Is Waldorf Education Inspiring Scientific Curiosity?

A few weeks ago, middle school students in our marine ecology elective at the Waldorf School of Cape Cod demonstrated a wonderful example of how Waldorf education is inspiring scientific curiosity in our students.

Our middle school grades (Classes 6-8) have the opportunity to take an elective class on Friday afternoons. Many of these classes are taught by members of our parent community.
One of the choices for the Fall session this year is Marine Ecology. Dr. Joy Lapseritis, scientist and member of our parent community, introduced students to the relationships of organisms with the marine environment through experiments and observations.  Over the course of 5 weeks, the class was engaged in asking questions and observing diverse organisms such as mollusks, horseshoe crabs, and marine mammals.  These organisms offered entry-points to discuss animal classification, coastal and open ocean ecosystems, life cycles and food webs, and interactions between human development and local estuaries. 

During a recent class, the students took part in a salinity lab. Salinity impacts deep water currents, which affects everything in the ocean, from seaweed to whales to submarines. The students experimented with how water of different salinity (labeled with dye) separates according to density. They also talked about the importance of water and salt balance for organisms that live in the ocean.

A small body of red salty water remains separate from blue fresh water.

Experiments like this one, challenge students powers of observation - an important component of critical thinking. After taking part in a lesson such as this, students are often asked to draw illustrations to accompany their written text in their main lesson books that they create. They have time to reflect and speculate about the results of the experiment.  

Dr. Lapseritis was struck by the curiosity and creativity exhibited by the Waldorf School students during the salinity lab lesson. She has used this salinity experiment in other school outreach lessons, where those students were very concerned with following the procedure exactly and finding the “correct” answers or observing exactly the same result as everyone else in the room.  While the Waldorf middle school students were great at following directions, they also showed exemplary scientific curiosity in the variability between the results from one student to another, and explored beyond the constraints of the protocol.  They freely experimented with what they could do with the simplest of lab materials - water samples of various salt concentrations - and made their own discoveries.  

Students compared their results with each other, discussing what was different and why, then created new protocols to explore further.  

“I realized midway through the lesson that I was nervous about the experiment going as I had planned,” confessed Dr. Lapseritis.  “But then I realized that the students were doing exactly what a scientist should: they accepted the results they were observing, generated hypotheses to explain their results and then came up with new questions, new experiments!  Although I had structured this elective to focus on process and observation, and learning to ask questions rather than find answers, the students have already learned to do this and they taught me so much!”  

Waldorf Education: Producing Creative Scientists

Fifth grade students may not be ready to write research papers but they are ready to make their first steps in that direction. Our Fifth grade students had their first introduction to group research work this Fall. Some liked working in groups and others were challenged by this work. When asked about this, Fifth grade teacher, Mr. Schofield says:

“I feel an obligation to introduce my fifth grade students to group work. I feel Waldorf Education can potentially produce individuals who are creative scientists and mathematicians. That is what I am trying to achieve.”

- Mark Schofield, Class 5 Teacher

Our fifth grade curriculum has North American Geography as a topic for grade five. Mr. Schofield, thought the idea of studying biomes (ecological communities) went nicely with their study of plants this year and animals last year.

Students were organized into groups of 3 or 4 students and asked to choose a Biome and research it. The assignment was to draw a food web for their biome. The students picked the desert, the plains, the tundra and the boreal forest biomes.

The project had strict parameters on the research. Students read 2 or 3 books on their biome and were asked to do research based on those books. Once the research was completed and the projects were ready, the teams of students presented their projects to classmates and their parents. Students were encouraged to engage visitors and tell them about their subjects and their work.

Classmates and parents came ready with questions to ask the student teams and all who attended were impressed with the students’ ability to present what they learned.

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A Community that Gardens Together

by Kim Allsup, Gardening Teacher

Here at the Waldorf School of Cape Cod, we garden together as a community. We have been gardening at WSCC for at least 25 years, but the addition of the lunch program sparked a new level of commitment to growing food in a quantity that would provide useful parts of the menu. 

Our Seed to Table Meals

Before we had a lunch program, my goal as a gardening teacher was to grow a wide variety of plants. Our harvests sometimes became a salad prepared and eaten in third grade. I often sent food home with children and sometimes this made its way into dinner and at other times a child would tell me that her lost carrots were found shriveled in the back of the car. It is wonderful to know all the good, organic food we grow will be eaten - in Chef Peet's lunch, in the Wednesday take home meals, as snack during our weekly faculty meetings or via veggie sales in the lobby. 

Today, the privilege of carrying the harvest to the kitchen is prized. I hear, "Can I take this to Chef Peet?" at least ten times in each gardening class. During lunch our youngest children often look at certain beans, peas, or strawberries in their meal and announce, "I picked this one, I remember it." 

Our School Sunhouse

Of course the ability to harvest a crop large enough each week to be a meaningful contribution to lunch is possible because we have a hoop house. I am continually grateful for the amazing community support and the efforts of a dedicated team that created this growing space. 

Autumn is a busy time for our garden work because it is the traditional harvest season. In the sunhouse it is also a vital season for planting as winter harvests depend on strong fall growth before the light levels decrease. 

Follow our work in the Waldorf School of Cape Cod Sunhouse on Twitter and Pinterest.

Gardening in Nursery Through The Grades

Of course we are both growing food to eat and we are growing children who appreciate and come to understand the nature of plants and the work of gardening. This learning through doing will mean that as adults they know how easy it can be to grow a significant amount of food. 

This learning begins in Parent & Child classes and Early Childhood classes. While these groups do not officially have gardening classes, I suggest gardening projects to their teachers. This is the first year a Parent & Child class has gardened in the sunhouse. 

Here is summary of our community efforts to grow our food since school began this September:

• Mrs. Green's Parent & Child class has harvested tomatoes and fingerling potatoes. 
• The Sunflower children are drying beans they harvested during family gardening.
• The Morning Glories have harvested fingerling potatoes.
• Class 1/2 have brightened the garden with geraniums which will come into their classroom soon
• Class 3/4 has had a double period of gardening each week where they have planted, weeded, harvested and enjoyed drinking from nasturtium leaves using chives as straws.
• Class 5 studied cucurbits (pumpkin, zucchini, watermelon) and drew their leaves as part of their weekly class Botany in the Garden. They also planted their experimental bed and gardened on Friday afternoons for the first electives block.
• A few students from Classes 6, 7, & 8 led groups of fifth graders during electives to get the sunhouse planted for the cold months.
• Mr. Mullins and Mr. O'Hara led the middle schoolers in pulling the roof over the sunhouse after Classes 1-8 gathered to recite their lunch blessings and sing the sunhouse blessing song
• Mr. Buskey tended the French gardens he planted near the sunhouse and the gardens near the shed.
• Mrs. Small and Class 6 continue to care for the wildlife garden they planted just outside the sunhouse. 

At Waldorf School of Cape Cod our whole community is involved in our gardening program and we all enjoy the benefits of our work together.

For more on gardening and education, visit our gardening teacher Kim Allsup’s blog Growing Children.