Workshop explores Waldorf approach to literacy

Salt Spring parents are invited to attend a half-day seminar with Waldorf educator Kathy Brunetta on Saturday, March 12 at the United Church.

Literacy and the Child is the second in a series of participatory seminars called Why Waldorf Works from the Salt Spring Friends of Waldorf Education Society.

Participants will follow the child’s acquisition of literacy from the earliest years through the elementary and high school years during a series of presentations and teaching exercises led by Brunetta.

Brunetta has over 26 years experience as a Waldorf teacher, beginning in 1984 with the completion of her teacher training at the Rudolf Steiner Centre in Toronto. She taught at the Alan Howard Waldorf and the Toronto Waldorf High School, of which her two sons are graduates.

While completing a Master of Arts degree in Curriculum Studies with the University of British Columbia in 2003, Brunetta provided educational support for Waldorf teachers and Waldorf schools by offering evaluation and mentoring services and teacher education courses.

She teaches with the Rudolf Steiner Centre teacher education faculty and has been an occasional visiting teacher in Waldorf schools. Currently Brunetta serves as pedagogical administrator for the Calgary Waldorf School, a full-time position that requires her to commute between her home in Vancouver and Calgary.

Press material from the Salt Spring society states the “goal of the Waldorf approach to the language arts . . . is to inspire in every child a love for the power of language.

“This love for language and narrative is cultivated in the earliest stages of child development through finger games and nursery rhymes. As the child grows the eventual introduction of reading develops out of the child’s own experience of living language.”

On the phone from the Calgary Waldorf School, Brunetta further explained that reading is only one component of literacy.

Waldorf educators focus on a holistic learning approach that involves play, movement and creativity for very young children.

They help children develop literacy through their “direct human environment” — the example of the adults around them.

Waldorf education also uses a developmental approach, looking at the right times to bring in different learning activities.

For example, students are introduced to reading in Grade 1 by first learning to write.

“By then Waldorf children have a rich language base, so their narrative content is quite sophisticated,” Brunetta said. In fact, children continue to learn “how to read” through their entire school careers as they take on more and more complex material through the high school years.

Some of the topics Brunetta will introduce during the seminar include the role of story, the role of the artistic process as a means of learning and how to use Waldorf Form Drawing, a learning technique unique to the program.

The seminar takes place from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Salt Spring United Church located at 111 Hereford Ave. The cost is $15.

All proceeds will support Salt Spring Friends of Waldorf Education Society’s efforts to  create a new Waldorf elementary school on Salt Spring.

For more information, contact shannonecowan@gmail.com or call 250-537-4847.