”. I said, “Of course, you get three days”. The next day he approached me and said, “Yes, we can do it”. And that was it. Yes, intuition in that moment of moral imagination. At that moment, “Mr So-and-so, I know you suffer from me a lot. And I got the idea that I can write a manual for you on how to treat me. I will write down all my mistakes you suffer from. You know, I'm so flexible and I can change everything within seconds and start from a new point. And you suffered from that? I will write a manual for you. And then we will cope.” You will cope with me. So I wrote this manual. I wrote down all my mistakes. The result was totally incredible because I made all these mistakes during the process and then he took this manual. He asked; “Everything you said is what I should do? And I really should do it?” I said yes. So it was full of laughter. Things that would have been a disaster in former times now turned into an opportunity for fun and laughter. But the real thing was that by this working together of providence we were filled with inspiration for the weak children. And finally, we two together led our children, with additional needs, to a level that was unbelievable. After the performance, our colleagues were totally amazed. They could not understand. How can children reach such a level? It was not understandable for them. They didn't know the secret. And the secret was that two opponents managed to work together. And then I tried to continue that process with the next person because I had a couple of enemies. This exercise does not only have an impact on our soul. It has at the same time, an impact on the entire College. The atmosphere changes step by step. Sometimes our atmosphere was heating up to the ceiling and from that point on, from that starting point, it changed. And if situations deteriorated, we were able to change that, and we got the right idea in the right moment. So that's what I really highly recommend.


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To summarize, how can we improve working together? First, we can do this by this little exercise and by exercising tolerance and empathy and a deep understanding of the other. In the sense of the quotation, what you do to one of the least of these my brothers, you do unto me, because today the essence of the human being says to us what you understand in one of the least of your brothers with tolerance, even if it is an error, you understand that from me. And I will let you overcome your prejudices if you dispel your prejudices by tolerant acceptance of what the other thinks and feels. Second, we can try to come in contact with a higher principle that unites us and that is able to let us work together like the organs of our own bodies, but this takes years and years and years. It does not happen within one year, but we can start now. And thirdly, working together with your opponent and try to love your enemies. I know that this is hard, so hard, however, as soon as you start to do so it becomes somehow easy. It is as if the weight is carried by an unseen being. I only have to start but there's someone invisible who carries the burden and gives us support with better ideas. Yes, dear colleagues. And that's what I want to tell you. And I can only say thank you for your patience and all the best for you and your work and you're working together. God bless you.


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Social Renewal69

By Paul Martin,Melbourne Rudolf Steiner School

Steiner reminds us of a principle that works through human history: When humanity is ready for an important step in spiritual evolution, the counter forces will strike, offering a seductive alternative. Two Examples: 1. Think of the excitement that was there at the start of the scientific age: the human soul opening to embrace the world, superstition giving way to sure knowledge, as people of integrity investigated Nature to learn what was true. What a wonderful future lay ahead: each expansion of human consciousness would enlarge the world we lived in so that our moral perceptions could gain greater and greater validity. Then the counterstroke came: deterministic materialism, preventing our spirit from expanding into all but a tiny part of the natural world. 2. We can think of the growing sense for the injustice of inequality, and then intimations of the possibility of universal brotherhood. The counterblow came with communism. When brotherhood is imposed, the result is quite different from what would arise out of love and true seeing.

The present situation

At present, there are many people who are secure enough in their ego-being to reach out inwardly to others. They are capable of experiencing the essence of those they love, and of knowing that it is this essence that illumines the relationship. Certainly, to articulate this requires careful observation and effort. It requires that we take an inner experience and repeat it again and again. It requires just as much practice as learning a musical instrument. But if this is done there comes a time when the inner perception of the essence of our loved ones is recognised as the most important part of the relationship. Then our love, our concern, our compassion arises as a direct inner experience of the other. This is spiritual togetherness, and it is this, which confers importance on physical togetherness. Of course, there are rules, and they are stringent. Intuition is by permission. Insight is granted by grace. Insight, once granted, implies responsibility. Failure to accept such a responsibility takes away any possibility of future togetherness. If the rules are accepted — and these rules are not imposed but are a matter of seeing — then life is enriched through every friendship. When this possibility was there in a sufficiently large number of people, the counterstroke fell, and

69 A College Discussion Paper, 21st April 2020.


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the new age of social media was ushered in. Here there’s no effort involved. We have instant communication regardless of physical location. There are no inner constraints. The recognition of the other person’s illumined spiritual being recedes as a possibility. So, there we have it: Humanity offered a new spiritual faculty, and the counteroffer, instant communication with greatly reduced faculties. Now here we are at present in a strange position. We are obliged to make use of digital media in our schooling in this time of ‘social distancing’. But we can make the best of it if we remember what it is that makes us love our work – the whole school community with its cultivation of a way of life that embraces the spiritual dimension. We know that there is great goodwill supporting us all at this time. We are physically separated, but that goodwill is tangible. Then there are our beloved children. When we use digital media, we are aware of their inner being, the illumined core of will to enter into the world and bring new forces into it. We are using the digital media, but the driving force in our teaching is our responsibility to their future and the love we have for them. The world is going through grave changes at present, but in our work, we can experience more keenly than before the reality of social renewal.


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College PD Talk70

By Robert Martin, Melbourne Rudolf Steiner School

Because of the ‘social distancing’, I am sure we all do have a little more time to ourselves. No matter how many people we have in our house, we probably have at least a little more time to notice what is going on in our minds. This does present opportunities. Rudolf Steiner suggested that we learn to understand the fullness of the universe around us, rather than just delegating certain parts of it to a realm that we cannot explore. He was, of course, referring to the spiritual parts, the non-physical world, the other 99% of the cosmos that we ignore if we get stuck in materialistic ways of thinking. The physical world, for all its beauty and magnificence, can only be viewed by us from our immediate surroundings. But if we start to explore the spiritual dimensions, then, we, being human, can go anywhere, and there is no limit to our expansion of experience and knowledge. This is the conclusion of the perennial philosophy based upon thousands of years of spiritual, scientific exploration. The place where we start on this journey of exploring the fullness of the cosmos is within�ourselves. We learn the simple act of quietening ourselves and learning to move into a realm of inner calm. This is easier said than done, but with consistent attempts, we can achieve this. Often that is as much as people want to do, just to escape from the anguish of some parts of our lives. Hence the great interest in meditation in our society. But we can go further, much further. With a calm soul, and with an alert mind, we can begin an objective exploration of the spiritual universe. There is nothing to stop us from quietly exploring the spiritual realm except our own materialistic ideas: they may lock us into only one way of seeing things. But, if we let our materialism go, and we stay sane and calm, then we can go on day by day, hour by hour, exploring the universe, and in fact, beginning to recognise within it the many other forms of being and consciousness that impinge upon us. We do this by beginning to understand the nature of the influences that flow into our lives, and into our thoughts. Or should I say, that we begin to recognise and to name the subtle spiritual influences playing into our thoughts and feelings. People of other countries don’t speak English, and nor do spiritual beings. The spiritual beings ‘speak’ directly to our inner world by influencing our thoughts and feelings. These almost subconscious impulses are what we translate into words, or adopt as feelings or motives of�action. We can take the words that arise in our minds as a result of these spiritual influences, and we can start to notice them in our own clarity of thought. In this way, we can be the master of our inner life. We can watch what is arising in our consciousness and not get swept away by every influence. We can say: “No I don’t want to think that way, I don’t want to be overwhelmed by these inner suggestions, I will try and maintain my own path through life.” That is a very worthy endeavour and is the fundamental thing one should try to do. We are only fully ourselves when we maintain our awareness of what is going on in our inner life.

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So, having to some extent calmed oneself, or at least concentrated during the calmest parts of one’s day, we can begin to notice what is influencing us, and then we can begin to place names upon those influences. The spiritual influence we often talk about is, of course, our Angel, our personal spiritual guide in our Earthly life. There is any number of traditions, whether it be Christian, or Islamic, or Hindu or so on, which will describe to us, usually in allegorical or mythopoeic forms, what the Angel is like. They use these forms of description because they most directly convey non-physical reality in the language developed for the physical world. They describe the circumstance as, typically, in which we encounter our angel, and how often we will encounter this guiding being. Once we have become aware of such knowledge, we can start to think for ourselves, “Oh, that is what is being described. My Angel! I am aware of that influence in my life now.” Conversely, if I am a materialist and I believe such a thing is impossible, then it will remain unknown to me, unless perhaps, I have some traumatic incident befall me, and I am dragged out of my complacency. If then, we observe our inner life, we cannot but notice that it is as though there are different voices speaking to us all day long, and we begin to recognise which ones are helpful, and which ones are deleterious. It has long been suggested to human beings that they also notice the deleterious, negative voices or influences in their lives, because they, alongside our angelic friends, manifest within our thoughts and feelings. We know a bad feeling, or cynicism can arise within us in some circumstances, or the blaming of other people or, worse, the cursing of other people. We know that when that happens, as long as we are not depraved or lost to decency, we will feel guilty. We also know that is not appropriate for ourselves, for human beings to feel that way about others. It is not right. And yet the temptation to go with such a sentiment certainly arises. Well, of course, there are always temptations to lower oneself arising in our mind, although they have less and less power if one does not go in their direction. So, on the one hand, we can recognise the definitely negative influences that play into us, and that the spiritual is not all rosy, any more than the physical world is all rosy. The spiritual world has innumerable beings that are not helpful within it. You know if you go along bad paths of thought you very soon find yourself in the company of beings of the most unfortunate nature. You want to get yourself away from them. It is not good to be in their company. In fact, you can just see this situation when you come across some unfortunate person who is suffering their own bad thoughts and hate of others. Overhearing their talk, the coarseness of their language comes from a hellish inner life; and they are in very bad company surrounded by negative spiritual influences. Not bad physical company, but bad spiritual company that surrounds them. By contrast, we know that as soon as we turn away from negative thoughts and feelings, and exercise self-awareness and control, we are able to turn our thoughts towards wishing to understand a situation in such a way that we can improve it. Then we can make a contribution to the future of our world. A simple way is by giving love, and then we immediately feel, “Ah, I am in good company”. The spiritual beings that have now come into one’s presence are beneficent. We think of someone, we love them, we bless them. For example, we think of our dear children before they go to sleep; we love them, and cannot help smiling when we think of them, and when we are doing that, we always feel that we are in good company. The company arises around us, spiritual beings arrive as we direct our nature to the good of the World. These perceptions of good and evil beings are not some figments of our imagination, they arise as we wake up to our full human consciousness. We notice, by the atmosphere in a positively approached situation, that angelic beings have entered the room. They are close to us. We can sense them quite clearly. Of course, it does not mean that we see them with physical eyes.


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You will be aware that there are different traditions of spiritual perception in different countries. In Australia, the description of spiritual beings given by the First Nation People is of such a different nature than the spiritual seeing of the people of Europe. Here in Australia, that sort of perception is described in a rather more austere way. Our part of the physical world engenders its own unique way of perceiving the spiritual. Nevertheless, the commonality of the experience of angels is unmistakable. So we recognise in certain circumstances what is described as the presence of the angels, and we can begin to enjoy their company at any time. This awareness is given to us if we develop a calm interest and love for the world. The spiritual awareness is not something one makes up, we test the objectivity of it by just doing those simple, regular things that have always been suggested by the perennial philosophy, by filling oneself with loving thoughts and trying to extend them to the world, and then noticing the quality of the changes around us, the changes indicate unmistakably, “Here is beneficent presence”.

If you wish, check it out by descriptions of angelic encounters in Judaism, Christianity and so�on. They have different terminology than, say, our modern language, but anywhere where there have been people who have striven to be helpful to the world, and who have contemplated the spiritual world, there you will find that these people begin to encounter benevolent spiritual beings that are of a personal nature, indeed very much like mature brothers and sisters who come around to help us. They are there at the birth of our children. We remember such situations only too well. Angelic beings are there at all the great events in our lives. When we are in trauma these same beings comfort us. At such times one may be blind to their presence, but in retrospect, we recognise how blessed we were by their care. Let us call to mind the inner nuances of thought and feeling that come to us all, in the times when we are working with children, whether in the office, the yard, or the classroom.�In a way, we are especially fortunate to be in the presence of children, because they do attract what is best in the spiritual world. Their innocence and spiritual beauty tend to repel what is bad in the spiritual world, and so it makes it very easy in a school to feel the good in the world, and to feel the angelic beings and to work with them. We walk into school and we enter into a sanctuary. We have a wonderful chance, day by day, to assure ourselves of the reality of the angelic beings, and to learn to call upon their presence for guidance and good company. Our side of co-working with the angels is to just calm ourselves, stay present in every moment, think lovingly of the children and be assured that we, the world is fundamentally loving and harmonious and saturated with goodwill. As we do this, the Angels will assuredly join us in good work for the children.


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College PD Talk71

By Robert Martin

Our inclination to talk freely about spiritual matters is inhibited in our present�society. Why? Because so often when people speak about spiritual matters they are speaking from the authority of a certain religion. This, of course, may have great social value within that religious group, but if you are an independent spiritual researcher, then you do not wish to be seen as someone putting forward a dogma. Nor would independent spiritual research be of any value if it was perceived as fanciful or illusory. Spiritual investigation can indeed be objective and scientific and can be tested by a commonsense approach. In such research, you have to keep a tight rein on your imagination, and yet use it, and your full human capacities, to explore possibilities. Our tools of spiritual exploration are contemplation of the body of perennial wisdom, meditation to overcome our own materialism and to learn to love and cultivating sustained thought and terminology appropriate to the study. Our terminology will overlap with that of organised religions, but often it does not coincide in meaning. For example, if we use the words ‘God the Father’. Nowadays such terminology has a pretty bad vibe for many people because immediately they think of a traditional God; a bearded man sitting on a throne on high, with a judgmental frame of mind. But, if for example, our terminology is derived from the Dionysian school of spiritual research, then God the Father is referring to the whole supportive realm of angelic beings who maintain reality for human consciousness and accompany our lives day today. The patriarchal, unbending figure is unacceptable to so many people, although it is employed still by many speaking from religious dogma. I mention this so that I will feel a little bit easier to speak about things which I think are common sense, and hopefully, you will realise that what I am talking about are things that anyone can observe and explore and are in no way dogmatic. A lot of the time people in this room, for example, would have a sense of communicating with dead friends, just through being aware of their presence. We might, for example, feel that they still have an interest in our activities here. Likewise, many people I know do have a sense of converse with their personal angel. This is just a common sense every-day experience for so many. Such things though are not discussed enough, because they are refuted in an illogical way by materialists; they are just written off without any basis for doing so. As a result, we are in a difficult situation where most people in our society do not discuss freely some of the most important and common experiences of their day-to-day life. We do not allow sufficient space in our hearts and minds to allow for the resonance of experiences that are subtle or expressed in inner voices speaking to us from our spiritual guides. For normal people, the nuances in our encounters with the world lead us to become aware of the many spiritual beings that inhabit our cosmos and are in immediate contact with us. As we start to consider all the beings influencing us, we have the chance to have a fully integrated conceptual life, a life that allows us to develop a deeper understanding of our experiences in prayer, or meditation, or those almost intangible moments that occur all day long in the classroom. Today I want to talk for a few minutes to you about, not the angels, but another very interesting group of beings who deeply affect people like ourselves. These are the so-called Spirits of Time, the Archai. I am using here the standard terminology of Christian Mysticism as laid out by Dionysius the Areopagite72, a researcher and writer who informed Christian philosophy since about the Fifth Century AD. In Christian philosophy, he is constantly referred to as an authority,

71 28 April 2020 72https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pseudo-Dionysius-the-Areopagite


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and his readers try to correlate his terminology with their own experiences in prayer and meditation. Through having a shared, consistent terminology, we are able to accrue knowledge of all worlds and conceptualise experiences, which would otherwise remain on the twilight borders of our minds. When Dr Steiner founded the schooling system in which we work, he made it very clear he was instigating a type of education that was not for all time. The principles of education he introduced were only for the time when he was speaking, and the next few hundred years. He was of the opinion that the earlier type of schooling based upon the scholasticism in Europe and developed eventually into the education of the 19th Century had now had its day. The appropriate development of humanity was no longer concentrating only upon the development of individual logical thought, but also upon the new faculty of human self-consciousness that he called ‘the consciousness soul’. The clear, alert thinking of the modern human had to now connect through the intelligent human heart with the spiritual foundation of the cosmos, and thereby become more practical and responsible in its dealings with the world. We will always need clear thought as a foundation but having established this as a general part of the consciousness of humanity, we now have to go further and work with the consciousness soul. This is the part of our being that strives to connect the spiritual with the physical and does not rely only upon logic but can nevertheless test the conclusions based upon spiritual insight with clear, logical thinking. Dr Steiner says our education system is for this time; it will fulfil its purpose and then pass away. I believe he was considering our relationship to the Time Spirits, the Archai, when he said this. Now, a bit of background to this.

The people who explore the spiritual realm have discovered that around us we have the�angels. These are the spiritual beings who in the last great cycle of the earth evolved from being human like us, egocentric like us, into their next stage. As a consequence, they have a much broader spiritual awareness than we enjoy, and at the same time, they retain the type of human egoity that we are developing now. Because of their development, they understand the human condition. They do not incarnate physically, and they are a powerful force for the good. They are also the most wonderful, non-judgmental friends when one gets to know them. They are much more experienced than we are, and so it is as though they are older sisters and brothers, and therefore we come to regard them not only with affection but with reverence. They respect our freedom, they advise us, but they will never over-ride our free will. Hence they will support us in all the wonderful things we do, and they will leave us in ‘freedom’ if we choose to do our worst. This freedom which can be misused, of course, seems to be the only pathway to maturation for a human being. The cosmic purpose is that we will gradually grow to independent spiritual maturity.�Older than the angels, having developed in an earlier cycle, two aeons ago, and therefore with even more maturity and power, are the archangels. They have the capacity to experience many, many states of consciousness at once, and are able to understand the impulses and thoughts of a great group of people simultaneously. We might think, for example, of the archangel of our school. This is an archangelic being, who in a meeting like this, is able to read the hearts and minds of all participants. This archangel can then help us to reach conclusions through inspiring members of the group to be able to share the overall consciousness that the archangel enjoys while we are�meeting. I see how wonderfully that works because I see that although we have little ups and downs in our meetings, the participants are wonderfully selfless. You do not see people riding out their ego in our meetings. We may get stuck in our views a bit because we are human and still developing our ego, but overall we can see and agree to the great wisdom that can manifest in the College meetings. We are able to watch it all with an acute critical, but not negative, mind. That is an instance of the work of an archangel, and every group where there is communal activity attracts the interest of a supporting archangel. From their human development three aeons ago, we now come to the great Archai, the


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time�spirits. Let us consider our communion with these spirits. For example, we invite them into our teachers’ meditation as the bestowers of wisdom and intuition. Their very being is time. Where they are, then there is time. The most concrete experience I had of this when I was younger, was while spending a day with a group of aboriginal people, elders who visited our school in search of an appropriate pedagogical system for their people. It became so clear that these elders were in a different time relationship to the world than ourselves. They had their own time spirit around them, and they brought it with them into our school. This was an illuminating experience for all of us. It was obvious that they were supported in their own special time zone. When they were in our school we abandoned our own relationship to time, and we were able to share the realm of the time spirit who guided them. It felt like timelessness, or perhaps better expressed, like being in a zone of non- lineal time. In our normal relationship to time, the Archai bring in change, they create renewal. The great mystics, the spiritual scientists who explored their nature, tell us that cyclically, every few hundred years, another time spirit leads humanity and brings in a renewed sense of time and evolutionary purpose. In other words, the time spirits are the great initiators of the new. They stimulate humanity to do new things, to extend our efforts beyond our present moment, to step out of the past into the future. When Rudolf Steiner gave his educational impulse, he said that this is the school for the immediate future. In his original College of Teachers were people who he personally selected; they were ardent students of anthroposophy, and many were deeply committed scientists of the spirit. They would have listened acutely when he spoke of time, and realised he was placing a very interesting picture before them; the task of creating the future. That task is the one that we have inherited, namely, we are to bring in the new in education. In some ways, people think that Rudolf Steiner’s system is old-fashioned because we go in for cultural studies, handicrafts, art, humanist science and so on. Of course, we use these disciplines because they are the clear stepping stones from the past to the beckoning culture of the future. I wish to remind you that we are always asked to be innovative, even in our present state of separation from our classes. So, we are still asking ourselves, ‘How do I teach children who are the harbingers of impulses that are essential for the future of humanity?’ We are working with one foot in the future and the other drawing strength from past culture. It is a very exciting and dynamic situation in which we find ourselves. It means that we really have to be very committed to our task. When we are really involved with a sense of the whole future unfolding before us, there is no half-way mark with respect to the effort we put in, and the interest it has for us. It also means that we are obliged to be fully present in every moment of the unfolding day. But, of course, at the moment, all we have in front of us physically is a screen, and we have to find our own way of passing through that medium and extending our own astrality and life force to our class spread out across the community.


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Report from The Pedagogical Section, Australia, 2020 By Peggy Day This year has of course been a very unusual one! The Pedagogical Class Intensive of tutors and friends was able to go ahead one weekend in January focussing on Lesson 19 prior to the six days of class teachers’ deepening through lectures and tutorials at this year’s Class Teachers’ Intensive at Glenaeon, This week marked a turning point, as by Australia Day our focus was on China and the developing health concerns there and the growing travel restrictions. In March I contacted the Pedagogical Section coordinators at the Goetheanum and in the US, New Zealand and South Africa to encourage collaboration internationally. This communication helped establish a forum on the Goetheanum website and some sharing of resources with Valentin Wember, Elan Leibner and Bernadette White. From March until May I sent out, as Pedagogical Section coordinator, in collaboration with Bernadette White in New Zealand, three letters of support to Initiative Circle members with meditative suggestions from Valentin Wember, for them to distribute to those interested. On one occasion this also went directly to all teachers. The Pedagogical Section/Glenaeon Intensive tutors then worked with 7 separate Zoom sessions in April to support the Australian class teachers of each year level in finding their way in the remote home learning world. Bernadette White and Andrew Hill were a support in this. In May a few follow up sessions were held to reflect on the lockdown experience for teachers. In June we had a Zoom conference – this time for Victorian teachers and linked with Robert Martin, Lisa Devine and Terri McMillan. I invited Marilou Aurallo, to have one also for Early Childhood teachers in Victoria. The Goetheanum asked us to distribute the publication, The Inner Work of the Waldorf Teacher, which arrived in September and already 180 copies have been sold to schools and teachers, with the Steiner bookshop in Sydney mailing out. The November meeting of the Pedagogical Section at the Goetheanum, even if it goes ahead, will of course not be easily accessible to those of us in Australia. We will have a Pedagogical Section meeting via Zoom on October 25th rather than our usual weekend meeting. We will be looking at national cooperation among members of the School of Spiritual Science working in education including joining in new projects, considering steps to further support the work on the ‘Core Principles’, the website we are developing and the journal team. Pedagogical Section Coordinator’s Current Tasks

1. Editor and publisher of the Australia/NZ Pedagogical Journal, moving back now to a biannual publication.

2. Attendance and presentation at International Pedagogical Section Meetings at the Goetheanum annually.

3. The organisation of the Annual Pedagogical Section Initiative Circle Meeting in Sydney each October.


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4. Founding member and on the organising group of the Australian Teacher Educator’s Forum in conjunction with the Melbourne Rudolf Steiner Seminar, who have been welcoming hosts of these meetings after the first few years.

5. Co-convener of special conferences on deeper themes of the educational background [e.g. the administration of and the contribution to the organising group of the Dawning Mysteries Conference (2018) Group].

6. Bringing the mediative class work of the First Class of the School of Spiritual Science to the teachers’ community through conference presentations (or upon schools’ request).

7. Supporting the Steiner Educational Curriculum in schools, its implementation and the indications from which it arises. This was previously as Lead Writer of the Curriculum under contract to SEA and continues in the role of Education Officer, cooperation for which we are very grateful. Liaison with international curriculum contacts: e.g. Goetheanum, Van James, Valentin Wember and Michael Merle.

8. Teacher professional development: The annual January 6-day class teacher intensives, a cooperation between Glenaeon School and the Pedagogical Section, preceded by a weekend class intensive for the 10-12 lecturers and tutors.

9. Liaison with the Early Childhood movement. 10. Contribution to the Core Principles by the Initiative Circle in 2019 at the invitation of

SEA, a welcome collaboration; including a sharing of the Inner Essence of Steiner

Education.

11. Distribution of The Inner Work of the Waldorf Teacher in cooperation with the Steiner bookshop.

Co-workers

Around our country, there are more than 60 initiative circle members, involved in writing resources, teacher education and mentoring, leading initiatives and teaching. I am most grateful for the colleagueship of the full circle members and particularly for the co-working and support of the following Initiative Circle Members, in their various connections to the Pedagogical Section this year. Helen Cock: liaison with the Teacher Educators’ Forum. Bernadette White: Coordinator of the Pedagogical Section in New Zealand, support of specialist conferences, co-working between countries on letters to members. Jennifer West: previously responsible for the distribution of books translated and/or published by the section; now focussed on school leadership and governance. Rod Tomlinson: Support with the Pedagogical Section Journal and editing of compilations of Rudolf Steiner’s indications on educational questions and school leadership. Neil Carter: previous coordinator of the Pedagogical Section in New Zealand; co-editor of the journal for many years, science teaching; astronomy. Robert Martin and Lisa Devine: Support for Victorian Teachers during the lockdown. Robert Martin and Paul Martin for their journal contributions to support all teachers. Tim Dunn: preparation of a journal each year which highlights teacher’s innovative practice based on indications adapted to the world today; high school development; science curriculum and teaching. Jeremy Board: Science teaching. Marilou Araullo: liaison with the Early Childhood Movement. Barbara Baldwin: supporting teachers with children with additional needs.


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Gerry Josephson: preparation of specialist conferences, anthroposophical background to education. Pauline Lucas: Support of class teacher curriculum implementation. Narelle Savage: providing a connection with knowledge arising from the work of the medical section at our meetings. Sophia Montefiore: school leadership, pedagogy and curriculum. Gilbert von Kerchoven: Archetypal stories from many lands Diane Tatum: Supporting publishing and marketing Warm wishes to all, Peggy Day,

Coordinator of the Pedagogical Section, Australia


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January Class Teacher Intensives 2021- January 11th to 15th Glenaeon School in Conjunction with the Pedagogical Section in Australia

Listening to the Call of the Spirit in our Times

In Service of the Children and our Future

Supporting teachers who are inwardly attuned and awake to the opportunities

each day to lead the children and older students towards the future that the world awaits.

Delivered remotely via Zoom with hubs in some schools. Bookings https://www.trybooking.com/BMFGV

*

Day 1 Peggy Day- Opening – The Call of the Spirit in our Times

Message from across the World - Christof Wiechert- The Human Being and the World)

Day 2 Bernadette White- Stories of Hope in the Wisdom of World Literature

Sophia Montefiore- Biographies of our Times

Day 3 Lisa Romero- Inner Development Tasks of our Age

Day 4 Lisa Devine- The Seeds of the Future: The Poetry of the Soul in our Times

Van James – Pictures of our Future Potential in Art

5 Hours of lectures NESA accredited $100 - plus for each year group - 9 sessions- 1 hour 40 minutes = 15 hours NESA accredited

6 Core Curriculum/Main Lesson Sessions per year group- English, History, Maths, Geography and Science interwoven- $200 3 Support Sessions- 1 Drawing/Painting per year group, 1 Inner Development per year group 1 learning Support Session per year--$100--- Total Cost $400


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BOOK REVIEW

The Inner Work of the Waldorf Teacher Pedagogical Section at the Goetheanum, Switzerland (207 pages) Here we have two books in one; firstly, a new compilation of reflections on inner work and deeper aspects of the pedagogy from contemporary sources and extended excerpts from Steiner’s lectures – which are even more relevant today – form one section. Secondly, there are around 75 pages connected to the old purple book, Towards the Deepening of Waldorf

Education (out of print for several years), which includes many notes from the founding of the first school and original verses and meditations given to teachers and students. This book has been in preparation and translation for several years now. It seeks to bring reflections from current teacher educators and pedagogical leaders, as a contemporary experience of the inner work which Steiner suggested for teachers, based on the verses and meditations, as well as the Pedagogical Law. Hearing the voices of those who are right now endeavouring to implement these ideals and visions in their inner and outer lives, has immediate relevance for our work here in Australia and reminds us that all around the world in over a thousand schools and a further 1000 Kindergartens, teachers gather to do this work. As the Foreword outlines:

Christof Wiechert explores the spiritual impulse which stands behind the work of the

Waldorf educator or teacher, emphasising the importance of cultivating ‘the higher self’

which towers above the everyday ‘I’ as (a) pedagogical guiding star. Claus-Peter Röh

takes the two teacher meditations given by Steiner and investigates their structuring

poetically, tracing tensions and connections between the outer and inner perceptions

of the human being through these verses. An additional perspective is then provided

when Christof Wiechert discusses the two morning verses in relation to the

meditations.

Thomas Zdrazil looks at pedagogy being a path of inner schooling, through

understanding the being of the growing child, while Rüdiger Grimm and Florian Oswald

consider the far-reaching consequences of the Pedagogical Law as interrelationship

between student and teacher. Robert Thomas and Franz Lütters investigate Waldorf

education as a pedagogical movement of our times, outlining the importance of the

education as a social as well as Michaelic impulse. James Pewtherer takes an

historical view of the metamorphosis of intelligence over the course of time and calls

for true educators… to work with spiritual scientific seriousness towards a richer and

deeper grasp of the knowledge and the life that is ours today. The first section closes

with an article by the co-leaders of the Pedagogical Section, Florian Oswald and Claus-

Peter Röh, on the nature and work of the Section.

There follow longer excerpts from Steiner’s lectures, which outline the establishment of inner practice and some results of esoteric training. These include Concerning the

trust which may be placed on thinking, the nature of the thinking soul and of meditation;

The Requirements of Esoteric Training and Some effects of initiation.


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The original notes from the founding of the first school which form a third section of the book, provide access to Rudolf Steiner’s words as he spoke of this world festival event for humanity and the importance of the teachers’ circle at their weekly meetings connecting to the guiding beings at whose behest and under whose mandate, this work is done. Lastly, 35 pages of verses by Rudolf Steiner are included. Handwritten versions by Rudolf Steiner and typed version in German and English of verses for students and teachers, include not just the Teacher’s meditations and students’ morning verses but also verses for graduating students, the verse for the laying of the foundation stone of the Stuttgart Waldorf school, for a student who had passed away and for language lessons. This book which was always given in the past to those joining a school’s college of teachers, would form a deep study for a college now, and is a comprehensive background to esoteric leadership in a Steiner school for full-time students preparing to enter the profession and is a gift for the personal reader to come back to, again and again.

Peggy Day

Pedagogical Section Coordinator in Australia


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BOOK REVIEW

Developing Judgement Competence: The Activity of Discerning in Teaching and in Everyday Life. By Manfred von Mackensen

“We are looking for a bridge between the solid objects and their surroundings; from the

tangible to the real idea; which we then bequeath to the separated things around us. It’s all

about continuing to span new arches for the bridge: using the multitude of discerning activities

which unify trivial matters with philosophy in an age-appropriate context.” This book represents Manfred von Mackensen’s last contribution to Steiner Waldorf pedagogy. It centres on Rudolf Steiner’s recommended teaching methodology, the core of which is the pupil’s developing desire to judge, or more precisely to develop the activity of discerning. The original German version Urteilstätigkeiten im Lernen has been published and is now in print. The English language translation is currently being finalised by Zachariah Boucher in Austria. Manfred von Mackensen has contributed an enormous amount to the deepening and sharing of a Steiner Waldorf pedagogy and curriculum, most particularly for the upper school sciences. Over the last decades, he published many books and conference proceedings that include careful concise descriptions and discussions to assist teachers to deliver experiences based on a phenomenological methodology, with many wonderful practical examples. I feel Manfred von Mackensen has supported us as teachers to allow the students to develop their own understanding of the world based on their own ability to discern what is valid – something fundamental to the task of educating individuals who live out of true freedom. The educational task of the upper school may be distilled into something akin to the title of this book. This book is a courageous step into a domain where very few have gone, an attempt to deal with the question of what we actually do when we actively discern (or judge). The author suggests there is as yet no sound philosophical and epistemological basis necessary for such an investigation, and that when setting out to investigate what discerning involves, we get the impression that anything goes – any offbeat ideas might be acceptable. As he says: “The

stage on which one could observe a clear line of thinking, coupled with a pedagogical result,

is empty, dark and cold.” This is Manfred von Mackensen’s last book, and it is an extraordinary exploration on how to work with the beginnings of judgement and discernment in 12/13-year-olds and how we may develop these abilities from early adolescence through to senior classes. He uses some carefully chosen classroom examples to help shine a light on what might, in fact, be occurring within the students, and we are asked to “work our way up to the bright light of guiding ideas,

our observation of what takes place in our soul during discerning”. Manfred von Mackensen expresses a hope for teachers to bring our own enthusiasms and understanding into harmony with the curriculum content, concentrating on our own outwardly- and inwardly-directed activity. A more theoretical approach starting with the ‘typical Waldorf’ understanding of human development and piecing together our lesson plans from what “should be included” is much more challenging and problematic. Manfred von Mackensen states that “There are two important paths confronting us: observation of ourselves and

observation of our own teaching. We’ll get off to the best start by observing what’s closest to

us – ourselves.” Dr. Tim Dunn Consultant to Steiner schools


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BOOK REVIEW Brigid of Iona Retold by Diane Tatum and Illustrated by Sanja Hermann Published by Pentangle Productions (2020), 54 pages.

The story of Brigid of Iona, as retold by Diane Tatum and illustrated by Sanja Hermann, maps the journey of the human spirit from the ancient Hibernian wisdom of the Druids – who revered the power in the Spirits of Wind, Earth, Fire and Sea – to the time of the Kings who tried to conquer the earth; the birth of ‘The Child of Light’, that King of the Elements who brought the light of the Sun to Earth, which restored to human beings the possibility of finding a connection to the spirit once more. We end in the present, with ourselves, meeting Brigid and discovering that her search can also be ours.

The story sees the child, Brigid, born of the loving union of the two streams of Druids and Kings moving through circumstance, grace and inner striving, towards the light of the Sun. With a strong connection to the Spirit from birth, Brigid passes through hardships to reach the Isle of Iona where she lives immersed in the Mysteries of the Druids. Growing in wisdom and goodness she takes on a quest to reach the sacred flame of the Holy One and when fully matured, leaves her home on Iona to be led through her faith and with help from spiritual beings, to Bethlehem where she assists Mary in the birth of Jesus. This experience leaves Brigid with the shining power of ‘The Prince of Peace’ and thereafter she continues her work as Saint Brigid, bringing healing and kindness to all she encounters. In the physical and metaphorical sense Brigid’s journey is from the outer to the inner; the worldly to the spiritual; the distant reaches of the world to the heart of wisdom and light. The story is an initiatory text that shows us an alternate way of being and seeing ourselves; a way to experience the Christ in a contemporary, etheric form.


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In the context of Waldorf education, the story of Brigid of Iona would be especially potent when brought to the child whose consciousness is beginning to awaken, especially around the Class 2, 8-year-old stage. It shows that, despite human foibles and undeveloped qualities, we can become our higher selves by striving towards goodness and light. Brigid of Iona, however, is so much more than a children’s tale. It is relevant to every one of us who is striving on the path of initiation to the etheric experience of the Christ. Just as life progresses step by step, day by day and year by year, the story,

written in rhyming verse carries the listener/reader along with Brigid’s journey. It becomes a personal, contemporary and intimate experience when we see that Brigid’s journey has ultimately led right to us; that it can be our journey.

On every page and at every point in the story, Sanja’s colourful drawings illustrate the path of Brigid’s life. Such is the power, skill and beauty of the illustrations that when seen alone, without the text, it is possible to follow the journey and experience Brigid’s striving, the trials of her soul and ultimately the revelations of the spirit, that is in the light and power of the Christ Being. Together, the text and images bring a special offering to those fortunate enough to experience this book and it is to be hoped that it reaches all those who work in education and who strive on a

personal path of initiation.

Wendy Hyland, Tarremah School


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Calendar ON-LINE November 18th and 25th 2020 Dancing the Divide Creatively Navigating Competing

Discourses

SEA in partnership with Sydney University https://tinyurl.com/yadwvuos

19-22 May 2021 International Conference: Pregnancy, Birth and Early Childhood Medical Section, Goetheanum, Switzerland https://www.goetheanum-paedagogik.ch/en/veranstaltungen/internationaler-kleinkindkongress

ON-LINE Nov 29, Dec 6, Dec 13, Dec 20 Sundays 8am Advent and Spiritual Beings of Love Lisa Romero https://innerworkpath.com/events

19-22 May and 1-4 June, 2021 Goetheanum Adult Education Program Teaching Anthroposophy Today Practices, Challenges, Paradigms https://www.goetheanum-paedagogik.ch/en/veranstaltungen/goetheanum-adult-education-program

January 4th-8th, 2021 Music Intensive: Perth Waldorf School Learning to Listen and Creative Music

Teaching

[email protected] ; 0447 692 654 Trybooking.com/BLIRL

11th-14th June, 2021 Heartwood Conference: The Nature of Evil and the Challenge to be Fully Human www.heartwoodsiteworks.com

ON-LINE January 11th-15, 2021 Teachers- Listening to the Call of the Spirit in our Times- 4 lectures and Class Specific tutorials for Classes 1-7. Class Teacher Curriculum Intensives [email protected] trybooking

July 5th-8th 2021 The Vital Years Early Childhood Conference Sensing into the Stream of Life Mt Barker Waldorf School S.A.

ON-LINE 13th-15th January, 2021 USC Masterclasses in Steiner Education Sunshine Coast, QLD Introduction 13th; Early Childhood, Primary, High School 14th-15th http://www.usc.edu.au/steiner

July 5-July 8, 2021 SEA National Teacher’s Conference 2021 Being Responsive to our Times

Samford Valley Steiner School, QLD www.steinereducation.edu.au

2021 Rudolf Steiner Education Seminars Seminar One: 18 – 23 April; Seminar Two: 18 – 23 July; Seminar Three: 3 – 8 October Taruna College, Havelock North, NZ https://www.taruna.ac.nz/courses-and-workshops/rudolf-steiner-education/

April 18-23, 2022 World Teachers’ Conference Geotheanum , Switzerland The Battle for Intelligence: Mind the Gap https://www.goetheanum-paedagogik.ch/en/publications/blog-11th-world-teachers-and-educators-conference On-line n person Goetheanum conferences


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for waldorf/rudolf steiner education

Documents