Dr. Brad Kershner offers reflections on the metacrisis and shares an in-depth summary of the book Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. He makes connections between the themes of this book, the larger constellation of social and cultural problems we are all facing, and the principles and practices of Waldorf education – an approach to learning in community that offers timely and relevant values and practices to address our deepest educational questions and dilemmas.
This lecture was offered to parents at Kimberton Waldorf School – October 11, 2023
High School
Building Bonds and Creating Memories: Playing Sports at KWS
Guest post by Ciara O’Hara, class of 2025, a rising junior who recently returned from being an exchange student in Germany. This past year, Ciara was a leading scorer on the varsity girls’ basketball team, performed a lead part in Mary Poppins, and worked part-time. She has been a Waldorf student all her life.
Playing a sport at KWS has brought me some of my best school memories. One of my favorites was our varsity girls’ basketball team going undefeated this past season and becoming champions in our division. I have never seen a group of girls work so hard as they did throughout the season, and we got to do what we set out to as a team and as a family.
Our team travels throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey to play, and I think being able to travel with your team helps build relationships and brings the team closer every time. If you play high school basketball at KWS (or even if you don’t), once a year you get to experience an amazing weekend called the Waldorf tournament. Waldorf teams from all over come to our school for a three-day basketball tournament. Every year this tournament brings so much happiness and fun to our school and I couldn’t be more grateful that we have it. I have made some amazing friends at this tournament and have gotten to spend time with some of the best people.
As soon as you join a sports team at KWS you become part of a family and with that, there are responsibilities for each member. We work together as a team by showing up to practices, being there for our teammates, and always cheering them on no matter what the circumstance. We are a team, a whole, and I have never seen that so clearly as I do at KWS.
As you grow and start playing sports in high school not only does it begin to impact you physically, but I have found that it also can help impact how you deal with things. I have learned how to manage schoolwork and a social life and playing sports all at once, and my teammates and coaches have done nothing but help and support me and everyone around me. Managing your time is so important if you intend to play a sport; it can all add up very quickly but there is definitely enough time for everything at KWS.
Something that I have found to be so important in managing all of these things in high school is to be never afraid to ask or feel embarrassed because you need some help, whether that be from a friend and teacher or a coach. I am working on enjoying every moment and always putting my physical and mental health first!
If you are thinking about playing a sport, whatever it may be, I highly recommend it, no matter if you haven’t played before or are not sure how good you’ll be. Either way, you will come out being better and look back at some of the best memories you will make in school.
Todd Stong’s Words to the Class of 2023 at their Graduation Exercises
Saturday, June 10, 2023
Todd Stong studied art and creative writing at Brown University, graduating in 2014 magna cum laude, with honors, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In 2016, he started teaching at Kimberton in the painting room with grades 7 through 12 and as math support faculty, working with Tonya Rice in the 9th grade classroom – what he considered a daily masterclass in teaching. It also helped that Mrs. Rice was his own math teacher back in 2008 at Perkiomen Valley High School – he knew he was in good hands. Couple that with thoughtful, careful mentorship from Anna Zay, and he had soon expanded his teaching to include History through Art, Algebra I and II, Geometry, 7th Grade Perspective, 8th Grade Platonic Solids, Comedy and Tragedy Mask-Making, US Government, and Yearbook Advising. You all had him busy! In 2019, he decided it was time to return to his own artistic practice and applied to the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, where he received his MFA at their Rome Campus with a full academic scholarship and teaching stipend. Now back in Philadelphia, he teaches printmaking and design at West Chester University, and works assisting the artist Odili Odita in his studio, while pursuing his own art career through exhibitions and publication. Next fall he will be an artist-in-residence at Yaddo, joining the ranks of past fellows such as Michael Tilson Thomas, Langston Hughes, Philip Guston, Flannery O’Conner, and James Baldwin, among many others.
“A few weeks ago, I had the absolute pleasure of returning to Kimberton to meet with this wonderful group on stage behind me and do something that for them was completely natural: draw. We did a classic exercise: taking a line for a walk. Meaning, we all picked up chalk, committed it to the board, and let our minds unspool across the dark stretch without lifting a hand and breaking the line. Another rule: no going over the lines. Come to a dead end and, sorry, find your way back out of it, think your way through the maze that you’ve just created.
Because drawing is really just that – it’s a kind of thought. It doesn’t feel like thinking in the way we are used to thinking about thinking – a monologue only audible in our own heads. It is a way of negotiating the space and the stuff of the world, internalizing then physicalizing it, like dance but recorded flat. And at the end, you understand differently. You might not be able to put words to it, because, well, that’s the point — it’s drawing.
When the board was chock full, I presented a set of brushes taped to the ends of four-foot long dowels and, holding them from the far end, we dipped them into buckets of water and began drawing again, directly on top of our first attempt. Then, with that practice down, we tried out ink on a long scroll of newsprint.
It was so much fun. What I love about Kimberton students is their willingness to do. Their unblockable, indefatigable, iron-core will. Their fearlessness. Present a four foot long paint brush to any Joe Schmoe and tell him to paint, and he’ll have a panic attack. Give it to a Waldorf student and they’ll try to make you a twelve-division circle without you even having to ask.
I was so proud of the drawings we made together and of the joy we had being in something of an art class one more time. But I wanted them to think about something, something in switching from chalk to extended brush. So I asked them, “what was that like?” “Well, it was easier to control the chalk, easier to get out exactly what I wanted,” said one student. “The chalk is closer to the body. But it was maybe more exciting to use the brush, more free, more expansive”, said another. A flick of the wrist multiplies into a wild gesture.
Though roughly the same principle – using this instrument to put our spatial thoughts outside of ourselves – the body was altered in radically different ways from tool to tool, and so the kinds of thoughts that could come out of ourselves changed with them.
A tool, of course, is meant to help us do things our bodies can’t do on their own. It can be a bit awkward at first. But with practice, a well-designed tool becomes an extension of the body. The hammer, after hitting many nails, is a kind of fist; you swing it and you can see, know, and feel where it will come down, and how deep the nail will sink. The shock of impact rattles through the handle and up your arm; you understand what the hammer has felt.
A piano makes your fingers into vocal chords; the longer you practice it, the more seamlessly you alone sing as a choir. And anyone who has hit a perfectly composed chord in perfect time will tell you that you feel that in your chest. As much as you allow your body to flow into your tools, they flow back into you – don’t forget that – altering you in ways you’re not always conscious of. Think the chalk and the chalkboard, those tools that let us map out our minds, and in so doing change them.
This might all seem a little out there, or maybe totally a given, nothing new. But I’m bringing all this tool talk up for a reason. There are, I imagine, a diverse group of possibilities on each of your horizons, whether that’s more school next year or more school later, whether finding gainful employment, a trade, going into business with family or for yourselves. Whatever the possibilities are, you will have choices ahead about the tools you use. And those are going to be choices distinctly different than any generation that came before you. Because the tools are becoming different.
When it’s getting dark out and you’re just finishing up your German homework and still have a math problem set and a world lit response, or maybe a painting to design, and you get a text from a buddy that there’s a party everyone’s going to in an hour – you’ll have ChatGPT and Midjourney and a host of other generative artificial intelligence tools at your disposal.
When you need to find the right words to convince someone to hire you, or when you need to sell your service to a client, you’ll have these tools available. And it will be your choice entirely whether you use them. I won’t lie to you: if you use them savvily, you’ll probably get the grade or the response you wanted and save yourself a lot of time. It might feel great.
You know, as an artist and a writer, I’ve been thinking a lot about these technologies. In some ways, they seem like a miracle – why not use them in my studio, when I can’t afford to a hire a model? Why not have ChatGPT write that grant application? I’m tempted too, I won’t lie!
So, let’s look under the hood. This is technology built on statistical analysis of inputs culled from human production. Meaning, in essence, that it’s been fed libraries and museums, outputs of the minds of thousands and thousands who used much humbler tools to make their contributions. Give it a prompt, and it’ll simply predict what you want to read or see based on what it deems from its data set to be most likely to follow the given words. It’s a mind eater, chewing hunks and crumbs of thought and vision left for it by thinkers past, and mashing it all together into a paste that can reassemble into whatever is asked of it, by predicting the likeliest outcome.
Do you click a button and let a cloud of probabilities select your thoughts for you? Or do you drudge through your own mind, weeding it and watering it, pulling up ideas from its soil, and planting them onto a page or a canvas. It will certainly take longer to do the latter.
What you choose to do, what resources you decide to cherish most – your time or your mind – those are your decisions. That’s what it means to be a graduate. I will only say this: the reward of making is rarely the execution of a fully preconceived idea, seen in the mind’s eye and brought into reality as an exercise of technique. It is in the starting and getting turned around, looking down at the page and realizing that you understand something in your own thoughts that you hadn’t before. Pausing, leaving, returning, and rearranging. Learning from what you’ve done and thinking deeply, in a way that is far more organized, more crystalline than what you can concoct in your head alone. My biggest revelations in the studio never came from sitting around thinking; they came from doing, which is, actually, just another way of thinking. Are you going to let a machine take away that possibility?
And then there’s this: that the machine will always know exactly what it needs to say, and it will simply say it. But you, you will struggle, and out will come the rough drafts with big plot holes that you find yourself patching with webs of imagination, or perhaps leaving gaps of mystery. The best works of art are ones that don’t tie up neatly in a bow. The best writing takes the writer’s own mind for a walk and sometimes leaves them deep in the forest or far out to sea.
And of course, that’s what is so rich about life, too. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up; but this journey, this wandering, this is the real stuff of life. We live in a culture that tells us that we’re wasting our time if we’re lost, that we need to find a career and settle down and be productive members of society. But let me tell you this: a machine can’t get lost. Only a human can. And that is maybe the most magic we can wish for. That is key.
One of my favorite classes to teach at Kimberton was History through Art. The graduates on this stage were the last crew I taught, luckily scheduled October 2019 when we could be all together in a room plastered with posters of masterpieces. There is nothing quite like the panoramic of a classroom, as our following year of screen time sorely demonstrated.
Yet in the midst of these many artworks, the very first thing I taught them was not actually a piece of art, as many of us would define it – something made by the hands of an artist. Instead, it was a small jasperite pebble with two little holes – like eyes – carved over many thousands of years by two repeating drops of water, and a small crevice right under them – a mouth. Every feature made geologically, no hands or tools involved. Dubbed the Makapansgat Pebble, for its discovery in the Makapan Valley of South Africa, it was discovered three miles from any other piece of jasperite it might have broken off from, and close to the bones of one Austrolopithicus Africanus, a distant human relative.
It is not a giant leap to the conclusion that this great ape had found this pebble and seen a vision of itself in the two little eyes and mouth, a vision it saw fit to pick up and carry home to a dolomite cave. Of course, and this is something I made clear to my ninth graders, a key tenet of such ancient history is that we will never really know what actually happened; Occum’s razor, the simplest explanation being the most likely, must reign.
No matter what, it’s a great story, maybe one of the most important stories, because at approximately 3 million BC, it would be the first known evidence of symbolic thinking and aesthetic sense of any living creature in the record. A moment when the world presented one if its living with an idea of itself. And that that was a comfort. That that great ape took that rock and carried it away, despite its seeming uselessness.
I like to think that the world was giving our ancestors a hint. It was saying, “you don’t have to keep your mind inside of you. I’m here; there’s space to breathe.” And so, the history of art is born. Entranced by the world around us, we slowly began to hold a mirror up to it, to take our ideas of the mysteries of life and put them out there for everyone else to see. In so doing, we shaped how one another saw the world, and began a chain reaction of thought that provided a foundation for civilization.
Generations moved through the caves of Lascaux, recording the animals they had encountered, perhaps hunted or been hunted by. Generations – many, many generations, hundreds of them – left hand prints in the caves of Borneo. “Here I was, in this world,” they say, “with these five fingers, where all of my people were before me, with theirs.”
What a punch to the gut. If we’re to say that a tool is an object used to extend the possibilities of the body to do work, then the whole world becomes a tool, a place where we let our brains, that most important anatomy, unfurl; to leave clues, give advice, offer respite, puff ourselves up, place ourselves amidst our relations, mark ourselves in time. All these things that would just stink to keep cooped up in our skulls. And instead, we can make the world alive with us. You might say it even wanted us to.
This is not to say that I want you all to grab your cans of spray paint and go out and tag the side of a mountain (I mean, you’re Waldorf students – at least break out a hammer and a chisel). No, but I do want you to keep yourself in this world: you, yourself. What you are matters. I don’t mean that in terms of what profession you choose or what talents you hone. I mean it as this: what thoughts do you nurture? What love? For whom? How will you tell the world?
Will you tell the world? Or will you let something else do that for you?
When we were done with our drawing exercise and had cleaned up our brushes, the seniors took me to see their portraits. Six stellar, sophisticated paintings hanging in the senior hallway, each a marker of themselves. I could tell they were so proud, and for very good reason. When you look at those paintings, know that they are siphons, sieves, dream catchers, pebbles catching water drops – those paintings sift through a miasma of calibrated sight and motion, mind-body-tool-surface. Every mark a culmination of events, begun so many years earlier, nurtured here in this incredible school. Every choice – pose, poise, color, texture – a revelation as much as an inevitability.
When we look at those portraits, it’s not just about the young person in the painting. It’s about us, too: our seeing ourselves, in a collection of marks. Our reaching out to them, and them to us, a chain reaction of empathetic understanding, mixed with awe.
Now I know that as much as I try to be the hype man of everyone’s innate painter, the hurdle that must be jumped to take pride in our artwork is sometimes too high; the often thoughtless messaging of what’s good and what’s bad too ever-present and too ingrained.
Then there’s this: that every letter, number, symbol, that you string together, can do just the same work, whipping up an electric wind, activating worlds in everyone who reads them that deepen into trenches and shoot into the solar system, often without our even noticing. That’s the magic of being human: how we, at our best, electrify one another with maybe just bundle of hairs tied to a handle or maybe just a stick of chalk.”
Class of 2020 College Acceptances
The Class of 2020 has had wonderful college news arriving in mailboxes and inboxes! We are so proud of them.
A list of all acceptances to date follows. A number of students applied Early Decision and so were admitted to their top choice and did not apply elsewhere. Seniors had until June 1 to commit to the college of their choice. Some students are still considering a gap year, a national trend. They received nearly $600,000 in merit awards per year. Congratulations to our accomplished seniors!
- Arcadia University
- Arizona State University
- Bard College
- Bard College Berlin (*Gabriel M-Z)
- Beloit College
- Berklee School of Music *(Nate B)
- Ohio University
- Berry College
- Christopher Newport University
- Clark University (*Justin Z)
- College of Charleston
- College of the Atlantic (gap year) (*Isabel D)
- College of Wooster
- Connecticut College
- Drexel University
- Earlham College (*Ellie S)
- Lawrence University
- Edinboro University (*Hannah L)
- Elon University
- Guilford College
- Ithaca College
- Juniata College
- Kalamazoo College
- Klein School of Communications/Temple University
- McDaniel College *(Monte P)
- Millersville University
- New England Conservatory (*Anna D)
- New York Film Academy (LA Campus)
- New York University (*Lillie L)
- Slippery Rock University
- Syracuse University
- Temple University
- Temple University (College of Public Health Athletic Training BA/MS program) (*Clara A)
- Union College (*Isabella J)
- University of Harford
- University of Pennsylvania (*Safaya S)
- University of Pittsburg
- University of Pittsburgh (Swanson School of Engineering) (*Jason W)
- University of Pittsburgh, Bradford
- University of Pittsgurgh, Johnstown
- University of Tennessee (*Russell H)
- Ursinus College (*James Mc)
- Wagner College
- West Chester University
Class of 2019 College Acceptances
Wonderful college news has been arriving in mailboxes and inboxes! Congratulations to our accomplished seniors!
Tony Bian
College of Wooster
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Penn State
University of Illinois Urbana-Champlian
University of Pittsburgh
Temple University
Purdue University
Teagh Conway
Quinnipiac University
Temple University
Saint Joseph’s University
Susquehanna University
Saicharan Dandu
University of Pittsburgh
Temple University
Drexel University
Penn State Brandywine
Cody Ding
Penn State
University of Pittsburgh
Ohio State University
University of California Irvine
Alexa Hinkle
Drew University
Malia Homberg
TSP Academy
Dahlia Warwick
Prescott College
Green Mountain College
College of the Atlantic
Bard College
Warren Wilson College
Jake Wilson
Virginia Military Institute
Valley Forge Military Academy
West Chester University
Hadlee Wolfram
Ursinus College
Norwich University
Virginia Military Institution
The Self Portrait
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” – Aristotle
We are not an art school but every senior at KWS paints a self portrait. This not only represents the culmination of the Waldorf painting curriculum, but requires students to engage with the deep questions of identity: “Who am I?”, “How am I seen?” and, most importantly, “What is my place in the world?”
In high school, a new questioning about life and the personal search for truth and self-knowledge emerges and students are ready to confront good and evil, questions of destiny, evolution, and identity. Through the self-portrait project students are challenged to really look at themselves closely to create a physical likeness but to also look deeply at who they are in this world.
Our high school curriculum encourages students to look at themselves, reflect back on their lives and go out into the world and contribute to it from the sense of who they are.
When students graduate from Kimberton Waldorf School, they leave with not only a strong academic foundation but with a sense of who they are, the ability to think for themselves, and the confidence in their capacity to learn and do whatever they put their minds to.
“The senior portrait class represents the culmination of the Waldorf painting curriculum, making use of all the years that come before it in the pursuit of a meaningful piece of art that students and their families can take with them and cherish for years beyond graduation. Pulling from drawing tools introduced and sharpened in 9th grade, painting technique developed in 10th grade, and color theory explored in 11th grade, seniors work for about two months to produce a self portrait that expresses their inner spirit coming into harmony with the external realities of their body.
“The potential for such a portrait is boundless, and seniors are often at first a little daunted. First of all, there is the hard work of really looking at themselves, of being objective and making measurements about things that often times they don’t want to dwell on. Throughout the course, students have to learn to be comfortable with how they look, and in doing so they come to understand that they themselves are beautiful despite what they think of as imperfections. The second daunting task comes in dealing with the number of choices they must make. Do they paint a realistic skin tone, or one that expresses some quality of themselves more metaphorically? Do they choose a background that puts them firmly rooted in the world, or do they paint one that uses color to make it, as we like to say in the painting room, “pop”? How do they pose for their initial photo session, which determines the basic structure of their drawing? The best way to answer these questions is always to jump right in, to do something fearlessly and know that mistakes are where the good stuff happens — learning, growing, correcting. One choice leads to another, which leads to another, and eventually the final outcome looks as if it couldn’t have been painted any other way.” – Todd Stong, KWS Painting Teacher
This is EDUCATION THAT MATTERS.
High School Mathematics: Projective Geometry
“Projective geometry has the capacity to open minds and broaden thinking. I learned about things like perspective and duality, and all of this came together at infinity to create an understanding that I knew I didn’t have at the start of this block.”
Problem Solving and Perspective
The central point of mathematical activity in the Waldorf high school is problem solving. The important thing is learning how to solve problems, not what the answer is. With this as the focus, high school mathematics builds on both bases of mathematics: inspiration (induction) as a beginning and logical conclusion (deduction) at a later stage in the mathematical activity.
The most important aim is to develop the students ability to think with a wide range of approaches until they get to the logical conclusion, and to give them confidence in themselves and in their thinking. Another important goal is to prepare the students to apply calculations methods to everyday life and also to give them the foundation for further education.
Geometry is the mathematical discipline that deals with the interrelations of objects in the plane, in space, or even in higher dimensions. More than any other mathematical discipline, the field of geometry ranges from the very concrete and visual to the very abstract and fundamental. In one extreme, geometry deals with very concrete objects such as points, lines, circles, and planes and studies the interrelations between them. On the other side, geometry is a benchmark for logical rigor, the elegance of axiom systems, logical chains of proof, and the parallel world of algebraic structures.
In tenth grade, students study the projective properties of geometric figures
Beyond Mathematics
In high school, children reach a new stage of development where an individual’s inner life confronts the outer world in a relationship that still has to find a form. In an integrative education, even geometry has its place in the deep work of young adults. The deeper concepts of mathematics around perspective, infinity, transformations, angles, boundaries, and duality lead to new insights and broader understanding of not just geometry, but of life.
Introduction to Projective Geometry from a student’s main lesson book:
The Euclidian geometry we have worked with up until this point has dealt with the finite, the measureable. In the consciousness of the ancient Greeks, even the realm of the gods was considered in finite terms. Of course this finite or measureable nature implies ideals; for in actuality we can never be exact. As soon as we try to represent a point or line on paper, it is only an approximation, or rather a two-dimensional representation of the ideal. A point, as defined by Euclid is that which has no part, and a line is breathless and thus can never actually exit in the physical.
Projective geometry takes the elements of Euclid but stretches them in space toying with the idea of infinity. This geometry has seen application in the perspective drawings done already during the Renaissance by such artists as DaVinci and Durer. Projective geometry challenges Euclid’s elements asking us to see points as lines of infinity and whole planes becoming points. The mysteries of infinity order the random and obscure the ordered.
This block is an exploration of space, projecting lines and points to infinity with geometric nets and conic sections, observing the phenomena as they occur. We can wrestle with the ideas, but this course also gives us the opportunity to step back and relish the beauty and magic of these lines and points as we strive for exactness and perfection.
Students need to develop an intuitive understanding of geometric relationships and how to manipulate them. Learning how to do geometric proofs with compass and straightedge is an essential part of developing that knowledge. That knowledge will be used by an architect in many ways, from the creation of complex computer models to hand-sketching. In fact, one of the first things they teach in architectural perspective drawing class is how to use basic geometric principles we all learned in 10th grade geometry to quickly draw realistic and correctly-proportioned perspective images.
The relationship between mind and hand through pencil and paper is very direct (same with sculpting clay, for that matter). You lose that direct connection when a computer interface is involved. Once you know and have intuitively internalized the principles, the computer allows you to magnify that knowledge in practical applications.
I insist on seeing a demonstration of hand-drawing skills even for prospective employees who will only be doing computer drafting or modeling. What they can do with a pencil shows me in a very direct way how their brains work and whether or not they really understand what they’re doing when they try to graphically represent spatial concepts and systems,
So, yes, I think it’s important that students still learn how to do geometry the old fashioned way. Even though a computer will automate a lot of the calculation and construction for you, you still need to understand the geometric principles at work in order to use them. – Archinect
Twelfth Grade: Zoology Block at Hermit Island
Every year our 12th grade students take a week-long trip to Hermit Island in Maine. They join about 100 seniors from other Waldorf schools for a week-long course on invertebrate zoology. They take daily trips to the tide pools and mud flats to investigate sea plants and animals. They discover creatures only visible in tide pools and under the microscope, as well as sea urchins, squid and sea stars. There are opportunities to experience the glowing of comb jellies and bioluminescence in the ocean. The students hone their observational skills by identifying various species of crabs and snails living in this vibrant ecosystem and come together as a group to discuss the week’s theme of earth as an organism.
As with all great Waldorf curriculum, learning is multi-modality and integrated. Students balance the scientific with the artistic through sketching organisms and watercolor landscape, to writing sea-based poetry and stargazing. And as always, they had fun and made new friends.
What an amazing opportunity for our children!
Ninth Grade: Agriculture Practicum
Our 9th grade was recently “away” on their Agricultural Practicum. We use the word away loosely. They were away and here at the same time. Students worked all week at Camphill Village Kimberton Hills, helping them harvest in the CSA, herb garden and orchard. While there, the students participate in the life of that community, work and share meals with villagers and co-workers. They also get a taste of work in the cow barn and in general farm maintenance. All of this plus staying overnight in the Garden Building! While there, they work with Celia Martin in the evening preparing beef jerky for their backpacking trip in the spring. Kimberton Waldorf students are introduced to a variety of complex issues around food and nourishment through the Agriculture Practicum, our gardening program and through exploring topics around food justice and food insecurity.
Senior Project: Mirabelle Kunz
The senior year at a Waldorf school is designed to be a synthesis of the students’ education and a preparation for their next step in life whether it be college studies or professional life. A highlight of the senior year at Kimberton Waldorf School is the Senior Project. The Senior Project is an opportunity for students to show personal initiative and independence in a study or work of their choice. Students must design a project that includes a research component, artistic or practical component and stretches their abilities mentally, physically and/or emotionally. Teachers step back while the students work under the guidance of a mentor. This creates a space for growth toward academic freedom.
Mirabelle Kunz is a senior at Kimberton Waldorf School. Mirabelle has been working on designing and creating a line of clothes that highlights her love of fashion and is full of color and texture. “I chose to make a clothing collection because I am interested in studying fashion design. My goal is to present my collection by holding a fashion show in the spring.” As part of her preparation for her senior project presentation, Mirabelle recently did a photo shoot in New York City to highlight her clothing line. “I planned a photo shoot to take pictures of my collection that I can now use in my college portfolio. I like fashion design because I enjoy the individuality that clothing can give a person!” Mirabelle hopes to study fashion design in New York City in the fall.
Past senior projects at Kimberton Waldorf School have included photography exhibits, pottery collections, mastering a foreign language, dance, building a 3-D printer, creating mobile phone apps, music and art. 2016 graduate, Hannah Wolfram flipped a house for her senior project. After purchasing a house in need of repair, Wolfram spent every weekend and holiday working on the house. Hannah worked to repair a leaky roof, replaced the kitchen and bathroom, updated electrical and plumbing, dry walled, sanded floors and painted. Learning the importance of budgets, timelines, inspections, collaboration and planning became a secondary level of education during her project.
Students can spend more than 100 hours working on their projects. They encounter real life problems as they work to overcome challenges, dead-ends and unexpected complications. They learn to persevere through difficulties, find new resources, and examine the subject from multiple perspectives. In the spring of their twelfth-grade year each senior presents an extensive written report and an oral/visual presentation of their work. The project is presented to a committee of faculty and outside community members, and before the entire school, families and friends. Students learn valuable public speaking skills as they explain and defend their work before a group. For many of our students, the senior project is one of the most challenging, memorable and ultimately valuable experiences they have in their senior year.
Kimberton Waldorf School: College Preparedness
High school: Landscape Studies
Waldorf High School students travel through time and cultures in their language and history curriculums. There art reflects those journeys. Students learn
to see artworks of each culture as symbolic of the consciousness of the people in
a particular place at a given time. Students work with a variety of mediums to create landscapes reflective of their thoughts and ideas.
Twelfth Grade: Children’s Zoology Books
Reflecting back on a rich journey through the grades, this project captures the relationship of science, art, and writing that embodies an immersive curriculum. In their Zoology books, seniors showcase how subject areas come together and how writers of fiction can reflect facts from the world around them.
Tenth Grade: Odyssey
An Advisor’s Perspective by Celia Martin
I had been hearing about “the Tenth Grade Odyssey Trip” for years. That title denotes challenges, struggles, and obstacles to be overcome, but also triumph at the end. I had viewed photos of the trip, heard stories and seen the tired yet confident students limping or walking slowly down the halls the Monday after, and I wondered what the trip was really like. How difficult was it? Would I be able to do it? This year, as a tenth grade advisor, I found out.
After a seven hour drive on Sunday, October 7, we (28 students and three adults) arrived at our campsite along the Appalachian Trail in Virginia in a cold drizzle and set up our tents in a wet fog. We managed to get the charcoal lit and then worked to hack off slabs of frozen ground beef and cook the “hamburgers” in a steady rain. Thirty people were trying to hover over the sizzling meat, not only to keep the rain off the burgers and prevent it from putting out the fire, but also to feel a little bit of that wonderful dry warmth. There were no tables and no chairs so we stood around awkwardly, not wanting to sit on the cold, wet ground. We were chilly and damp and it was so foggy that the flashlights couldn’t cut through the mist. This was already an Odyssey! We were all very grateful for the warm, delicious food. Almost miraculously, the wet wood that we added to the charcoal after dinner started to burn and we crowded around a big campfire and laughed and talked and sang, the fire lifting our spirits. We looked forward to crawling into nice warm sleeping bags and we hoped that our tents wouldn’t leak.
The next day we were paddling down the James River and even though it was misting a bit, and a little cool, it was great to be paddling down that beautiful stretch of water. I couldn’t think of anyplace I’d rather be on that Monday morning, surrounded by the peace and tranquility of the river and that fantastic group of students. Everyone was full of energy and in high spirits.
For two more days we followed the river going through riffles and rapids and stretches of calm. We saw turtles and Great Blue Herons and the Kingfishers went chattering by. Each night we had a big campfire with songs, riddles and a story or two from Andy Dill. Everyone had their jobs to do so while some gathered wood or scooped water from the river, others cooked or washed dishes. Everyone was so willing to pitch in that it never seemed like work at all. We were tired from the long days of paddling and it felt good to crawl into our tents at night.
On our third night we camped just above Balcony Falls and we listened to the loud sound of the water pouring over the rocks all night. In the morning Andy charged the students with creating their own canoeing partners so that everyone felt confident about getting over the falls safely. After much discussion and rearrangement, we were ready to challenge the falls. Those on shore shouted encouragements to each pair as they prepared to go through, guided by Andy standing out on a high rock giving signals. Everyone was nervous but once we were all safe on the down river side, albeit a bit wet, we felt re-energized to keep going.
Later that day we traded in our canoes for backpacks and hiked three miles to our first campsite on the Appalachian Trail. The outhouse there was much appreciated after having nothing but the trees for three days. Some already had blisters and other foot problems. After just a few miles with those heavy packs, we all decided to eat the dinner that weighed the most so we wouldn’t have to carry it the next day. After a delicious and filling meal of lentil stew with vegetables, we had another wonderful campfire filled with fun and laughter and went to bed early in preparation for the nine mile uphill hike the next day.
Our first full day on the trail was very challenging. Our packs were full and heavy and the trail was very steep and rocky. It wasn’t easy for anybody but we all kept going and we elevated our spirits by singing, joking, playing word games and by believing that soon, very soon, we really would be at the top. At one point we were treated to a beautiful view of the landscape below and there, far, far below us, was the James River winding around the base of the mountains where we had just been the day before. That was the first time we had a sense of how high we had climbed, and it felt very gratifying.
At our campsite that night we found that the spring was very shallow which made it difficult to scoop out the water. A group of dedicated students worked for hours into the darkness scooping and filtering water to painstakingly refill everyone’s bottles. I was amazed by how well everyone worked together and how irrepressible this group of kids was, despite the difficulties. They smiled and sang through the struggle and helped each other always.
The next day was technically not as difficult as the previous but because we were so tired from the day before, it was a challenge. Andy spent time each morning caring for foot problems and blisters and now we also had some wrapped knees and ankles and sore hips where the backpacks sat. Almost unbelievably the trail still continued to go up, but not as steeply as the day before. The views were awe inspiring and gave us a reason to pause to catch our breath. When the first group arrived at the campsite that afternoon, a few of the boys left their packs and ran back to help those at the back of the group who were still about a mile out. We were really tired that night but there were tents to erect, water to be purified, meals to cook and dishes to clean. Remarkably, the students were still singing and laughing and helping each other through their exhaustion. We talked about how much we missed the conveniences of home but no one was complaining.
At the campfire that night we calculated that if we wanted to be home at 8 pm the next evening, we needed to get up extra early at 5:30 am. We all readily agreed and the next morning we quickly took down our tents, ate breakfast, loaded up our backpacks and were silently hiking out of our campsite in the dimness of the morning at 7:10 am. After two miles we reached one of the vans along a road and were able to leave our heavy backpacks to continue the last five miles carrying only water and food. This was our steepest elevation rise yet – a 2000 foot gain in only a few miles. It was an arduous climb even without heavy packs; steep, rocky and seeming to go up forever. Whenever we thought we were at the top, the trail kept going higher. We could feel the air getting colder and colder. Finally we arrived at a beautiful grassy meadow stretching out along the top of the ridge. It was sunny and peaceful and many of us just wanted to lie down and take a nap. But we were so close to the end of the journey that a whole new energy overtook us and we hiked the last mile to the vans full of energy and triumph. We had done it!
On Monday morning, there we were – limping or walking slowly down the hall, tired yet very satisfied, each of us feeling an unspoken connection to everyone else. We had struggled together, overcome obstacles together, supported and helped each other and kept each other going. We had met the challenge and met it well. Now we knew, really knew, what it means to go on an Odyssey.
