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Dear Colleagues,
Despite the tumult and turmoil in our world, nature continues to bless us with its bounty. I just returned from several days in Wisconsin and Massachusetts and enjoyed the end of “leaf season” with its soft light and glorious colors. For a West Coaster, the air was just brisk enough and the steady fall of leaves was mesmerizing - each puff of wind brought new showers fluttering to earth. I was joined on this trip by Sarah Arnold, our new Director of School Development and Membership, as we commence our partnership. This was a wonderful opportunity: many thanks to Tomorrow River Community Charter School, Red Granite Charter School, and Central Sands Charter High School for so warmly welcoming us! It is such a privilege and delight to visit a school, to briefly slip inside its rhythms, daily life, hopes, and dreams, and to witness the dedication, creativity, and innovation that teachers and school leaders bring every day. Each school is unique as it finds a pathway through our goals and aspirations, the demands for compliance that vary state by state and district by district, and the opportunities and challenges of each school’s location, topography, and demographics.
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Unique, yes, yet part of a country-wide web of like-minded schools and educators. Our seven Core Principles provide common ground (see below for an overview of our first Principle), along with our desire to make the gifts of Waldorf education accessible and available to as many children and their families as possible, and our dedication to bringing enlivened, developmentally appropriate education to our students, provisioning them as well as possible for the adventure of an unknown future. Our schools also typically share a common set of challenges: compliance and assessment, the rising numbers of students with individual needs, changes in society’s relationships to institutions, including schools, and a serious challenge in recruiting, preparing, and supporting enough teachers. Our schools need teachers; our teachers need support. We hear this everywhere we turn.
Announcing Our 2027 Annual Conference
Given this urgent and fundamental need, and the equally urgent needs of our students, our annual conference will focus on what it means to be an educator in a Public Waldorf school today. I am delighted to announce our January conference, Public Waldorf Education: Meeting the Needs of Now. We will be joined by Professor Neil Boland from New Zealand, who works internationally and in a university department of education, addressing this question from many aspects. We are very excited to welcome Neil and to engage with and learn from his research and experience. Our conference will include two keynotes by Neil, a keynote panel of experienced Public Waldorf educators who will identify and discuss key issues of “now,” singing together led by Christiana Quick-Cleveland (many of us who have been around for a few years know what a gift that will be), workshops on aspects of our theme, arts and crafts workshops, discussion groups to allow you to more deeply connect with colleagues, and the unstructured but enriching activity that surrounds gathering in a shared space: excellent food, dialogue on the coffee line, and many opportunities to make new friends and greet the old.
Plan to join us in Los Angeles (our second of two years at Ocean Charter School) from January 15-17, 2027 as we explore the nature of teaching and leading today, the capacities and skills that our task demands, and how we can build and support these capacities. We know that our conference must inspire, enthuse, nurture, and connect across our schools: please do your best to have at least two people attend so the impulse for our collective work can flow back into our schools. More people, greater likely impact!
We have a small task group helping us to explore the question of teacher preparation; this includes work with Neil Boland. We will hold a post-conference meeting with him to expand this study, looking at new approaches to teacher education for Public Waldorf teachers. This will be open to anyone who is interested: 2:00-4:00 pm on Sunday, January 17. Please factor this in when you make your travel plans.
There will be much more to come, but please mark your calendars and plan to join us in January!
Liz Beaven
Executive Director
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Core Principles
The Core Principles ensure that Public Waldorf education is ever-evolving and continuously renewed through practice, research, observation, and active reflection.
Members of the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education are committed to these principles.
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Core Principle #1:
Image of the Human Being
Public Waldorf education is founded on a coherent image of the developing human being.
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Each human being is a unique individual who brings specific gifts, creative potential, and intentions to this life. Public Waldorf education addresses multiple aspects of the developing child, including the physical, emotional, intellectual, social, cultural, moral, and spiritual. Through this, each child is helped to integrate into a maturing whole, able to determine a unique path through life.
Rudolf Steiner’s educational insights are seen as a primary, but not exclusive, source of guidance for an understanding of the image of the human being.
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An Exploration of Core Principle #1:
Image of the Human Being
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This first Core Principle is foundational; it forms the basis of the other six, informs our practice, and helps us to examine and advance our mission, vision, and values. It asks: who do we teach? What are our goals with and for our students? How do we view each student and our task as Public Waldorf school educators?
All education systems include an implicit or explicit image of the human being; this image shapes how we view our students and therefore how we teach, what we teach, and when we teach. Waldorf education strives to make its image explicit and coherent and to respond to it. Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf education, frequently spoke about the importance of holding a coherent image of the human being; his new art of education was intended to address a “true image of the human being” and to awaken in the teacher an ability to build an understanding of this nature. An ongoing process of inquiry and observation allows us to discover and rediscover the many dimensions of this “true image,” and it runs throughout our other six Principles.
In Public Waldorf education, we hold a comprehensive, inclusive image of the developing human being. Our image includes the physical, intellectual, emotional, social, cultural, moral, and spiritual aspects of each unique individual. We strive to balance these in a developmentally appropriate way, recognizing that different aspects will be more visible at different stages of development, but that all are present in each unique human being. An ongoing examination of this foundational principle brings a richness to our work as it invites us to view each individual as unique. It informs our relationships with our students and with colleagues and parents.
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We’ll continue to explore each of the seven Core Principles, taking a closer look at what they mean and how they inform our work in Public Waldorf education.
To read all seven Core Principles in English or Spanish, click the buttons below.
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2027 Annual Alliance Conference
Public Waldorf Education: Meeting the Needs of Now
January 15-17, 2027 | Ocean Charter School, Los Angeles, CA
Conference details are still in development.
Visit our conference page for current information.
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