Chalk Board Drawings and a News Cleanse
Parent Teacher Conferences
Next week we have Spring parent-teacher conferences. Early Childhood will have a regular schedule, and the Grades will have early dismissal at 12:45 p.m. all week. After school care is on all week. Thank you!
We look forward to connecting with you!
Important Dates
March 16-20: Parent-Teacher Conferences - early dismissal at 12:45 p.m.
Wednesday, March 18: Board of Trustees Meeting at 3:00 p.m.
Wednesday, March 25: Spring Presentation from 6:00 - 7:00 p.m.
Thursday, March 26: Last Day of Winter Term
Friday, March 27 - Tuesday, April 7: Spring Break
Wednesday, April 8: School Resumes
Saturday, April 25: Spring Soiree 5:00 - 10:00 p.m.
Grade 3 Visits Gaia Farms
Grade 3 visited Gaia Farms on Thursday, a local farm on the Gaviota Coast. The students worked with goats, pigs, chickens, and cows, as well as hearing about the local flora and creating sage bundles. They also took a hike to view the spectacular coastline.
Waldorf Chalkboard Drawings
Waldorf teachers use the chalkboard as a way to welcome students to the classroom, render the information of their lesson with care and beauty, and spark curiosity and imagination in the children.
This art lives in the classroom for extended periods of time. It’s a mood-setter, a place for students to rest their eyes during a story, dream into a concept, or just be.
Sometimes the art evolves over time, for example a first grade teacher may have a beautiful scene of a cottage in the woods that lasts for months but that has an addition or change every day. Often, the image is an inspiration directly out of the content of the current block. The children treat the chalkboard and its art with an impressive level of reverence; they treat the board as you would a painting on the wall at a gallery.
You might think it would be difficult for a teacher to erase such a beautiful creation, but there’s a lesson there as well. Nothing lasts forever; continuing to grow and change is part of life. With the sadness of saying goodbye to one drawing, there is the excitement and mystery of a new drawing.
In a time when most other schools have replaced chalkboards with smart boards and white boards with the intent to relay information quickly and easily, the idea of a teacher investing time in creating a gift for students holds even greater value. Here are some examples from our classrooms.
The WSSB Steiner Study Group
Members of the WSSB community are warmly invited to join the weekly study group on Thursdays from 8:30 to 10 a.m. Guided by members of the Helen Hecker Group, we start with a eurythmy exercise and then read and discuss Lisa Romero's book, Spirit-led Community.
For more information contact Lisa Itamura at lyitamura@aol.com.
Kim John Payne: Going on a News Cleanse
In this episode, Kim John Payne addresses how constant news exposure erodes our ability to be present with our children. He explains that modern news cycles, with autoplay, doom scrolling, and half-hourly updates, repeatedly trigger the amygdala even when we're hearing the same story again. Each repetition builds a micro emotional trauma and baseline anxiety that children absorb through a kind of emotional osmosis, sensing that part of our attention is elsewhere.
Kim shares strategies that parents have found successful in reclaiming their presence. The first is appointing a "catastrophe buddy," someone trusted who will alert you if something truly significant happens, so you can let go of the fear of missing out. Others have switched from visual news to audio, or limited themselves to a single five-minute summary each morning. Some replace news-checking habits with soothing podcasts that bring relaxation or joy, which children also absorb. Kim encourages parents to consciously substitute news time with connection: telling "I remember when" stories, sitting with a teenager, or simply being present. He suggests a month-long cleanse, noting that most parents who try it never return to their previous level of consumption. The goal is to stop feeding attention to provocative content and instead invest that attention in the people right in front of us... and maybe a little bit of calm and love to ourselves.
