Waldorf Parent Council, Edmonton, AB

The Waldorf Alternative Program is an alternative elementary school program offered by the Edmonton Public School Board. The Program teaches the provincial curriculum by using the Waldorf philosophical/pedagogical approach, which places additional emphasis on handwork, eurythmy, music, drama, painting/drawing and foreign language instruction. Moreover, the curriculum is augmented with specific Waldorf artistic, physical, social and linguistic components.
Waldorf is an educational approach, developed by the Austrian philosopher, educator, artist and scientist Rudolf Steiner. It was developed primarily as a way to educate the whole human being and not just those faculties that were deemed useful at the time for a rapidly industrializing society. The first Waldorf School was founded in 1919 in Stuttgart, Germany. Since then, the Waldorf method and pedagogy have spread all over the world: there are currently close to a thousand independent Waldorf schools in sixty countries throughout the world and a fast-growing number of public Waldorf inspired schools and programs.
Central to the Waldorf philosophy is the idea of the child’s gradually developing soul qualities: thinking, feeling and willing. Therefore, Waldorf is often described as the education of “head, heart and hands”. Waldorf education is based on the understanding that the key to critical thinking is the development of a free and creative imagination. Children in Waldorf nursery programs play with dolls that don’t come with predefined characteristics and facial expressions, but allow the child’s imagination to thrive. In Kindergarten and the early Waldorf grades, natural materials such as beeswax, silks, fleece and wooden blocks are used in a way that appeals to all the senses and that encourages the child to use and explore its own imagination. Throughout the early grades Waldorf teachers tell stories without offering printed pictures.