Am deeply touched by this short you tube movie of Renate Hiller, co-director of the Fiber Craft Studio at the Threefold Educational Center in Chestnut Ridge, New York
.
R e p o r t
Handwork Research Conference
April 20 – 22, 2012
Preparing for the Future
How do practical, artistic activities support the development of soul-spiritual capacities?
This
theme and research question was at the heart of the second handwork
conference organized by the Fiber Craft Studio of the Threefold
Educational Center in collaboration with Dr. Gerald Karnow and the
Conference Planning Committee*. It brought together 60 individuals from
Waldorf Schools and other settings eager to form a learning community
and support each other in their common striving.
It was in ancient times,
There lived in the initiates’ souls
Powerfully the thought
That ill by nature
Is every human being.
And educating was considered to be
Like a healing process
Which brought the maturing child health
For life’s fullness of human existence.
From Course for Young Doctors by Rudolf Steiner
It
is of the utmost importance to know that the ordinary thought-forces of
man are the refined forces of bodily growth and formation. In the
forming and growing of the human body, a spiritual manifests itself. For
it appears as such in the further course of life – the spiritual force
of thought.
Excerpt from Fundamentals of Therapy, Chapter 1,
by Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman
These
leading thoughts - that were also part of the pre-conference study
materials -formed the inner core of Dr. Karnow’s lectures at the
Threefold Auditorium. Drawing on his wealth of experience as physician,
school doctor and educator, and by involving the conference
participants, he brought alive the developmental stages of the human
being from embryonic development through physical birth and the three
seven-year periods up to age twenty-one. This journey of the human being
towards maturity, towards the birth of the ego, is one of communication
and movement with the forces of the cosmos and, through the senses,
with the earthly environment. It is a process of gradual liberation of
soul and spiritual forces from the physical.
This
liberation happens in three successive stages from the head to the
heart to the limbs in each of the seven-year periods. During the first
seven-year period the child’s communication with the world happens
through imitation. During the second period (age 7 – 14) the child works
on gaining self-mastery in the feeling life by looking up to an
authority. During the third period (age 14 – 21) the capacity of
judgment evolves; then the capacity for self-direction begins to be
acquired.
The handwork teacher – who is aware of these general developmental
movements and has a sense of each child’s individual being – will find
the right gesture of communication and the right handwork projects to
bring healing and support on the path of maturation. Dr. Karnow stressed
that the rich sensory experiences and most varied movement gestures
inherent in handwork projects have the potential to support the
developmental movements in just the right way. As the child engages in
meaningful work, creating items that are useful and beautiful, skill
capacities, cognitive capacities, moral capacities are being supported
and fostered. A project that embodies beauty and truth brings joy and
satisfaction.
The three-section workshops on handwork in the kindergarten and the
lower and middle-school years led by experienced Waldorf teachers served
as laboratories for practical research and conversation with regard to
the conference theme. The resulting projects were displayed in the
Threefold Auditorium Side Room where the plenum session led to a rich
harvest of presentations from the workshops and a sharing of questions,
thoughts and insights.
In
educating children through artistic handwork activities we are
preparing for the future – a future that they will shape with their
heads, their hands and their hearts in their present incarnation and in incarnations to come.
*Conference Planning Group:
Nicole Nicola, Philadelphia Waldorf School
Tjitske Lehman, Kimberton Waldorf School
Chris Marlow, Green Meadow Waldorf School
Renate Hiller and Mikae Toma, Fiber Craft Studio
From : http://www.fibercraftstudio.org/handwork_conference
From : http://www.fibercraftstudio.org/handwork_conference
