Introduction
- A Waldorf Education Curriculum for Grades K-8
- The Lakota Language and Culture Program
- The LWS Healthy Meal Program
- LWS Eco-Friendly Practices
1. A Waldorf Education Curriculum Grades K-8
The aim of Waldorf Education is to educate the whole child – head, heart, and hands. Based on the power of an age-appropriate and experiential pedagogy, Waldorf Education balances academics subjects with artistic and practical activities that encourage students to be active thinkers. Waldorf Education teachers are dedicated to creating a genuine love of learning within each child.
Early Childhood Years and Kindergarten
Our Waldorf Early Childhood and Kindergarten Program provides a nurturing rhythmic environment with daily, weekly, and seasonal activities that build a sense of order and security – something that is essential to the healthy development of young children. The classroom is homelike, and activities are focused on creative play and practical work like cooking and cleaning. The program also fosters the cultivation of imagination and creativity through storytelling and artistic projects such as modeling with beeswax, felting, watercolor painting, sculpture and woodcarving, and music. Also, outdoor playtime is scheduled every day and includes activities that develop a connection to nature.
Elementary Grades 1-8
At the Lakota Waldorf School, our elementary students move in “multi-year groupings” from one grade to the next, which builds a strong community as they share the journey from childhood into adolescence. Important subjects – such as math, language arts, social studies, and science – are taught individually in focused blocks of time (approximately three to five weeks long) with a daily lesson that connects one primary subject to as many disciplines as possible. Traditionally, lessons are not taught from one leading textbook. Instead, teachers bring the lesson alive through various activities that heighten curiosity and call upon the student’s powers of thinking, feeling, listening, and body movement. Examples include hand-clapping games, mental math games, jumping rope, folk dances, poetry recitation, and singing. Other activities integrated into the curriculum include beadwork, flute playing, loom work, beeswax modeling, pottery, gardening, watercolor painting, form drawing, and culturally relevant activities such as making a drum, building the sweat lodge or setting up tipis. Most importantly, each student keeps a “main lesson book” (through writing and drawing) that records what they are learning, and that serves as an assessment component at the end of each block.
To learn more about our elementary school program, please see the LWS Curriculum Grades 1-8 handout.
The Lakota Waldorf School is a registered initiative of AWSNA (the Association of Waldorf Schools in North America). To provide all our educators the opportunity to become certified Waldorf teachers, Celestine Stadnick founded the Academy for Indigenous Waldorf Pedagogy in collaboration with the Academy for anthroposophical Pedagogy in Dornach, Switzerland. We have established a guided, practice-based and culturally inclusive curriculum for the teachers with weekly seminars conducted at the LWS.
To learn more about Waldorf Education and resources, see The Power of Waldorf Education.
2. The Lakota Language & Culture Program
The Lakota Waldorf School is the only school in the US to integrate the wonders of Waldorf Education with a program on the Lakota language and culture. While helping students develop academic, social, and practical resources to meet the challenges of today’s world, LWS works to fortify a strong cultural identity and foundation for Lakota language fluency by interweaving the teaching of the Lakota language and culture throughout our Waldorf curriculum.
The Lakota Language and Culture Program lives in our Waldorf curriculum by engaging students in Lakota stories and myths, native sports (like archery), and arts and crafts such as beadwork, loom work, flute playing, and more. The program is also seen in the school’s daily rhythm of smudging with sage, praying in Lakota, feeding the ancestors (putting a little plate outside in honor of those who live in the spirit world), and the recitation and singing of traditional songs. In addition, seasonal pow wow festivals, which honor the rhythms of nature and the cosmos, serve to connect children with their ancestors’ rich cultural traditions.
Most importantly, teaching the Lakota language is of the greatest significance at LWS because it is the culture and the spirit of the people. Currently, the Oglala Lakota Tribe has only four percent (4%) of its members fluent in the Lakota language; most of them are over 50 years old. Also, among Lakota children who are ten years old or younger, only one percent (1%) speak Lakota fluently. As a result, the Lakota language, a dialect of Sioux, is classified by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) as vulnerable to extinction. To help change this classification, every classroom at LWS has a native speaker of Lakota that uses the Waldorf method of interactive dialog to build fluency in the Lakota language and can teach Lakota orthography, sentence structure, and more.
Visit our news page to learn more about LWS’s distinctive Lakota language immersion program and its unique focus on gardening, plants, and native ecology.
3. The Garden & Healthy Meal Program
The LWS Healthy Meal Program provides a nutritious breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snack to all students each and every school day. For many students, these meals are their primary source of nutritious food.
The program started with the opening of the school in 1994. It continues today during the COVID-19 pandemic while the school building is closed, and students continue their studies at home. Monday through Friday, student lunch bags are made by LWS staff and delivered by the school’s bus drivers.
The Healthy Meal Program is supported in part by foods that are raised in the school’s hoop house and garden. Also, the program is interwoven with the Lakota Language and Culture Program, which was expanded in 2019 to include the teaching of the Lakota language through garden and food preparation activities.
4. LWS Eco-Friendly Practices
At the Lakota Waldorf School, we believe children learn best by example. Therefore, every day is “Earth Day” at LWS, which means we work to foster reverence for the earth and environmental sustainability by implementing the following practices:
- Integrating the teaching of eco-friendly practices throughout the school curriculum
- Being a plastic-free campus that uses reusable cups, plates, and utensils in the classrooms, offices, and at school events
- Using eco-friendly cleaning supplies
- Maintaining a large hoop house and outside organic garden (both 90 x 60 feet) for teaching and helping to provide healthy meals
- Serving organic food (as much as possible) in our early childhood classes and at most school events
- Composting our food waste and recycling the garbage
- Promoting eco-friendly practices at all community activities held by the school
- Planting trees and native plants on the school campus
- Selecting green construction methods and non-toxic materials for our Master Plan for Campus Expansion, i.e., straw bales, passive cooling, passive solar heating, photovoltaic solar panels, and radiant heating
