Am i living in a TARDIS?

Stephanie!!! (I hear that now about two thousand times a day)

Cos the last time i looked i had short hair, weighed five pounds heavier, and it was the middle of September. Suddenly it is... OCTOBER. And like well into the start of October.

So how has teaching been so far. So far i can tell you it has been the MOST TIRING thing i have ever done. It is like motherhood, but motherhood for even MORE children. It was really funny, we were reading Stan thingymabob and the Dragon who wanted children and he met and old man who said go home, you now have children. And he went home and he had two and twenty and the children went TWENTY TWO!!!! He just wanted one or two, not twenty two... i sort of feel like Stan.

But i love the children all the same. No two days are alike. Something always happens, given the unpredictability of being with small persons. All you can do is love them and hope that it turns out alright, oh yes, and then there is a teaching in between.

The teaching is something else. You walk in with a lesson plan and most of the time you sort of manage to carry it out. Everything has to be nailed down to the second. Twenty minutes for this, ten minutes for that, five minutes for that - it's like planning the Pope's schedule. And then there are the times, which happen quite often when you discover, oh my i had NO idea that they would do it that quickly. Who told me painting would take an hour? It takes TEN MINUTES!!!

I have found understanding temperaments really useful. We are all getting to know each other and keeping that consciousness that we all have something to give each other the consciousness of the adult. I ADORE the way the class has come together. Everyone gets along (ok it is a small class), and everyone plays with each other. Sometimes the children will come to me and say, something and it might appear completely out of left field but because we do temprements, i go, ah-ha, that is interesting. I believe what this child needs is....

I have to say that of all the things we do everyday i love telling the story and doing the chalk drawings. I often do the drawings from the day before so that the children have a chance to make up their own picture of the story i have told them. Currently i am going through the quality of the numbers through the Queen's Quest, a story which i have had to write myself. Each number has its own quality - and i really enjoy this as numbers have a long and mysterious geneaology, and it introduce this beauty and magic at this age sets up an entirely different relationship to numbers.

Living in a system where there are no exam results to gauge your 'performance' is also interesting. It simply means that you need to make sure that everyone is trying their best all the time - or giving of their best. It is called the Education or Strengthening of the Will. The Will is the soul force that guides us into the future and it is vital that we help strengthen each other's Will or else the future is pretty bleak. I think in a way, exams do this. It is a very utilitarian way of doing this, and it also depletes or exahusts the Will eventually. It's a bit like using too much nitrate on a field. Eventually the natural fertility of the soil is screwed. And also the way it is currently carried out previleges people who are academically inclined.

To continue the soil analogy, we do it the biodynamic/organic way. The intention is to leave the soil MORE nourished and fertile - and hopefully being able to make itself enriched and nourished. We do many different activities through the week ranging from plastercine, to drawing to movement, etc everyone has a chance to be good at something, and help others be good at it.

I have lost weight since teaching. Seriously. It seems to have just come off me, all the weight i put on since May. I spend most of the day on my feet and then after class there is prep and after prep there are my own family and after that there is more prep and then there is SLEEEEP. I'm lucky if i have lunch. I usually wake at around 5 am and then get ready for school. And then i sleep at 9. As sleep is conversation with the Gods, i fancy myself having a good old chin wag there.

It is settling down into a routine now, and i still do get nervous, but at least i don't feel as if i'm about to pass out. I have also started becoming a bit more strict as the kids have been eased into Class One. You know, getting more down to the business of demarcating the line between classroom and life outside. People always think that life in a Steiner school is lax. It is anything but lax. There is a strict timetable and there is a lot of cover in the curriculum. However, we do lots of intuitive ways of learning which look like fun, but really are about learning. So people think, they play there all day. Nope, we are all working - see us drawing lines of the basketball court, that's form drawing which later helps writing. See us skipping and jumping backwards and forwards, that's Maths. Games - body geography. See us down in the woods playing? We are collecting leaves for our nature table. Hear us singing three times a day? That is us developing our breathing and our natural ear for music. Poetry - we are learning how to memorise and cultivate a feeling for language. Eurhythmy, apart from the more sublime aspects of it, we are doing cross motor skills. It is a fusion of the most wonderful ways of learning. We bake, felt, knit, garden - always applying ourselves to practical ways to being. It is truly a wonderful way of teaching and i LOVE it.

And the care and attention that the children get from every single member of staff is really very touching. I used to drop the kids off in school and hope that they were being looked after - now inside, i am just astounded at the care that they have received all these years. Of course it is not perfect, nothing is. But you know what, it is something which i feel has been right for us.

And i WILL do my best to pass on the good karma.

We have the Will to work
And into this our work may flow
That from which out of the spiritual world
Strives to become whole in us
In soul and spirit, in body and life.