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Many young people today are urgently seeking to make sense of a turbulent world and find meaningful directions for their future.

High School teachers can make a critical difference in individual lives and in society as a whole as they help students to discover their gifts and realize their often enormous potentials.

The Waldorf high school curriculum–arts-integrated, rigorous, broad, and practical–brings adolescents world-wide perspectives and the opportunity to develop capacities they will need to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

The Waldorf High School Approach

• gives students appreciation for past cultural and individual contributions, encourages them to grapple with issues of the day
• helps them to develop clear, flexible thinking, compassion for others, a will to work
• provides an integration of practical experience, academics and the arts
• stimulates wonder and imagination
• helps students to develop and balance physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual capacities
• strengthens a sense of community, responsibility for the earth and society

Curriculum

This certificate program consists of one four-week summer session for three summers along with continuing independent study, observation and practice teaching during the academic year. Prerequisites include a strong background in one's specific subject area and an enthusiasm for working with the challenges of adolescence. This program includes Foundation Studies as well as subject specialization courses. For those who have already completed the Foundation Year, the High School program consists of one three-week session for three summers. Students may enter the program during any summer.

Each summer session includes subject specialty areas such as physics, chemistry, life science, mathematics, history, literature, Spanish language, and arts taught by master teachers.

Arts include courses such as singing, speech, drama, painting, drawing, eurythmy, sculpture, form drawing, bookbinding, woodcarving, experiential education, crafts, mathematical models, and spatial dynamics.

Faculty Profile

Betty Staley, MA

Program Director, Waldorf High School Teacher Education

Betty Staley directs Waldorf High School Teacher Education as well as programs for public school teachers. A Waldorf educator for over thirty years at the kindergarten, elementary, high school and teacher training levels, she is a founder of the Sacramento Waldorf High School where she taught history and literature for nineteen years.

She is the author of Between Form and Freedom: A Practical Guide to the Teenage Years; Hear the Voice of the Griot!: A Guide to the History, Geography and Culture of Africa; Tapestries: Weaving Life's Journey and Adolescence: The Sacred Passage Inspired by the Legend of Parzival.

• Faculty