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SUMMER SESSION: JULY 7-18, 2008
Brochure and Registration Form
In this course, educators in alternative schools will learn how infusing a standards-based curriculum with the arts and Waldorf methodology can lead to a successful, transformative educational experience for both teachers and students. Focus of the course is disseminating an innovative model program for at-risk youth developed over the past several years at the Yuba County Court and Community Schools in partnership with Rudolf Steiner College. The project was recently supported by the California Arts Council (as an Arts Demonstration Project) and is now supported by the Walter S. Johnson Foundation.
PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS
• Students
improve academic skills, as well as their attitude toward school, themselves,
and their communities.
• The arts—drawing, music, painting, storytelling, movement,
poetry, and drama—are integrated fully into academic lessons.
• The integrated arts
program, in sync with current neurological research, increases students’
learning abilities, and helps break the cycle of failure and hopelessness
in which these students are often trapped.
• The Waldorf-based program has been tested for seven years at the
T.E. Mathews Community School in Yuba County with high-risk juvenile offenders,
12 – 18 years old.
WHAT
TEACHERS WILL LEARN
• Teachers will develop personal capacities
in the arts, literature, music, and movement.
• Teachers will learn to deliver creative, arts-infused thematic
lessons within a curriculum that meets state standards, as well as students’
developmental needs.
• Teachers will learn how to engage students with multiple learning
styles and challenges.
"I had the opportunity to spend a day at T. E. Mathews School in Marysville. The program is impressive. The students, on probation from the Juvenile Court, were engaged, actively learning, and having fun...I wouldn't have believed it---thirty plus juvenile delinquents playing recorders and loving it. What an impressive sight!
Supervisor of Academic Instruction
CA State Prison, Sacramento
Pages of Original Work from Students Main Lesson Book: Africa
Waldorf methodology…incorporates the best practices that resilience education and prevention evaluation research have found to promote positive developmental outcomes in young people, including health-risk behavior prevention/intervention and academic success.
The project fills an incredible void, a vast gap in the supports, services and opportunities available to young people, especially those with multiple risks and challenges in their lives. The project offers both the content and process for creating a cadre of turnaround teachers and turnaround schools that truly can weave a safety net, a fabric of resilience for our most in need young people.”
Bonnie Benard, Senior
Program Associate
and Resiliency Specialist,
WestEd
Read article fromJournal of Court, Community, & Alternative Schools,
Breaking Down the Barriers to Learning: The Power of the Arts.
On the last day of school, two fifteen year
old boys – one Hispanic, the other Hmong – played a Mozart
duet on their recorders. Both had been expelled from public schools
for violent acts, constant failure in class, and refusal to follow
directions. But their music lessons were rigorous. They had never
worked so hard on anything. When they finished playing their duet
before an audience of 45, classmates cheered and they even clapped
for themselves. It was a miracle.
Principal Ruth Mikkelsen
Yuba County
Court and Community Schools
2002-2003 Administrator of the Year, Colusa/Sutter/Yuba Counties
For information:
please contact Arline Monks
(916) 961-3932 at Rudolf Steiner College