Educational Support Work
The Educational Support teacher takes individual students from the beginning of Main Lesson time for approximately 20 minutes twice a week for between 5 and 7 weeks. They also conduct classroom observations and meets with class teachers and parents. They work in a room shared with the Cello Teacher from 8:30 and 10:00 AM. The Educational Support teacher also conducts Grade One Readiness and Grade Two Assessments and shares the results with teachers and parents. They attend the parent/class meetings to explain the processes to parents and give an experience of some of the activities. They are an experienced Waldorf teacher and has HEART (Healing Education and Remedial Training). They use several resources including ‘The Extra Lesson’, ‘Take Time’ and ‘The Well-Balanced Child’.
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Goals
- Support the individual needs of children in one-on-one sessions.
- Identify and address hindrances.
- Provide feedback on each for teachers and parents so that the individual child can be held and supported.
- Provide suitable exercises and activities for teachers to implement in the classroom.
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Art Therapy
In a dedicated room the art therapist utilizes several different art materials according to the challenges presented by the individual child or adult. These materials may consist of water colour paints for wet-on-wet and dry veil painting, drawing materials such as beeswax crayons, pencil crayons, chalk pastels and charcoal and clay for clay modelling. When working one-on-one, the art therapist will encourage free expression as well as giving guided exercises. 12 week cycles- once a week for 30-45 min.
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Goals
- To have an anthroposophically trained art therapist who understands Rudolph Steiner’s developmental stages of the growing child.
- To nurture, heal and support hindrances in the child that are causing difficulties or challenges.
- To have a close relationship with the parents so that the whole picture of the child is revealed.
- To offer a comforting, warm, friendly atmosphere in which the child feels safe to express him/herself.
- For the program to be supported by the school and access given to all children.
- To offer art therapy to parents and faculty members.
- To work one to one with the child/adult.
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Therapeutic Eurythmy
One cycle of TE consists of two individual half-hour sessions per week for seven weeks. There are four cycles per year and eight students per cycle, thus 32 students have the opportunity to take TE each year. The Therapeutic Eurythmist shares a room with the school store (which gets packed away on one half of the room behind a floor to ceiling curtain) and comes in two mornings a week. Students (and adults at the school) come out of class and go up to the TE room.
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Goals
- To provide a focus on the individual needs of the student.
- To support emotional or physical imbalances.
- Strengthen or subdue specific issues.
- Provide beneficial effects on breathing, posture, spatial awareness, tactile dexterity, feet problems, insomnia, digestive ailments, stress and anxiety for the developing student.
- To help the student become more stable and balanced in their individual stage of development.