Overview

It might be a truism and needless to say that all teachers should make efforts to understand their students. Real understanding is a sure foundation and support for children's healthy development, without which lessons will be random and connect with the students only superficially. Skilled teachers try to understand their students so they can lift learning beyond mere compulsion and drills. Rudolf Steiner's ideal was the weekly pedagogical meetings in Waldorf schools to support the teachers' developing insight into their students. He exhorted them to ""become psychologists,"" though not in the sense commonly understood. He demonstrated the ""art of evolving insight"" himself during faculty meetings in which he participated. It is an essential to the quality of any teacher's work to develop skills of perception, reflection, and insight. Christof Wiechert presents Rudolf Steiner's guidelines anew. He elaborates the art of child study as a key tool for nurturing student development, as well as the teacher's growing powers of insight. In short, the approach described here can enliven and support the educational and social dimensions of a whole school community.

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9783723515273

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Christof Wiechert was born in The Hague and studied education and geography, and worked for thrity years as a Waldorf teacher in The Hague. He co-founded the Waldorf teacher seminar in the Netherlands and is a board member of the Anthroposophical Society in the Netherlands. From 1999 to 2010, he was head of the Pedagogical Section at the Goetheanum, and remains active for the Free University at the Goetheanum. Christof dedicates himself to pedagogical and anthroposophic topics at home and abroad. He is married and has five children. Matthew Barton is a translator, editor, teacher, and poet, and taught kindergarten for many years at the Bristol Waldorf School. His first collection of poems was Learning To Row (1999). He has won numerous prizes for his work, including an Arts Council Writer's Award and a Hawthornden Fellowship.

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