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Where’s Waldorf?
Photo Via Post-Gazette
Awhile back, we reported about one of the few schools in America that shun classrooms filled with technology in favor of holistic and community-based learning environments. They’re called Waldorf schools and they’re big fans of creative play, learning through nature, and teaching children how to work interdependently. They knit, garden, and cook vegetarian recipes. It seems like a pretty amazing place to go to school, and if we had any say, we’d go back in time. We’d probably let our mama know that we’re going to be hippies when we grow up anyway. Since that’s the case, our mama might as well have slathered us in essential patchouli oil, packed our lunch box full of chia seeds and organic apple slices, filled our thermos with kombucha and booted us off to a Waldorf school.
Since we don’t see any time travel in our cards, we thought that it would be a good idea to look into becoming a Waldorf teacher. To begin, we started with checking the job market out. There are worldwide teaching jobs no matter what grade level you want to teach. Schools seem to be clamoring for educators who are Waldorf trained. And for good reason.
We ran into someone who had completed a bit of Waldorf teacher training and he was convinced that it was a life altering experience. He said that the training didn’t just teach you how to facilitate creativity, and interdependence in children. It also taught you how to explore those things in yourself, which allows you to be a great role model. He also told us that the training courses were ridiculously inexpensive. He was taking a once/week program that he said ran him just $1500.
But when I checked online, it seemed to be a great deal more expensive, and like it would be an incredible time commitment. The post-graduate training seems to cost as much as going to one of the best online colleges.
Here’s where you come in. If you’ve ever completed Waldorf training, or if you’re enrolled, or if you have any information on the subject, we’d love to hear from you. Please let us know what it’s like, where it’s at, how much it costs, etc.
Do you Waldorf?
Nature 101: The Chautauqua
What lessons can the mountains teach us?
While visiting Boulder, Colorado this weekend, I hit the trails of some of the most accessible nature in America. Chautauqua park is located right within the city limits of boulder, in walking distance of the Colorado State campus. It’s an absolutely beautiful park. Even the walk to the trailhead is unbelievable. Wandering in between two rolling foothill prairies, filled with wildflowers and lounging hikers, the hill becomes steeper, and as you make your way into the wooded area, you remember that you’re going to be climbing up a small mountain. As you climb, everyone you encounter has a smile, an interesting story, some word of warning or encouragement, or at the very least, a dog to play with.
The park was formed as a Chautauqua, which has a fascinating history and has influenced the American education system whether we’re aware of it or not. Before radio and television, the Chautauqua movement was one of the main sources of both entertainment and disseminating new information. Performers and scholars got together and began traveling the Chautauqua circuit across the united states. Folks began setting up Chautauquas in their own communities as a way to bring education to middle class people. They were typically located in beautiful natural settings, where people could escape the industrialism and growth that were typically ruling their lives. It was one of the turning points in the American relationship with nature.
When Europeans settled in the Americas, they brought with them a deep seated fear of the untamed wilderness which they were surrounded by. Many of the religious and social doctrines of the time regarded the forest and wildlife with dark mystery. They saw nature as nothing more than a filthy, disorganized, mess and claimed that was something of the devils creation. Someone needed to tame and conquer the dwelling of the beast. You can see this attitude reflected in many of the attitudes that we hold today. Culturally, we are extremely separate from the natural world. We designate areas in which nature is allowed to flourish and exist and we call these “national parks.” Even in such areas we tend to denigrate the natural order of things (see: fracking in our national parks).
After a couple of generations, people started experiencing the gifts of nature, and began thinking more progressively about our relationship with it. So these Chautauqua gatherings and communities weren’t just beneficial in creating careers in education, entertaining the masses, and spreading information, they were also beneficial in reconnecting the population with the natural beauty that surrounds us in nearly every region of America.
Perhaps America could use a revival of the Chautauqua movement. These days, when we’re so plugged into our technical revolution, many people have reverted to fearing the natural world. Most people hold the misconception that it holds many untold dangers. While they can disregard the ideas that their hormone filled food gives them cancer, their birth control causes blood clots, or that all of their electronics expose them to higher levels of radiation than our bodies can possibly handle, the thought of losing their footing and spraining an ankle on the mountainside fills them with terror.
I understand this fear completely. I’ll be the first to admit that forming a relationship with nature requires many leaps. It took me about 23 years of life to begin to wonder what lessons we could learn from nature. It took me 26 years to make it to my first peak. Before that, I preferred the plugged in method of living. But maybe it doesn’t have to take so long for others to find this path. Perhaps it’s time to go back to the Chautauqua way of assimilating people into the natural world. Maybe all we need is a group of traveling entertainers, educators and free-thinkers to prod us into plugging into something more meaningful, something more natural, something more real.
What do you think about the idea of reviving the Chautauqua circuit?
Give Me Higher Education or Give Me Death
The correlation between higher education and longevity of life has been well studied. It’s a wonder that it hasn’t turned into a selling point for colleges. They love that statistic about making a million dollars more in your lifetime, but they shy away from the whole “going to college will help you avoid premature death” thing. Perhaps it’s a little to morbid for Yale, but you’d think that the University of Phoenix would be all over that marketing campaign.
The study conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation shows that the correlation is growing stronger as time moves along.
Premature death rates differed sharply across counties, and a lack of college education accounted for about 35 percent of that variation from 2006 to 2008, the most recent years available, said Bridget Booske Catlin, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, who directed the study. That was up from 30 percent over an equivalent period seven years earlier. [NY Times]
In the language of the study, a premature death is any preventable fatality that occurs before the age of 75. There are some simple factors that account for the disparity between those who complete post-secondary education and those who don’t.
People who graduate from universities are more likely to make more money and are more likely to be covered by medical insurance. The number of uninsured Americans who make less than $34,000 per year rose to thirty percent in 2011. That’s compared to the ten percent uninsured in the $36,000-$89,000 bracket.
Food is also a huge factor in premature death, and most preventable deaths are caused by heart disease and other food related illnesses. Low income and high school educated Americans are more likely to live in areas saturated with fast food restaurants and tend to make poor diet choices based on availability and budget.
What do you think about the correlation between longevity and education? Do you think we should create some easy scholarships in order to make it easier for people to access education and live longer?
Yoga Improves Spatial Memory In Children
There is a growing trend of availability for yoga in schools, but for some reason, it’s starting to become a controversial issue. If I wanted to carry on from the last post and continue to write bitter satire, I would probably talk about how it’s brainwashing our nation’s children into becoming OM-ing, chakra aligning, LSD taking deviants. But, I’m not really feeling all that bitter today. The sun is shining. The birds are chirping. And I too, have experienced some of the benefits of yoga over the past month which is making me feel pretty zen today.
However, it’s hard to ignore the misconception that many people hold about yoga. It was rather shocking news when I discovered that there are some conservative individuals that think yoga is religious, cultish and even demonic. I experienced this confusion a few days ago, when a friend began softly singing a chant in a bath house and was asked to leave by an angry patron. The chants literal translation was “We all fly like eagles circling the universe on wings of light.” I think it’d be easy to agree that that kind of rhetoric is harmless. She politely stopped singing, but refused to leave. The woman got up, and began pacing around the room, blessing it by doing Hail Mary as she shuffled. It was really bizarre. The whole thing got me thinking about the controversy occurring in schools based on the same misconception.
I intended on writing an opinion column about how yoga is beneficial for kids. I was going to postulate that yoga helps children and high school students achieve greater peace of mind, and that it helps form a connection to their bodies (which is an extremely important aspect of combating the obesity epidemic occurring in America). But when I was searching to find some tips, I found some compelling research that turned this little opinion post into a factual, information dissemination, post.
Check out these findings from a spatial memory study conducted to research the results yoga has on children:
At the final assesment the yoga group showed a significant increase of 43% in spatial memory scores [...] while the fine arts and control groups showed no change. The results suggest that yoga practice, including physical postures, guided breathing, meditation and guided relaxation improve delayed recall of spatial information.
What do you think about yoga in schools?
Benefits Of Homeschooling
And THAT'S why daddy had you female-circumcised.
Today’s education system is a minefield of horrors. Kids graduating without being able to read, school shootings, drugs, unprotected sex all run through the hallways with more force than Niagara Falls. You might be thinking that you need to take on the left wing media ran education department with witty banners, ski masks and and moltov cocktails, but there is a way to take an active roll in your children’s education without becoming a felon. Homeschool those mofos!
1. You have complete control over what your children learn and when they learn it. You can make sure they understand that believing in dinosaurs is signs of allegiance with the beast, and that contraception will give them cancer and make their genitals fall off.
2. You can use your own learning style. Obviously, girls don’t need to know how to read or do basic math, so you can keep them on the right path with fun classes like sandwich making, and cardio because nobody wants to marry a chubby girl.
3. Tailor your curriculum to your child’s strengths or weaknesses. For example if your son likes playing with my little ponies, you can lock him in the barn and not feed him till he fixes that tractor you can’t seem to get running.
4. You can make sure they know what REALLY happened. Obama’s education regime would have your children believe in the holocaust, evolution, and homosexuality being a choice, but you know better.
We all know that our children’s education is of the utmost importance, since they are in fact the future. Don’t let your children’s minds be molded by a government that only wants you to pay for illegal immigrants to go to cosmetology school. Never forget this is America, this is YOUR country, and these are your children’s lives at stake. Obama isn’t king, so don’t allow him into your home to boss you around and tell you how to live your life.
Schools As Billboards. Sure, Why Not?
It seems that our education system is always and has always been in a “budget cricis.” Has there ever been a time in history when schools had “just the right amount” or “too much” money? At any rate, our education system has had to downsize with the rest of America during this period of “negative growth” (what a silly phrase) and some school boards are trying to take matters into their own hands to alleviate the problem.
With all of the budget issues that schools are facing around the nation, schools are trying to get crafty in order to bring in new revenue. As a response to budget cuts a few years ago in Texas. some school districts began working with ad agencies in an effort to blanket their schools and busses in advertisements targeted towards student bodies across the state.
Advertisers in Texas are now able to push their wares and services on their most impressionable consumers, teenagers. They know their market. A Big Mac banner in the gym? Why not? A steamy ad for Axe Body Spray featuring a scantily clad, airbrushed woman in sex ed? Hey, it’s realistic enough. When the University of Phoenix gets in on this and they take on the lunch trays, kids are going to be eating lunch off the face of one of those “I’m a Phoenix” folks in no time.
Having advertisements in schools is not consistent with the teaching of critical thinking, Ms. Boninger said [Faith Boninger, researcher at The University of Colorado at Boulder]. And what is being sold — fast food, for instance — can run counter to subjects being taught, like nutrition. She added that the polarized gender stereotypes and materialist perspectives that may come with exposure to advertisements had been shown to harm students’ self-esteem. [NY Times]
And are you ready for the kicker? This “solution” isn’t alleviating any of the district’s budget issues. In 2010, advertising revenue brought in less than 1% of the total budget.
What do you think about advertising in schools?
Internships: Slave Labor or Resume Shaper?
The controversy surrounding unpaid internships has grown over the past decade. Is it a valuable post-collegiate learning experience? Or is it a crash course in indentured servitude? No. It couldn’t be that. Indentured servants get something out of it. People who complete a full-time unpaid internship get a line on their resume, and a letter, at best. It’s easy to overlook the controversy as a problem for middle class kids, who feel that they deserve to leap right into a high paying career. But it has become apparent through law suits that have been filed against many prominent corporations, that companies are taking advantage of this huge free labor force.
How many interns does it take to screw in a light bulb? Who cares, it’s free.
This is the attitude that many companies have adopted over the past several decades. Internships that give students high quality experience and training, internships that pay (even the minimum wage), and internships that are genuine stepping stones to a paid poisition within a company are quickly waning in America. Many companies seem to have taken the noble idea of internship, and turned it into a bottom line issue, throwing interns into essential full time positions, that often boil into overtime.
Author of Intern Nation, Ross Perlin, notes the influence of unpaid internships on young people:
The damage is everywhere. Youth unemployment hovers above 18 percent, near an all-time high. The entry-level job is fast becoming an endangered species. A whole generation of twentysomethings feels adrift — crushed by debt, living with their parents, delaying traditional milestones of adulthood, unable to become independent stakeholders in society. Meanwhile, the labor of unpaid interns has quietly replaced or displaced untold thousands of workers. Lucrative and influential professions — politics, media and entertainment, to name a few — now virtually require a period of unpaid work, effectively barring young people from less privileged backgrounds.
It’s not all bad.
But would placing federal regulations on the practice, bar valuable organizations from offering legitimate, and enriching programs for recent grads?
David Lat, lawyer and journalist, founder of Above The Law says that internships aren’t to blame:
[...] unpaid internships are more a symptom than a cause of economic weakness. They are so popular right now because many employers, large and small, simply don’t have the ability to create new, full-time, paid positions.
What do you think about unpaid internships?
School Lunches: Feast, Famine and Rarely Food
The school lunch system is a confusing mess at the moment, according to parents around the nation. Many parents want schools to provide the 32 million students that participate in the school lunch program with nutritious meals. In response to these cries, and to the obesity epedimic in America, the Obama administration unveiled the first major overhaul to the school food system in over 15 years.
Most of the food lobbyists are on board with the changes. But some food companies resist any change to the status quo and are pushing to make their foods fit into the new rules and regulations. Let’s look at a few of the events that have occured in the past few months that are changing the conversation about what America’s children eat when they’re away from home.
Pizza is a Vegetable
First, pizza becomes a vegetable. This was a pretty memorable turn of events, in that it was a great example at how ridiculous our conversation about food had become. It sounded like the punchline of a bad joke you learn when you’re figuring out how to become a dietitian. Alas, it was a law.
However, according to the new overhaul, a piece of pizza would have to contain 1/4 cup of tomato paste in order to be considered a vegetable. Some food companies are up in arms that their “Pizza as a Vegetable” scheme backfired in such an unappetizing way. Now pizza might have to actually taste like a vegetable. Kid’s reply with a resounding “Yuck!”
The Potato War
The Obama overhaul will limit potatoes as a breakfast food and the potato agricultural industry is crying foul. They say that the administration is vilifying a perfectly good vegetable.
“Despite the fact that Congress said the U.S.D.A. could not limit potatoes in school lunches or breakfast, we still feel like the potato is being downplayed in favor of other vegetables in the new guidelines,” said Mark Szymanski, a spokesman for the council. “It seems the department still considers the potato a second-class vegetable.” [NY Times]
Overall, the food companies are pretty pleased with the overhaul, and these are just two points of dissonance. Does anyone know why frozen food corporations and food companies are going along with the changes?
Volunteering During Your Gap Year
Volunteering is one of the most beneficial ways to spend your gap year. Not only does volunteering look the best on your college and job applications, it also strengthens character, and will help you realize the depth and breadth of issues that you care about.
Volunteering is Good for You
Whether it’s working with rescued elephants, helping re-build huts in the Sudan, or putting together a literacy program in your hometown, volunteering is essential for the full development of the human character. Studies show that it also contibutes to overall well being and physical health.
Volunteering during your gap year will give you a boost of self-confidence. It will allow you to develop your interpersonal skills while you network and meet new friends and contacts. It also has some interesting side effects. Volunteering combats depression, and studies show that it will even help you live longer.
Where To Volunteer During Your Gap Year
There are so many organizations around the world that would love your help. It would be impossible to list all of the volunteer opportunities in one blog post. But it’s important to consider your preferences and lifestyle before you commit to a full year of volunteering.
Sure, working at an African orphanage might sound amazing on your resume, but if you hate hot weather, you may not make it the entire year. This is mainly common sense, but you really have to take a realistic look at what you want to do and who you are. If you don’t have much experience with kids, you might want to do some volunteering with children at home before you travel around the globe to teach English in South Korea.
Volunteering and Traveling
Torn between volunteering and traveling? Why not do both? Wouldn’t it be amazing to know that you helped someone in every country you visited during your gap year? Instead of winging it when you get there, plan your entire trip around volunteer opportunities that you’re interested in.
Will you volunteer during your gap year?
Gap Year Travel Benefits
There’s no denying it. We’re living in the hay day of the global economy. In North America, most of our goods come from outside of our country and our melting pot society has brought in cultures from around the world. Maybe your gap year would be a good time to go discover where all of it is coming from.
Traveling outside of your nation during your gap year gives you a great deal of perspective. There’s a reason that the term “worldly” has positive connotations. It describes a person who has a good grasp on what it means to be a citizen of the world. Worldly people are generally humble, giving, kind and interesting. This is good news if you’re planning on travelling before applying for an exclusive school, or if your gap year will take place after college before you settle into a paid position. Employers and educators want people with these qualities and know that travel brings them out in people. That’s because it is widely accepted that travel brings out the best in people. Extensive travel teaches young people how to problem solve, interact with people who are different, and cooperate with others, among other things. One of the most important lessons you can learn from travel is patience.
So, that bus didn’t come and you’re stuck at the station for the night. You’ve lost your passport. You’ve waited in line for hours of your life for a must see site, only to find out that it’s just a tourist trap. You learn how to roll with these things and your patience naturally gets stronger. This skill transfers over when you’re a student or an employee. Travel also gives you a good opportunity to gain the experience necessary to apply for travel scholarships.
If you decide to travel during your gap year, you will be able to include the experience on your resume, which makes for great fodder during an interview. Never underestimate the well told, completely ridiculous, or touching travel story when it comes to impressing an admissions councilor.
Have you traveled during your gap year? What do you think the benefits are for traveling during a gap year?
How To Make The Most Out of a Gap Year
This month, we’re discussing the Gap year in detail to explore it’s benefits for students. Last week, we talked about the benefits that employers and educators have noticed. This week, we’re going to talk about the things students can do during a gap year that will make sure the time is well spent.
Taking a year off shouldn’t mean that you spend eleven months on your mom’s couch, curled up with a bag of chips, watching The Bad Girls Club. In order for a gap year to be beneficial, students must partake in something enriching and affirming. They must be challenged and exposed to things that will help them discover themselves in the grand scheme of things. There are many options for the gap year student.
Traditionally, European students take the gap year with the intent to travel and see the world. Many American students travel in college utilizing the study abroad option. While this is a fantastic option for college students, it is a little more limited and structured than travelling during a year off. When gap year students travel without a school sanctioned itinerary, they’re more likely to explore, problem solve and meet new people. They’re more likely to discover their own interests and find their own path.
Taking a year off can be beneficial if a student wants to save some money and enter the workforce to discover their career path. Sometimes this option can lead to the student abandoning college to continue to make money, so it’s a good idea to put a year time limit when taking on a full time job.
The gap year can be a great way to give back to your community or to the global community. There are many opportunities for service in this world, for young people who are willing to take a year off.
Next week, we’ll go into more detail about travelling during a gap year.
Have you taken a year off to do any of these things? Did it help you or set you back?
Benefits of the Gap Year
All aboard! Take a gap year journey!
We’re spending January exploring the gap year. As we discussed in our last post, the year between high school and college which is otherwise known as “taking the year off” is becoming more of a consideration for American students. In most other wealthy cultures, the gap year is encouraged and is considered part of the development of young minds. In American culture, it’s generally viewed as wasteful procrastination.
“You’re taking a year off? To do what? Why don’t you just enroll in community college at least?” -Friendly Neighbor
Because of this overwhelming cultural view, many students head off to university to figure out what they want to do. But there are many benefits of taking a gap year, and direction is certainly one of those benefits. Students tend to enter university after a gap year with more of a solid sense of self and purpose. They also tend to have a career path in mind when they enter school and are more focused than their straight-from-senior-year counterparts.
While freshman year students have just finished high school are swamped with managing their own time, taking care of themselves, studying for exams, writing term papers and getting swamped with college drinking culture, gap year students take on less of a burden. Since gap year students aren’t worried about their GPA, they’re more likely to explore and reinvent themselves. This means that they can take more time to think about what they really want to accomplish in college and in their career. In this way, they have the time to figure out how to become an art teacher, but they also have the time to reflect and figure out if they really want to be an artist.
Beyond the feel-good notion of having students that are self-aware and purpose driven, gap year students also perform academically than their non-gap year counterparts.
There is even good news on the academic performance front, with several studies showing that students who take a gap year end up doing better than their non-gap year classmates. At Middlebury College in Vermont, for example, this was true even when controlling for the academic credentials that gap year students brought with them from their high schools. On average, those students have shown a clear pattern of having higher G.P.A.’s than would otherwise have been predicted, and the positive effect lasts over all four years. [NY Times]
Next week, we’ll discuss a few things students can do during a gap year.
Did you take a gap year? How did it benefit you?
What is a Gap Year?
You may have been hearing that phrase more often lately. Gap year. It sounds a little like a hiking boot. Many high school seniors are trying to convince their parents that gap years are a good idea. Many college grads are hopping on the gap year boat as well. Gap years are popular in Europe and Asia and they’ve recently started gaining popularity in the United States. So, what exactly is a gap year?
A gap year is merely a year that students take off between high school and college to pursue personal interests, talents, or to travel. The gap year hasn’t been popular in the United States because we’ve traditionally liked the straightforward path to success. As we reported earlier this month, the path isn’t quite as straightforward or narrow as it used to be in America. Now, many colleges and employers are looking for life experience outside of the classroom and a gap year can provide some of that experience if it’s done “correctly.”
The point of the gap year isn’t really to do anything correctly. It’s a year of personal exploration. It’s built off of the assumption that there’s no possible way you could know who you are, and what you want to do, when you’re eighteen-years-old. College graduates entering the job market may find themselves with few job prospects. They’re also taking a break off from formal education and the job market to explore their options and interests as well.
So, more students are doing it. That’s clear. But is it good or bad? Is it a waste of time and money or should we be pushing all students out of the rat race for a year to find themselves? Well, we’re going to spend the first month of 2012 exploring the gap year. We want to know what the benefits are, who the best candidates for a year off are, and how to make a gap year more productive.
Women More Likely To Ditch The Workforce
According to the Beaureau of Labor Statistics, women are taking this time of economic uncertainty to ditch the classifieds and head back to class. This might sound empowering to most women. Obviously, the more education women get, the better. They won’t have to settle for that job as an executive administrative assistant. They’ll be the executive. They’ll have access to better high-wage jobs when the economy rebounds, more control over their personal career path, and they’ll be able level the playing field in the workforce. These surface realities may sound like great news, but their implications are a little disheartening.
We can skip over the argument that women still make considerably less money than men do, because we’ve known this for years and knowing doesn’t seem to have changed anything. But one of the reason that women may be going back to school is because they have fewer options. The numbers of jobs that have recovered for men and women in the past two and a half years, when the recovery officially began, young men in the 16 to 24 demographic gained 178,000 jobs. Females in the same age group have lost 255,000 positions according to the Labor Department. With women’s jobs disappearing is there really anywhere else to go, except back to school?
Let’s not forget, that in this universe, higher education isn’t free. Women are accumulating more debt than men. If they’re going for a masters degree, they can expect to rack up a bill of over $100,000.
Now that women are saddled with debt and more educated then men, it’s time to hit the workforce, right? Many women exiting college will be the prime age for having children. Now that women are solidifying their roles as breadwinners, who will be mom? She’ll be that crazy woman with a blackberry strapped to her hand and a diaper bag that looks like a briefcase. Or are we going to switch gender rolls completely, Mr. Mom style?
What do you think about women returning to school?