Preparing for Conferences

Dear Parents,

When we meet together at a parent & teacher conference in the coming weeks or in the spring time, we will create a picture of your child at school, and I will try to answer any questions you may have. It sometimes help if you let me know your questions or interests before the conference. To aid in this process, the early childhood teachers have created this conference preparation form to fill out and return to me (either by email or in writing).

Although I do a lot of work with children in class to help work toward an inclusive social environment (I don't expect children to be artificially kind to every child in the class or for peace to permeate every moment of every day; but I am still working to foster the generosity of spirit present in the children), and although sometimes parents and I do create goals to assist in this process (e.g., 2 children seem to be always battling, and parents and I might together agree that more or less or different time together outside of school may or may not be helpful), I have found myself over the years refraining from making the conference a time in which we create goals or lots of things to work on as a teacher might with an older child. When our children are ages 2 to 4, there is so much that will evolve and change as the children grow, that being quietly strong, clear, and patient is the most helpful course of action. There are, of course, times when we can help young children with healing activities (and often teachers share these activities with all children or all families because all children benefit), and we need to be awake to the possibility of other sorts of help needed in the early years. We also, however, want to allow our children time to develop their senses of autonomy, initiative, and industry.

Speech development, for example, happens at different rates for different children. When I was first becoming an early childhood teacher, I found this article about stuttering extremely helpful. It is old. It may well be that a current speech pathologist might refute some of the research. All the same, the general message of the article--that child development is not a smooth path of ostensible perfection but has its normal deviations along the way--obtains not just in speech development but in many areas of child development. In speech, for example, the researchers found no difference in the speech patterns (e.g., repetitions, pauses, and the like) of 3 to 4 year olds considered to be stutterers compared to 3 to 4 year olds not considered to be stutterers; it was found to be fairly normal for children, as their speech developed, to struggle to put ideas into words fluently. What caused a pattern of stuttering to persist, however, was when caregivers or parents became concerned and considered these normal hiccups in speech to be a problem. The diagnosis of stuttering was found to be the cause of stuttering. I recommend reading the article to see how the author presents his research and develops his argument.

Again, I use this idea also as a metaphor for other areas of development. While I do intervene quickly in social issues (because other children become involved and, I believe, long term habits of relating to each other become established), in many other ways, I prefer to create a stable and artistic environment, and to be mindful and observe, and share my picture with parents--without any sort of solution or prescription or recommendation or judgment. Thank you for your support of this approach.

With warmth and light,

William Geoffrey Dolde

p.s. I have experienced with one of my sons the question of stuttering--when his speech began to quickly develop, he paused and repeated sounds quite a lot. Some other adults noticed. Some even gave me and my wife various links to medical services that would be available--indeed, there are times for early intervention, and that was the drift of some of these sources. We chose to have faith in development and the article--his speech and mental pictures were developing so rapidly, it seemed to me, that it was hard for his speech organs to keep up. Touch wood, the patient model seems to have work; over a period of months, the normal repetitions of his speech evolved into normal speech for an almost 3 year old.

Lantern Walk, Friday, November 13

LANTERN WALK

Dear Children's Garden Families,

As winter approaches we will kindle the light within us all at our upcoming Lantern Walk this Friday November 13th. We will gather our courage for the dark days ahead as we walk into the night with our shining lanterns guiding us. The lanterns are a symbol of our inner light that must be kindled during the long winter months ahead.

There will be two lantern walks, one at 5:00pm and one at 6:15pm. Nursery families and siblings will attend the 5:00pm walk. Siblings are welcome if they are able to support a reverent mood and stay close to their parents at all times during the festival, including the walk where they should be by the side of their parents. They can bring their own lanterns if they have one.

Please arrive on time and walk quietly to the playground where we will have hot apple cider. Please do not arrive early. (This is very important). Park in the lower parking lot just off Campbell Rd (you turn immediately right as you come into the main driveway on Old Pietila Road).

After a few minutes we will go inside to the Butterfly classroom to watch a puppet play. The teachers will then lead us on the lantern walk. After the lantern walk we will lead you back to your cars and say goodbye.

Please look in your parent folders on Wednesday November 11th for a small gift to put under your child's pillow to find after the Lantern walk, right before bed or the following morning. (We will not have these for siblings who attend, apologies).

This is a quiet and reverent festival and we ask that you help support this mood by quietly guiding your children through the experience.

Blessings

Dyanne, Kim, William, Vanessa and Cordula

Lantern Workshop Monday

The sunlight fast is dwindling, my little lamp needs kindling.
Its beam shines far in darkest night,
Oh, lantern guide me with your light.

Celebrating Fall Festivals
A Parent Workshop on Lantern Walks
Presented by Cordula Hetland and Vanessa Kohlhaas

Monday, November 9th
7 – 9pm

As the days grow shorter, we must keep our inner light burning. Come join us in talking about how to celebrate this season of darkness with children through lantern walks. Participants will learn about lantern walks, sing lantern songs, and make a lantern to share with their family. This symbolic tradition brings home the deeper truth in the words of Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism (563-483 B.C.) “There isn’t enough darkness in all the world to snuff out the light of one little candle.”

Whidbey Island Waldorf School
6335 Old Pietila Rd. in Clinton

Advanced registration required
Suggested donation: $5.00
Supplies to make your own lantern will be provided

For more information or to register:
Email: butterflygarden@gmail.com
Or call: 360-221-2270

Conferences, Celeen Away, Puppet Show

Dear Nursery Families,

Please know that Celeen will be away from our Butterfly Classroom from this Wednesday and all of next week. In addition to her many other gifts and occupations, Celeen organizes and guides retreats for women on Whidbey Island and round the world, and from time to time she will be away from our classroom as she is involved in this other important work. Please ask Celeen if you want more information about this work; I do not want to misrepresent or oversimplify.

Anne Mauk (who worked as a kindergarten assistant at our school last year) will be the usual substitute for Celeen. On the upcoming Wednesdays, however, we will have a replacement for Anne (two possibilities are decided for whom the role is just at the moment).

We will have no school on November 23, 24, and 25. Teachers have an in-service day on that Monday, and we offer conferences for parents on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Because I have some availability earlier and childcare challenges on the mornings of the 24th and 25th, I am offering some additional, early conference times on the next two Thursday mornings--and on the Wednesday early evening, November 18 (when we were to have our parent meeting, which is rescheduled so that we can all see Helle Heckmann speak). I will also offer conference times during the afternoons on the 24th and 25th.

While grades families are expected to attend a fall and spring parent & teacher conference, early childhood families are asked to come to one conference in either the fall or the spring. The kindergarten teachers and I have a goal of providing more frequent--if briefer--communication about every child in the class rather than a long quasi-report at conference time. This is to say that even if you choose to refrain from signing up for a fall conference, I will strive to provide vignettes from your child's morning in the nursery class in a written form.

Our children seem to enjoy the new puppet show of granddaughter's efforts to bring a pumpkin home for Thanksgiving with the help of grandmother, grandfather, the dog, cat, and mouse. They also have asked for me to reprise Rub-a-Dub (and several children performed that earlier puppet show themselves today). Children are finding new playmates (with occasional tension and conflicts because another child feels left out) and new parts of the room to play in (that is, rather than the same two or three children heading for the loft right away, different children go to the loft, while others realize building and imaginative possibilities elsewhere in the room. While a number of children seemed less willing to allow peace to settle upon them during teacher-led or quiet activities today (perhaps because of Halloween or the time change or both), as a group the children are on a trend of working well together.

The healthy social life is found
When, in the mirror of each human soul,
The entire community finds its reflection,
And when, in the community,
The virtue of each one is living.

Rudolf Steiner—The Social Motto

Elsewhere Steiner wrote that a social group can be at its healthiest and most effective when the work of the individual serves the needs of the group and when the needs of the individual are served by the work of the group (I do not have the exact quote). While I do not lecture about Rudolf Steiner in my nursery classes (at least not until after Thanksgiving [that's a joke]), I have impressed by how our nursery children have been living and working and serving into this social ethic. While our children show the normal and healthy survival instincts to make sure they get the toy or food or friend they want, they have been willing to be flexible. When baking bread this year, for example, we combine our rolls together into loaves. While children still often want to make their "own" loaf (even though we will all share it the next day), a number of children were quite willing to let go of ownership of this or that portion of bread, ready to share the work and results with others. Because children tend to want to eat the dough before it gets to the oven, I have been encouraging them to use their strength to serve the group as we prepare bread for the next day (the dough is sometimes tasty enough that I have to exhort some children to share their strength). A number of children feel inspired by this, and we have fewer and fewer power struggles about tasting bread. This social ethic seems much more "just right" than power struggles about sanitation, etiquette, and the like. Children want to be strong. They want to help. They want to serve (true, they also want to be served). They want to experience autonomy, initiative, and industry. Our children in this year's Butterfly nursery seem to be on a path of doing this well.

With warmth and light,

William Geoffrey Dolde