Today, I attended a meeting of regional Waldorf school leaders hosted by Seattle Waldorf School and held at the Seattle Waldorf High School. In attendance were school leaders from Tacoma Waldorf School, Whatcom Hills Waldorf School, Sunfield, Whidbey Island Waldorf School, Madrona School, Three Cedars Waldorf School, and Olympia Waldorf School. Among the topics we discussed were areas of future collaboration, and the region's relationship to The Association of Waldorf Schools of North America (AWSNA).
Possible areas of collaboration within our region are mentoring and evaluation, shared adult education events, and shared faculty events.
Last year, Seattle Waldorf School hosted a
session with Christof Wiechert during faculty review days and invited faculty from area schools to attend. SWS would again like to host something like this for the region during the month of June, in the week that most schools hold their review day meetings.
Last year, Seattle Waldorf School hosted a
session with Christof Wiechert during faculty review days and invited faculty from area schools to attend. SWS would again like to host something like this for the region during the month of June, in the week that most schools hold their review day meetings.
Another point of potential collaboration is adult education evenings. Our school is hoping to partner with Seattle Waldorf School in hosting an adult education event this academic year.
Effective communication between the school and parents was also a topic of interest, and schools shared some successes they have had such as:
- having alumni students be involved in the school in some way
- parent teas hosted by the Head of Administration and Head of Pedagogy
- small weekly email updates to complement a twice-monthly newsletter
The hottest topic on the docket was the discussion of AWSNA and its role in our region. The Pacific Northwest has the largest number of developing schools in the country. Tim Morrissey, Dean of Education at Tacoma Waldorf School, is the Regional Coordinator for AWSNA. Tim noted down questions about AWSNA's budget and operations, to be brought the January meeting of the Leadership Council and Board of AWSNA.
Finally, we ended with a discussion of the High School, and its importance to all of our regional elementary schools. Reiterating that a Waldorf education is meant to be through Grade 12, ideas were shared about how our schools could support the Seattle Waldorf High School as an institution that belongs to our region, and serves all of our schools.
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