Your intentions are your only limitation

"When I'm forced to sit there in a desk, my mind wanders. But what happens the moment I stand up and I can do something creative with my hands. Am I still disabled?" 

~Jonathan Mooney, from What the Silenced Say.

I arrived on the farm to find a student from Kimberton Waldorf school seeding lettuce. I introduced myself and began working alongside him. Before long I became curious as to who he was and where he was from.

“Are you hired help? Or volunteering?”

“My school requires us to work on a farm for a week.”

Wait. What? Cool. 

His school, the Kimberton Waldorf school near Phoenixville, unburdened by most bureaucracy, treats students like human beings, like young people who need nurturing, and people who have value to contribute. Waldorf takes to heart the idea that we learn most of what we experience. In Waldorf education, all subjects are integrated. Students may learn about physics using measurements in iambic pentameter and thus, learn about poetry. They design, craft, and create their own textbooks, utilizing their art, imagination, and writing. Rather than being talked at by impersonal textbook, weighed with imposing girth, the students grow attached to their books and their learning. It's not something they will throw in the recycling bin at the end of year. It's a learning journal. Teachers stay with students from their earliest years until their graduation, personalizing education.

Music, dance and theater, writing, literature, legends and myths are not simply subjects to be read about and tested. They are experienced. Through these experiences, our students cultivate their intellectual, emotional, physical and spiritual capacities to be individuals certain of their paths and to be of service to the world.

http://kimberton.org/


Waldorf education seeks to answer the question: What is true learning? How can all of us learn to pursue what is fascinating to us? How can school inspire, through an educational partnership, a fresh sense of wonder that hearkens back to the way we perceived the world as small children. Education should encourage students to pursue genuine learning like a child might chase flying insects--with wide-eyed wonder--to achieve their own empowerment. 


Students nationwide suffer from miscommunication with their school systems, unclear expectations, misleading instructions, and overemphasis on grades. We become disillusioned and disheartened, emotions that can harm the relationship between a person and their learning. "Education" for many people means playing the game of school, and beating the system, but if we do not allow ourselves to follow our butterflies, our interests, our spirits, our empowerment, how can we lead fulfilling, meaningful lives?


The most suspicious bit of evidence is how ADD and ADHD symptoms melt away in the sunlight. When children are outside, their penchant for so-called "misbehaving" dissipates (see the link below). The "logical conclusion" for children who cannot stop shaking their leg, or drumming with their fingers, or speaking out of turn is to diagnose them with "a problem". So we pump them with medication. 


Kids who have "ADD" or "ADHD" don't have a voice like industry pharmaceuticals and Ph.D. dissertations. We believe in the right of an intellectual elite who go to Ivy League institutions. As our society becomes more accepting of "diversity," we need to consider especially cognitive diversity. Embrace what is awesome about your mind. 
http://www.additudemag.com/adhd/article/8274.html

The student, 15, asks Coyote and I if we have advice for him regarding high school and college, and maybe even life beyond college.

Coyote says something typically mind-blowing, which I don’t remember now. I share with the student that he should not to underestimate himself, that he should not compare himself to others with harsh judgment, that just because people may be older than him, they don’t know better simply by virtue of their age “advantage”.  I also advised him to try a lot. Anything he thinks he’s interested in.

He has so much life ahead of him.

I'm ecstatic that students are learning to reconnect with their food sources, their health, and the lovely peace of working the land in the service of forging their worldviews.

Swiss Chard