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The Homeschool How To
I don't claim to know anything about homeschooling, so I set out on a journey to ask the people who do! Join me as I chat with homeschoolers to discuss; "why are people homeschooling," "what are all the ways people are using to homeschool today," and ultimately, "should I homeschool my kids?"
The Homeschool How To
#90: Thinking About Starting a Micro School or Learning Center? Here's What to Consider!
What sets Waldorf education apart from other learning models? Join us on a fascinating exploration with Suzanne Glick, a seasoned Waldorf educator and homeschooling advocate, as she shares her journey and insights into this unique educational philosophy. We promise you'll gain a deeper understanding of how the spiritual and artistic principles of Waldorf education can be seamlessly adapted for homeschooling, providing a holistic approach that resonates with parents seeking alternatives to conventional education systems.
For those considering micro schools or learning centers, our discussion offers practical guidance on launching and sustaining these innovative educational communities. From forming a leadership team to curriculum design, we explore the blueprint for creating adaptable learning environments that accommodate various educational styles such as Waldorf, Montessori, and forest schools. Suzanne and I also discuss the importance of community engagement and financial sustainability in establishing a successful educational venture. Whether you're an educator, homeschooling parent, or simply curious about alternative education models, this episode is sure to provide valuable insights and inspiration for your educational journey.
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Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool How-To. I'm Cheryl and I invite you to join me on my quest to find out why are people homeschooling, how do you do it, how does it differ from region to region, and should I homeschool my kids? Stick with me as I interview homeschooling families across the country to unfold the answers to each of these questions week by week. Welcome, and with us today we have Suzanne Glick. Suzanne, thank you so much for being here today. We have been communicating a little bit on Instagram and I'm really excited to have this chat with you, so welcome.
Speaker 2:Oh, thanks for inviting me in. I'm really inspired by your posts and the depth and the width and the breadth of all the things that you're covering, so I was really delighted to be invited to talk about Waldorf education and the journey that I went on as a Waldorf teacher for many years for 27 years before I bailed and started something completely new.
Speaker 1:That's exciting to me. So, all right, why don't you break it down from the beginning? Because, as you know, a new homeschooler just interviewing homeschooling families. I've talked to a couple of people, one in particular I can remember, lindsay, who discussed the Waldorf education and how she did it in her household. But I'm sure it's different everywhere and comes in different forms. So if you could give us a little background on where the Waldorf idea even came from, that would be great.
Speaker 2:Oh sure, I fell in love with Waldorf education when my adult kids are in their mid-late 20s. Now were really little and discovered a festival community festival and it had the Waldorf roots and that's where my introduction was over. That would have been 28 years ago now and I followed the breadcrumbs.
Speaker 1:It's been around a little bit.
Speaker 2:Well, yes, it's had its hundred year anniversary. The Waldorf pedagogy itself, from Rudolf Steiner's roots in Austria and Germany, and the original team of teachers were artists that he handpicked, some artists and said here's my philosophy take it up, check it out, do something with it, transmute it, make it your own and then teach out of this spiritual work and these indications that I've had as my own personal download. And so essentially that was the root of the impulse of what we now know as Waldorf education, and it evolved and emerged into this classic look where you have these pretty painted classrooms that are all in this specific color order and teachers in aprons and the little children in the kindergarten and then you go up through the grades with the same teacher. Those are the ideal markers. But all of that was constructed along the way and standardized all the way along over 100 years.
Speaker 2:It didn't start out that way. His first school was in a factory and he offered it free education to the children of the factory workers to be able to see if he could test his theories and his philosophy and his pedagogy with these artisan teachers that had never taught before. They were just working out of their impulses, of their natural artisan capacities, whether they were wood carvers or knitters or tinsmiths or whatever they were, and they were to teach science, math, language out of themselves. So it's very unique. In that way, montessori is different and Reggio and Emilio is different as well, where they work with community skill building. Especially, the Reggio system is very focused on teams and the beauty of the social life coming together, and Montessori is very practical. Neither one of them really have the undercurrent of the importance of recognizing the soul, spiritual nature of human beings, and particularly with the transparent softness of the spiritual aspect of the child. So that's what sets Waldorf apart and that's what resonated with me as a new mom and a new teacher as I went through my teacher training in Oregon.
Speaker 1:Okay, so this was not always an idea for homeschoolers. This was an actual idea for an education system in itself, for different schools to operate this way.
Speaker 2:Well, that's how it presented in its first incarnation. Was in the Waldorf Astoria cigarette factory, the children of those employees and he wanted to test-.
Speaker 1:In the cigarette factory, did you say?
Speaker 2:That's why it's called Waldorf, because that's Waldorf Astoria. I didn't know about that, but he had children of all genders and ages working in the woodshop and then the boys would knit and the girls would work with these tools hand tools, making spoons, making bowls so it was very much a study for him to experiment. But ultimately when you read and the science behind it and the spiritual work behind it, it is perfectly suited to homeschooling. It's very malleable and people think it's so fixed and you have to have it look this way. That's been patented and trademarked. The look of Waldorf.
Speaker 2:I like the look of Waldorf, but the actual roots of it are far broader and more accessible than we were led to believe.
Speaker 2:I think it's just become a branded elite education. That's what it's become and that's what I learned in my 20 years in the classroom was it's not been accessible and unfortunately it's also been infiltrated by lots of different outside factors. Some of them are the governing school bodies, the public school systems that you have to match your curriculum to to get funding. Unless you have philanthropists that are willing to pitch in and benefactors to support the life of the school, you have to come up with money. Tuition doesn't always cover it. As an administrator, I learned all about that and all the extra little things that have been kind of taken away from. The ultimate goal of Waldorf education is to provide a holistic education, so it makes complete sense to just transform that, take out the pieces once you know what they are, and bring it back into the homeschooling community so that it's accessible to micropods or even families out in rural areas. You can totally use it in that way and that's what I've been working on for the last five years.
Speaker 1:Okay, and that actually is a great segue to the question that I had had. As you were talking. The public school system you said Waldorf, has been around about 100 years, which puts us about 1920s. Our public education system was derived from the Prussian model in the late 1800s from John Dewey and Horace Mann. They brought that over to the United States and started implementing that here, which is the standardized. You know, this is how we all learn in a classroom. Everybody learns the same thing, the same way at the same age. And then the testing started coming in.
Speaker 1:The Rockefellers started donating millions and millions of dollars to put their people on the board and then in turn put their information in the curriculum that was being learned across the board and across the country. So that all these so that the little kid from Bronx, new York, could learn the same thing as the kid. And you know rural Montana, and they all had the quote unquote, same opportunities. So it's interesting that shortly after that model was being pushed. And you know, when you look into why the Rockefellers well gee, why are they investing so much money in the school system? They've got this, you know, oil, tycoon, business. Why would they want kids graduating and then being competitors to their business. Well, of course they're not going to want that. They wanted people smart enough to do the job, but not too smart to question the job itself or to think of something better, a better way.
Speaker 1:So it's interesting that the Waldorf model then came in from Rudolf Steiner and didn't take off in the school systems. It makes total sense because it sounds like when you nurture the children's each individual spirit, what drives them, what inspires them, they might actually create these businesses that do really well, or new ways to do things. You know, run vehicles that might overtake what is currently making the investors all of their money. So that's really interesting. I never thought about the other people that tried to compete with the quote, unquote business model of school, but it makes sense that it didn't take off. So did it take off in private schools?
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, it did. And one of the hallmarks of Waldorf education, if you look at Silicon Valley, that the people in the high levels of business and entrepreneurship put their children in Waldorf education. If you look at Silicon Valley, that the people in the high levels of business and entrepreneurship put their children in Waldorf schools, specifically because of the nurturing qualities of the pedagogy and because the outcomes are so much higher for critical thinking that the children are taught right around sixth grade to really develop their capacities for questioning everything that they're given and that is not taught in the public schools. So Waldorf has a high level of retainment for people that know this about it and can afford it, because the teacher's salary is still not very high, even though we've worked so hard to bring this private school education. So there are lots of features about it that are holding their own against that system, or have been up until recently. I believe that the Waldorf education as a whole, under the governing body in North America anyway, has been infiltrated by certain checks and balances that they need to control it and implement the DEIJ curriculum, which is very much a woke agenda in disguise. It's my opinion from studying it and seeing the changes that have happened.
Speaker 2:Rudolf Steiner was a really strong advocate for no vaccines and that also had to be managed in Waldorf schools. Some took a stand against it and failed and closed. There was a huge exodus from the schools and they still have to compete in the marketplace against public education Montessori's, privately funded and other private charter schools and Christian schools and Catholic schools all of those private schools. So there's a big world out there of private educators and private education models and Waldorf stands in its own way within that and it also bridges between the public schools. I know in Canada they get funding because there's very few philanthropists in Canada by compare the ratio.
Speaker 2:They are in the US, where my youngest child's been going to the Whatcom Hills Waldorf School in Bellingham and there's a huge panel of privately funded benefactors in there to keep that school afloat and the grandparents and legacy plans and stuff. We don't have that in Canada in the same way. So I saw a lot of schools close in BC when we were watching the pandemic take its toll on private businesses and then to see what's happened though, out of this takedown and the infiltration part is that little micropods at grassroots level are starting to pop up like little mushrooms. People are taking Waldorf education. They're hiring Waldorf teachers that have left the system because they don't agree with that and making these new models that are so much more organic and what I believe is true to what Steiner's original intentions were to make it accessible to not just kids in factories and towns but in rural populations as well.
Speaker 1:So that's what I'm seeing as a reformation and I think it's overdue for Waldorf to have had that, that reclamation if I'm assuming I'm picturing like this is where, like the Obama's children and the Bush's children and the Clinton's children and the Biden children and the Trump children, they all went right Like they were probably all classmates together, you know getting this prestigious education. Meanwhile we're all over here Like can we get our free school lunch of you know GMO food? Um, so what would a day or a year, kind of a week even, look like in the original Waldorf setup and then walk us through what's sort of been infiltrated in the last, however long, to change the original model and then what, what you'd like to see it get back to.
Speaker 2:Oh sure, I could talk a long time about this. But I noticed, because I go to a lot of conferences even though I'm no longer teaching in a Waldorf school. I've built my own programs and I'm doing a lot more outreach these days for people that are interested in starting their own programs with Waldorf Pedagogy and others. So we have at Alighten Ministries, which is the private member association that I work with now, we have been seeing a real growth of private education. So that means you're not dealing with the public at all, you don't have to submit your records, you don't have to deal with the IRS. In the same way, you're under a ministry umbrella and that is in the private domain. So that's a whole nother level to what's happening with this reformation. So in the standard Waldorf day for a six-year-old child you would be either stepping into first grade or you would still be at the end of kindergarten, and they're very close. But they're also very different. And the kindergarten day is set up with an in-breath and an out-breath, so there's lots of free play and then there's circle time where everyone comes together and they acknowledge they're together in a circle. I love the circular models. That goes all the way through right up to grade 12.
Speaker 2:My children graduated as well from some of the Waldorf schools in Portland and in Vancouver. So I got to travel with them and that actually healed my inner yearning for having not had that kind of education myself and recalibrated my public school experience. So that was very healing for me to watch them. And after circle time then there'll be an organic activity and every day of the week is different. After circle time then there'll be an organic activity and every day of the week is different. Either you go out for a walk and it's an explorer and you just the teachers are observing the children, what they resonate towards and what they're interested in and picking up off the ground and mushrooms and whatever on their walk day, or there's a garden day, there's a baking day, and those are set up in the rhythm of the week. It would be the same thing every week. We'd bake on Monday, we have woodwork and handwork on Tuesday, we go for our walk on Wednesday, we would have puppet show on Thursday, something like this, and those are crafted on a standard template, but the Waldorf teacher in that role in the kindergarten would be free to choose and build their days and then there would be a snack time and a story and a cleanup song and all these little features that are hallmarks of Waldorf education. You sing all day. When I'm back in the kindergarten I find myself singing all day, even when I'm not with the children, just because it's living in your soul life. So that is kind of how it takes shape. And it's only half day, so there's pickup between 1230 and one and then, if they wanted the full day, parents need a full day. Then the child would take a rest and have quiet activities and coloring and painting day and all of those beautiful soul nurturing, artistic activities are found in the kindergarten and they're also found in the grades. In the grade classes, grade one, they would have a morning circle as well. So it's the familiarity that it carries over.
Speaker 2:And they would also be introduced to their number systems and they would have a story for every number and the number would be able to be retained in memory because it would evoke this sense of story making.
Speaker 2:Inner picturing is what we call it. And the same with the letters the golden goose. You would have the G on your chalkboard and it would be in the shape of a goose. And the same with the letters the golden goose. You would have the g on your chalkboard and it would be in the shape of a goose and the child would remember the story and then they would remember the letters, and the phonetics will come along with that as well. When you pair two o's, you get this sound and their neighbors with the ou. So everything is created for them in a way that they can access it over many, many years. And that's also how literacy and numeracy is taught. So that's for a six-year-old in the grade one in the kindergarten picture. For you, as you go through the grades, those systems change a little bit. The content of the curriculum is different, but the flow of the day is the same.
Speaker 1:Okay, so all right, I've got a couple of questions. You mentioned the private membership association, which I am quasi familiar with, Um, I feel like it is something that they hide in like a law book in the deepest, darkest library because they don't actually want lawyers to know it exists. They definitely don't want us to know it exists. Um, where do you find information on even like is? Is a PMA something that and there's also a PEA, from what I understand, which is under the umbrella of a PMA, a private education association? Is that something that you, every Waldorf institution, is able to obtain, or is it like you have to go and find these laws on your own?
Speaker 2:This is accessible to anyone. You can form a private member association with two people, with 200 people, with 2,000 people. Churches operate under private education associations and private member associations, and there's also private health associations. So practitioners can have their client base. Everyone in their client base is a member and they engage in the private domain with their clients. So you can't come in and get services unless you're in the private domain. Some of the health administrations do a hybrid model where they have a public version of their business and a private version, so they can take insurance and they can deal with the public and then they have their private clients. You can do that.
Speaker 2:It's not so easy to do that in the education realm because you're working with children and families, but education for those new members is paramount when everyone understands that the risk that you take joining together is shared among your group, just like the Quakers. It's all private and the law associations by the way, the bar is also a private member association. All the courts this is public courts. Public law is found in black's law dictionary. You can get all the terminology you need and amber right who I work with every day. We have a morning meeting. We check in about all the things that we're carrying on our business portfolio of education programs and courses that we're running and opportunities for people to become informed, so you can get in touch through me for her and get that information into your hands. And there's a lot of great case law and studies that support keeping your autonomy in the private domain. We know lots about that and we are happy to help set up more PEAs. Every day there's a lot of interest being generated about this.
Speaker 1:Yes, and it's from what I understand it's more, that you don't have to follow the laws of, like I'm in the States, so what our state would actually cover. I don't know about how the taxes work, but you all are part of the membership. So therefore, if someone's child was under my care while I was teaching them the Waldorf you know education and they got injured, they can't sue me and I can't sue them. Vice versa, we're all in a membership together and whether that looks like, hey, we all donate a dollar a month to the membership or whatnot, it's that sort of look. But if the government were to say you all have to wear masks, you know, or you all have to get this COVID vaccine or whatever monkeypox vaccine, you don't have to fall under those rules.
Speaker 2:That's right and this is something that has been kept from us purposely because it's part of our natural law. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights supports this that parents are allowed, and under their rights as parents, to educate their child in the way that they best see fit. So if you challenge, the authorities come knocking on your door and you say I want to shut down your little daycare program here. You're not allowed to have this, you don't have a license, then you hand them a special document which we create for you and you say cease and desist and you don't have any rights to come into this private member association and we are doing business in the private domain and it's outside of your jurisdiction, and that generally stops the train on all states and provinces. So this is universal. I don't have a lot of information about how it works overseas and in different other countries, but we're exploring that too and there's a lot of good backing power behind.
Speaker 2:Enlightened Ministries has PMA power and other agencies that are actively working on the legal end of it. So, to talk about liability, because the US is a very litigious country, you have to also have your own governance system set up in order to manage your conflict, your disputes and certain kinds of problems that might arise just like if your child got hurt in the private domain, then you are responsible for managing the outcomes of that, whether there's an insurance claim made or there's a transaction made to do a remediation on that. And if you are unable to and someone says I'm going to sue you anyway and the public, we're going to the public courts. You would take your private governing documents with you and submit them and say these are our bylaws and these are our standards of operating, and then they would have to examine those and come to their conclusion that way.
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Speaker 2:So there is certainly a lot more background work to do, and it just keeps pointing us back to self-governance. If we really want to be independent, then we have to be self-governing. We have to know how to manage ourselves and govern ourselves, and we've been teaching it to the children in our programs using a wonderful tool called Sociocracy, and there's some great training out there for sociocratic methods. It's all Circle Council based, which is an indigenous practice all over the world, and the kids in our programs are learning how to moderate meetings and solve their own problems. And that's something that Waldorf does have room for, though it's not in the curriculum directly until you get to sixth grade and study law and ancient Rome and Greece and where democracy came from and so on. So then they can activate it there and really use it. And my 12-year-old's all over it. He's always getting into the conflict realm whenever he sees one and wants to set it up so that everybody sits down and have a little tribunal. So it can reach really far into the future if you teach your kids.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's really cool. So how have you seen the Waldorf system change over the years? You said it was sort of infiltrated and not going the way it was originally intended.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's been a sad decline. I think that to be able to keep up and compete in the marketplace has been the driving force for Waldorf to bend and shift and model itself on one track and leave the teachers less and less free to design their own way forward. So when Steiner gave those indications to the artisans and said, take this in and make it your own, when I went to my teacher training that was still in place and now it's much more standardized, where this is the way you teach, this is how much you do, this is the way the outcomes are going to be, and we also have to write report cards rather than observations. So I think that all of those overlays, slowly chipping away at the foundation, has made it it. It's really unrecognizable even in the 20 years that I've been working in this field and I think with the new the, the impact of COVID and now also compliance, compliance, compliance to this LGBTQ inclusion and and how it's framed in Waldorf is very convincing. Like I bought a couple of the books to see what they're promoting.
Speaker 2:But queering the kindergarten just doesn't speak to me at all. When Steiner's indications were the archetype of the man and the woman, the masculine and the feminine, the mother and the father, are cornerstones of all the other archetypal work that the child will become an initiate of. The old woman, the wise one, old woman, the wise one, and the hermit and the, the priest, like these are archetypes not to be messed with and they speak to the soul, life and the folk soul of our cultural roots. It's queer in kindergarten having a man in a dress before the children is not something I don't think Steiner would have gone for that and and. So when I saw that and it's being promoted heavily I knew that there was some big trouble afoot and a lot of other teachers left because of those changes that were being made.
Speaker 1:Wow. So, and that's sad too, because with the teachers leaving, you don't have anyone there kind of fighting for like no, we don't want it this way. The parents don't have anyone there kind of fighting for like no, we don't want it this way, the parents don't want it this way. You know, let like kids, be kids and not have to worry about you know that confusion at that age, no less. Um, yeah, that's well, that's that. So that's going on in canada as well as in the States.
Speaker 2:It's kind of seems like a global push. Yeah, it's under the governing agency of AUSNA, which is the Waldorf governing body, that makes sure you have your certifications and that you're compliant to the codes of conduct and you hit all these milestone markers for your organization. If you were just a little school that wanted to have a Waldorf pedagogy and even if you had a teacher that had been trained in that pedagogy or an administrator that was carrying it, you would still have to go through the certification process to get your Waldorf stamp of approval. And otherwise and that was approached when I advertised my last little kindergarten program in Bellingham, I was approached by the governing officer that I couldn't say my program is a Waldorf program, it had to be Waldorf inspired and they made sure I corrected that. And then I went on the path to membership and saw what they were offering me and all the hoops that I'd have to jump through to get the stamp of approval to be a Waldorf teacher School. I was like I'm already a.
Speaker 2:Waldorf teacher all these years. Why can't I just carry on? Montessori doesn't have that kind of challenge that I've seen, so it's specifically to the Waldorf brand.
Speaker 1:How does the Waldorf differ from the Montessori way that it's run?
Speaker 2:There's a lot of differences in there. The Waldorf schools generally work with teams of the same age children because they're going through a soul development curve together, like the nine-year change, if you have a nine-year-old, you'll know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:Suddenly they wake up, stressed out a little bit more than before and my child's going through what's called the 12-year change, where he's much more assertive and aggressive and wants his independence, he wants to get close, he wants to be away. It's this polar polarity experience for parents. If you don't understand that your child's going to go through those cycling through those things, I've got four kids so I've watched it and observed it and I know, ok, the next wave is going to hit me here pretty soon. You know these are the telltale signs. The teeth are falling out at seven and sometimes earlier. Then the child makes a spiritual and a soul growth leap and they're ready for something new, new challenges, academic work, taking up the work of their hands, going out into the world as an apprenticeship. You know those are the kinds of things that match up with those evolutionary cycles of growth. When you have the change of teeth, that's the first marker. At seven they go and they learn academics and they have puberty. That's the next marker at 14, that they're ready for more mental, strenuous work and organizing themselves and managing themselves.
Speaker 2:With Montessori they have mixed age classes and it's all ages and I think that that has its own magic and beauty, where the older ones become mentors and the younger ones look up to them and they build their community that way, a little mini community of multiple ages. Montessori is also very focused on play, but without the imaginative, spiritual kind of play, like we don't hear the fairy tales, we we don't see the dress up in the dolls. One of my little students that was in my kinder play group she's four now went to Montessori kindergarten and she's where are the silks? Where are the dolls? I want to be a princess today, but that's not available to her. It's chopping carrots and doing manipulatives and learning your numbers.
Speaker 2:That's the direction set. It's very practical. And Montessori is really suited for homeschooling too, because you can include the child in everything that you're doing all day long You're making bread, you're taking out the garbage, you're washing the floor. It's very practical and it gives them a sense of belonging to a family and if that family is multiple age class, then that's the family. And in Waldorf it's a little bit, looks a little different, where you have the adult as the archetype of knowledge, the initiate giving this wisdom, and then you have the tribe of children around you that are all going through the same growth experience, inwardly and outwardly, so that's the biggest difference that I can see between the two.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, that's really really interesting because I can see benefits to both sides. So it's like how would you know which one would be best? And then you get the public school system and you're like, okay, well, I think either are better, well.
Speaker 2:I've had Waldorf moms that have gone through a training and Waldorf school has been great. I'm going to have my child go through Waldorf school, I'm going to be a teacher, I'll be all perfect and their child's like not into it at all. They go to Montessori and that's exactly what they need, and I had that experience with one of my children too. I was already guns blazing going to be this Waldorf teacher mom and he just couldn't handle it Sit, just couldn't handle it, sit still, and, you know, draw pictures all day and I don't want to do any of that. He wanted to be on a farm, so I took him out and I put him in a farm school and he's still out on job sites. Now he's 28. He's up in the oil fields in northwest territories banging on things with sledgehangers. This is perfect for him. He never wanted that, but my daughter loved it. It was. It met her right where she was. So it depends oh funny.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, it's nice to have the options right, Because right there, that just goes to show you that the public school system it's the same for every kid across the board, whether you're interested in what they're teaching or not, or how they're teaching it or not, like it's going to be the same. And they sell it to us as well. We're giving every kid the same opportunities so that they all have an opportunity to be successful. But what is successful really, you know?
Speaker 1:Um, I think they busy parents so much these days so that and you know, we have to go to work, we are, we're all pushed to go to college, and then we come out with all the debt, and then you know you have to work to pay off the debt, and so we need something to do with our kids all day while we're working to pay off that debt. And well, there's school, and we already pay for it with our taxes. So how convenient is that? How it is? So how does it work in Canada? Are you guys paying school taxes and then paying additionally to send your children to the private Waldorf schools or Montessori schools?
Speaker 2:Yep, that's how it is. I was in Vancouver for 12 years and in Squamish as well for five before that, and now I'm in Washington. I'm down on Orcas Island now building another little kindergarten for my grandson and his little community of little ones and their moms, and it's so fascinating to watch how these things just naturally occur when people get together and they want something. They don't want what's here. It's a very tiny little community. They want something else. It's like perfect. There used to be a Waldorf school here. It closed. It's time to bring in a new one.
Speaker 2:So these initiatives I'm finding are highly in demand, and it's because parents waking up to the fact that their tax dollars aren't actually giving them what they want. You have to make an inner leap and an adjustment to pay for education. That is a big jump and it actually ends up becoming a full lifestyle assessment that if you really want this, then you're going to have to change more than just your paycheck delivery to the tuition costs. You have to transform your thinking and unschool your own mind. And I think you've had Tasha Fishman on your calls before and I work very closely with her team in Calgary as well. We are very busy with her community, unschooling these families, coming out kind of like shell-shocked. What happened? Where was I? What is this programming that I've got? I need to discard this. How can I get rid of that? And my journey with being a Waldorf teacher and a Waldorf parent was just that I unschooled my education mind and then I came out the other side and was ready to make those sacrifices and make those changes. And I didn't mention this that I was a single mom through all of this, a single working mom, and I wanted desperately to have my children close enough so that I could earn a livelihood and also be with them and witness their education process and be in control of it. And I've always set myself up that way, even when we weren't in a Waldorf school.
Speaker 2:That Charlie was he's my 12-year-old. When he was small I just showed up at a local daycare. They said they wanted a forest school. I said, well, I'll be the forest school designer. And then I had them with me, I was getting paid and I designed them a curriculum for that, because they had a forest in the backyard. So they had a forest in the backyard. So you can do it as a single parent, you can do it with two incomes. It's not out of your reach If you change your approach and your thinking to get yourself in the door and take control of that part of your life. It's within your means always.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you're right about that. It takes a whole shift in thinking and it's it's not overnight. You had I, when I realized, kind of like, oh gee, how I viewed the world is completely false and that's not how it really runs. That's just like the show, like the wizard of Oz, you know, but there's a whole curtain covering the reality. So it was like, okay, can I really quit my government job that I? I finally started making the money I always said I wanted to make. And, um, they started letting us work from home 50% of the time. And, oh my God, the kids would be gone in daycare and school and I could just be home for 50% of the time working. Like, oh, it's amazing. All those years I spent in the cubicle, day after day.
Speaker 1:And then the pension and the health insurance. Like now that we are on my husband's insurance, I'm like my daughter she had like a huge swollen thing on her arm the other day. It must've been a spider bite that just swelled up and I'm like I don't even know, like, can I take her to the doctor? I don't know how regular insurance works. I'm used to having state insurance. So everything is just a $20 copay, Like, no matter what you do, it's 20 bucks. 20 bucks. I'm like I don't know. This could be like $1,000, just for them to tell me, ice it. So it's like a total different way of thinking.
Speaker 1:And then the whole homeschooling, like you said, de-schooling. So at first we started out making it look like school and he cried and I cried and we all yelled and you know so, um, but now we've gotten. We took many breaks and tried different things in curriculums and I'm doing a nature study right now that we absolutely love, a math with manipulatives. That's pretty cool and it's like, hey, if you don't, if you don't want to do it, you're six years old. Okay, Try it a little bit, See if you're having fun. If you don't get it today, come back another day. And you know we don't have to do lesson one for a week and then lesson two the next week. It's like, just do it till you master it, till it's easy, and then we'll move on. Like there's no rush and it really is such a transition and thinking. But could you walk me through how one would actually start one of these? You said you're starting a kindergarten right now. What does that even look like?
Speaker 2:Oh, it is so fun and I never thought that I would be doing this kind of work.
Speaker 2:I thought I was just going to be a Waldorf mom teacher and my kids would age out Eventually. I would just retire and go back to my studio where I have a clothing business and textile design and apprenticeships that I run. That's my other passion project. But this has taken its own life. So I it just grows and grows. So what? I observed that when there was a need for my littlest one, who was three at the time, and I had him ready to go enrolled at the Whatcom Hills Waldorf School in Bellingham and they lost my file and suddenly he didn't have anywhere to go and he desperately needed to go somewhere because he's so social and he's not gonna spend the whole day with me, driving me crazy, wanting me to play. I don't want to play, I gotta work on all these other things. So I just put a call out to the community. Anybody want to have a little play group? And that's the same thing that happened here over and over again. It's a repeatable system. Does anybody want to play group? You can do with any age kids. I just put a poster up on our local orcas homeschool page. Anybody want to study? Buddy, who's 12, 9 to 13 year olds.
Speaker 2:I'm taking in students and I've had great response just overnight. People are are hungry for this, just an alternative. They don't know what it looks like, they don't know how to do it, but they will follow someone that does. And so, after all those years of kind of making it up as I went along and using my backpack full of administrative skills and tools and templates from running other programs, I discovered that I had a toolbox that was something scalable and saleable, and we are right now in the midst of our auditor's courses, wrapping up and we'll be opening the doors for Launch your Learning Center in 12 Steps. It's a 12 to 16 week course that you can take with us. Lots of one-on-one attention. Everything's in there, from who am I the visionary to who's my leadership team.
Speaker 2:Step two and then what governance system do I want to use? How do I want to interact with everyone and what's the baseline of rules and who's making them? Who decides? Who decides all the way through? Here's your handbook. Which are your governing documents? Are you a co-op? Are you in the public or private domain? We have all of that.
Speaker 2:Then we have your step five, which is your financial plan. Got a beautiful spreadsheet that's working and punch in all your discounts. Everything just populates. Step six your business plan. You want sponsorship and investors. We've got all the paperwork done. Then seven how do you find your location if you don't have one? Well, this is how you do it. This is how you bring it in from outer space, from your fantasy world, into reality, all the way through curriculum design, how to do the hiring process, how to do your outreach and your community building and get the culture of the year.
Speaker 2:So you had asked me earlier about what a year looks like, and it's all based on the seasonal flow. So you have your high points and your low points, where there's work to be done, and then a big celebration, and then there's work to be done and then another celebration, and that carries also in the flow of your building projects. Because if people know that you're going to have a maypole or you're going to have a winter market or a solstice advent or anything like that, they will come to you because it's soul food for them. And that's why I love promoting those kinds of community building activities, because it does its own marketing. It just kind of filters through the system that the right people that are looking for, you will find you Don't be too visible, but don't be invisible.
Speaker 2:And then we continue on with what supplies, where do you get them? And then finally your doors open and you get to launch your center. And then you do an assessment and you start using the same toolbox again, year after year after year, building on it so it's sustainable. So we've been teaching that and and guiding those new initiatives and it's amazing that it works so well because it's you're doing the self-development work and you're able to hold all of that in your own being and people will follow a good leader that's honest and operates out of that kind of integrity. So that's what I've learned and I love the results that I'm seeing and I hope more people are going to jump in and starting November, we've got a wait list started.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow. That's awesome. And is it all people that want to do the Waldorf style, or could they be doing a farm school and still use this model?
Speaker 2:Yep and all through the course content there are options for you to explore and study on your own. So you can do hybrids. If you wanted to put a Montessori farm school together, that's a great match. If you wanted to have a forest school with Waldorf, that's a great match. If you wanted to go fully into Summerhill and do a Sudbury model, you can do that. It depends on what kind of age children you're working with. You will design to your own portfolio and your demographic as well.
Speaker 1:What is the sort of money that one would need to invest in this? I would love to have something like this, but then I also look at our week and I'm like we don't really even have any time.
Speaker 1:So I don't know when, but you make it work if you want, if that's what you want, right? The kids that we get together for playdates with this would obviously just be you know. Hey, we can do this instead. Yeah, what sort of money does one look like it need to invest if they wanted to do this at the, whether it's at their house or at a location?
Speaker 2:There's a lot of factors that will drive the answer to that, and we're finding that we had one mom that she's like I've got six acres in an empty garage. If y'all can come over and help me finish building this out, we've got our classroom and then we'll just have free range kids and we'll have someone guiding them. So I'm training one of their moms that has Waldorf experience. She's like is that all I have to do is just sing a few songs and walk them over to the goats and go?
Speaker 1:over here.
Speaker 2:That's all you have to do. It's easier than you think. But finding the location if you get into having to rent something or you want to buy something, then you have to build your capital and you'll have to do an outreach campaign for that. Whether it's a fundraiser or everybody puts in their share. We did that in Ontario.
Speaker 2:I did a group there and they all had to put up. $500 was all we needed. We had 13 families and that was enough for us to get all of our infrastructure. We were donated a room above a shop in a barn that had a wood stove in it and we just took off with that. And the year before that we were kicked out of the school because of the mask mandates and we just ended up having a farm school in the cold and stayed in the barn with the cows when the kids needed to be warmed up. And then we just who starts an outdoor school program in the middle of February. But I did and it was great, and the parents that sustained that were the ones that sustained the next level of it too.
Speaker 1:And so I'm thinking of in New York we have pretty strict reporting requirements, but if you're under a PMA or a PEA, does that alleviate that requirement?
Speaker 2:Yep, you may have to fight for your rights. You may have to be assertive with them when they come to collect their information. It's actually easier if you've never had your kids in any kind of schooling and then you just opt out. Because I know I didn't have to register my youngest as long as he was under eight. They weren't bothering me. And now they don't know where we are because we moved between Canada and the.
Speaker 2:US so much so they cross the border with them like well, aren't you in school? No, I'm homeschooled and they don't ask us any questions. So there's ways of staying under the radar, even as a large group. You can get around that. There's always a workaround, but sometimes you're going to need to have legal representation for it, or you're going to have to have your case law and your documents in hand to pass over or mail out so that they'll stop harassing you because they do. But it's certainly it's not a deal breaker.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, cause I'm thinking I think one of the requirements too would be I can homeschool someone else's child, and I'm sure that limits how many kids say there's two other kids that aren't mine, but only up to 49% of their homeschooling. Their parent has to do 51% of it, and so, yeah, I was kind of thinking you know how could I do that? But if you're under a private membership association, that would go out the window as long as you had everything in order and all your ducks in a row. Do your kids know what to do in an emergency? Do they know how to call 911 from a locked cell phone? Well, if you've been listening to my podcast for any length of time, you know that I have been working for the last year on a book that talks about exactly this.
Speaker 1:I was going through homeschooling curriculum with my son and realized that, although they would brush over certain things that my son would need to know in an emergency, nothing really delved into it, and definitely not on a repetitive basis. I started reaching out to teachers and asking them what schools do to prepare kids for emergencies and, other than skimming the surface, they said that they really feel that this information is the parents' responsibility to teach, but do parents know that? It's not like there's a handbook where we talk about who is responsible for what? So I set out on a journey to write a book about exactly this, and it is finally published. My illustrator, cheryl Krauthamel, is a retired NYPD officer, so she was the perfect fit for this book. We have hidden a 9-0-1 and a 1 in each illustration so that you and your kids can have fun searching for these numbers. While solidifying for your kids what these numbers look like, I've put the steps for how to reach 9-1-1 on various cell phones, even if they're locked, and what that call will go like and what information they will be looking for.
Speaker 1:My book will help your child practice their first and last name, mom and dad's first and last names, their address, what to do if there is a fire, it goes over stranger danger, internet water and gun safety, and I have paired an activity book to go right along with it. To solidify these concepts, give yourself peace of mind and give your kids the confidence to handle the unexpected. By grabbing your copy of let's Talk Emergencies today, you can head on over to the link in my show's description or thehomeschoolhowtocom, and, if you do, purchase the copy. Please, please, please, leave me a review on Amazon. The more reviews I have, the more the algorithm will push this book out there, so I would really appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening and for all of your support of the show.
Speaker 2:I've attended several seminars and webinars for places that are trying to start micro schools, and this is highly overlooked. The importance of covering your bases and that's something that we have in our course, because we've been through it, we know what can happen and we know that you need to have these agreements in place, these working agreements with your families and also with your faculty. You have to onboard the right people that are going to hold the same vision. It does take a little longer to do it that way, but the results really speak for themselves when you have that security.
Speaker 1:And so the parents are paying tuition for this right, because that's kind of funding a little bit of it. Like, say, if I wanted to create a school here and I had 13 families, so there were, you know, 13 kids under my care all day. Would do some of the parents take on the role as educator? Or when I hire that out and the parents pay the tuition, um, that's sort of how that works, oh yeah, that's a case by case study of how you want to construct those parts.
Speaker 2:We can certainly help you get your head around it, because it's a lot of questions. You can hire out for a carrying teacher that covers all the curriculum. You can do that if you have the resources for it. But the little group here that I'm working with in this pod right now they're doing what I call the three P's of home learning, place, play and project. If you have those three, you don't even need to hire anyone, because everyone comes with their own natural skills. What do you know? What's your passion? Well, I love to ski cross country and I like to study the gold rush. Well then, teach that. You don't have to cover all these other things. You could have a tutor come in that has the skills for literacy and you can have your literacy markers. That's what I do with mine.
Speaker 2:My child is when we're short for time, just make sure you get your two math pages done. And he's working on business math and he can see I want to open a business. So you have to learn decimals, fractions and percents to get there, and then you have to be able to put a pie graph together and now you're good to go. Oh, mom, now I understand it and it's so much easier and I can get there and then I'll be able to do my project. So they're very motivated and you can get them motivated because they love what they're learning and they're learning how to love what they're learning. And if they had to be reprogrammed from leaving the public school, give them time and space for that. Tasha talks a lot about that, so I don't have to get into it. But the three Ps will save you every time in transition out of an old system and into a new one, especially if your parents come with skills.
Speaker 2:So you just take an inventory of what everybody loves to do. I like to cook, I like to bake Well, then you can do all your math right there and everybody can take a day. That's what this group is doing here on Orcas. The moms are going to rotate through, so there's always two people on deck so that you can have a ratio up to 12 kids, and then there's one.
Speaker 2:One of them is taking a training with me so that she can do the classic Waldorf work, so that she's the main body of knowledge, and then everyone else is just in there in the flow, and then, if you want to take a specialty, I, and then everyone else is just in there in the flow. And then, if you want to take a specialty, I want to bring a little woodworking project in, great, this is your whole hour to do that with the children and I become the assistant to you. So that kind of sharing of roles and responsibilities naturally evolves in an organic way when you have a parent body. But six is a critical mass, that's the magic number. If you can get six children together, eight's even better, because then you have a little buffer. But six makes the financials work.
Speaker 1:Okay, oh, good to know. Good to know. So is there a website or page that people can find you if they want to sign up for this course or, you know, get more information?
Speaker 2:Yep, and the same Instagram page that you and I have been chatting through yours and mine is the Threshold Learning Center TLC on Instagram. It has links in our link tree to get our free ebook. It also has information about our Launcher Learning Center course, which is going to open November 12th, and we have a lot more free offerings in there too about the place play and play-based learning. So you can find out more about that there and you can get a hold of me and amber for the private membership association information is also all tied in that to that link and we have our website.
Speaker 1:It's alightonorg okay, I will put your handle for instagram and your website in the show's description so people can just easily go there, and then it's one click Awesome. What else? Was there anything else that you wanted to make sure that you discussed today on? You know when you were thinking about this call.
Speaker 2:Yes, I have gone over pretty much everything. Mostly I'm on fire about the play place and project-based learning. I could talk a lot more about that, but I wanted to show you some books just for reference, if I can screen share. I pulled up some Waldorf specific book links that may be useful to y'all and I found them really valuable because they translate the information that's found in the classroom into home setting and it's really effortless once you get the hang of it and if you have a resource person.
Speaker 2:My colleague Lee and I, we both share the role of consulting for people that are building these programs at a home level and she does the eight shields model, which is very nature-based and very organic, and she has a program, or had a program, in Long Beach, washington, which is going to be revitalized for teenagers and summer camps and rites of passage and all that beautiful stuff. We're working on that right now as a project, but she can also work with with um any of this content, especially not the specifics for Waldorf. That seems to just be my domain at the moment. So here's some other really beautiful books.
Speaker 1:Okay, maybe I can link these into the show's description too, because we have writing to reading the Steiner Waldorf way the education of the child. Children at play. Waldorf education a family guide.
Speaker 2:That's a great resource because it has a great bibliography that you can explore and there's maths and sciences and how to teach chemistry and geometry and anybody can learn this. It's it's it's kind of coded in mystique, but it doesn't need to be. Waldorf is very accessible and it's a beautiful practice, especially for home learners. There's the Roadmap to Literacy, which is another great, great book. I've used all of these books.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we have the Roadmap to Literacy, the Waldorf Handbook, the Waldorf Homeschool Handbook and the Genius of Home. Oh, awesome, all right, I will try to link all of those. If it lets me put in all the characters.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll just send you this document too. I just wanted to share my last little note here about what I discovered. When I panicked and left the Waldorf school as a profession and launched out, I was like I'm leaving, I can't do this anymore. And then where do I start teaching my child? And I looked to my own backyard first, and the sense of place and it all came alive in me that all I need to do is work from the center of my home, in my heart space, into my backyard, into my neighborhood, and build on these concentric rings. And now we have geology, geography, local sciences, interaction with our indigenous people that are here.
Speaker 2:Charlie got to participate in their paddle big canoe and now he's engaged with all these other people in the community, and finding mentors for him was a priority this year and it all came out of just working with where I am in place and finding those people and those families that come, and then from there it's just watch them play, and if you watch them play you'll learn the most. Don't interfere, just let them be. And from the play comes these projects. I want to know how to. And then, just like your wonderful podcast how to podcast, how to homeschool. I want to know how and that's where we stand as lighthouses for all of you that are looking out for help here in service to provide that.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, and it's funny that you say that too about the let them play, because you know, every time I bring my son out to play dates, he tends to not play with the kids that are his age. And I get that Like you don't have to, you can. He always either goes off by himself or plays with the younger kids and I'm like, is this a self-esteem issue? Like he needs to be the alpha and he's afraid to do that with the kids his own age Cause he'll be, you know, uh, defeated as the alpha. So if he goes towards the younger kids and you know I'll talk to him after like you know, I drove you like an hour to this play date.
Speaker 1:Why did you play with the strangers four-year-old over there instead of the friends that you've seen? You've known these people for two years and he still doesn't want to play with the kids his own age. And it's weird because we are used to that school model where you play with the kids that own age. It's weird because we are used to that school model where you play with the kids that are your own age. But then it's also like, oh geez, I hope.
Speaker 2:I hope you're not like I don't know, have some sort of confidence issue, either you know, when I've seen that many times and taking a backseat from directing to just observing is one of the most powerful remedies to for teachers coming out of the system to be able to step out of leading all the time and directing all the time and just let the children lead you. And as I practice that more and more when my children were young because part of the teacher training covered it was some evidence that the emergent leaders are the ones that you're watching, they are guiding, and if they find some other ones who follow them, that's what I would say about your son, just hearing this little snapshot of your story. He's got leadership in him and he wants someone to follow, he wants to demonstrate his skills, he wants to show off, he wants to be in charge and let him lead and he'll practice it. And my son did the same thing. He would come, be in charge and let him lead and he'll practice it. And my son did the same thing. He would come up at loggerheads with the kids his own age because they wouldn't do what he wanted and wouldn't follow. And then suddenly he's got this little Piper group of children following him and the older ones are looking at this. How did you do that, and they get curious. And then the bridge is built, and that's what the multi-age class is wonderful at, because Waldorf can be done in a one-room schoolhouse.
Speaker 2:We did that for years too. We didn't know that we could, and you have to experiment, try it out, trial and error. Let the children tell you in a feedback loop Well, how did you like that? What was fun about that? Would you want to do that again? No, no, that was boring and I'd rather do this. And they're teaching us as much as we're sharing our knowledge with them. So that was a real power pivot for me, coming out of my teaching career to being led by the children themselves, especially the children of today.
Speaker 1:Yes and yes. And as the parent you're like, should I be concerned? Is this something that you know? Is he, like, lacking in some sort of confidence? It's very hard to know, you know. So obviously you have to ask people. Talk to people, research, read books. So I always like to put it out there.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, I've got nice resources about that too for teachers. I can send you some more links for books.
Speaker 1:So, suzanne, thank you so much for joining us today. What a wealth of knowledge.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. It's such a great, great relief to know that there's a lot of people out there looking for what we have to offer and share.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning into this week's episode of the homeschool how to. If you've enjoyed what you heard and you'd like to contribute to the show, please consider leaving a small tip using the link in my show's description. Or, if you'd rather, please use the link in the description to share this podcast with a friend or on your favorite homeschool group Facebook page. Any effort to help us keep the podcast going is greatly appreciated. Thank you.