The St Michael Steiner School

South London, Gloucester, and New York all saw the opening of the first Waldorf (or Steiner) schools in the English-speaking world in 1925, 1927, and 1928, respectively.
The Waldorf School is not, like so many others, a "alternative school," established on the idea that it will eliminate all inadequacies in education.
The new generation striving to adjust to life is affected by the entirety of social life through a teacher who knows the soul and people.
People will leave this school ready for the real world.
Rudolf Steiner wrote and spoke about the human being in body, soul, and spirit in more than a hundred publications and talks during his life, and this understanding is the foundation of Waldorf Education.
See Rudolf Steiner's essay The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy for a deeper understanding of this original perspective on child development.
Since many teachers have drawn on the extensive body of material produced by Waldorf educators over the past century as well as on Rudolf Steiner's recommendations, most Waldorf schools throughout the world now have a canon of topics and traditions that are clearly appropriate for each age.
However, there are several methods that have gained widespread acceptance in most schools because they have been so effective in giving kids the greatest education possible.
The Class Teacher and the Main Lesson are the two facets of Waldorf Education that are most frequently found in this group.
"The custom of the teacher keeping his same students should be followed [...] as faithfully as possible; one should take them over for the first form, keep them the following year in the second form, go up with them again in the third year, etc. One must occasionally be able to reflect positively on what was instilled into the children's souls years earlier. [...] passing the students over to a new teacher every year who is unable to build on the lessons they have learned in previous years causes a great deal of damage to the development of the disposition or emotional life.
The teacher should progress through the various school levels with his own students as part of the teaching methodology.
We can only get into the rhythm of life in this way. [...] and] We would be wise to believe that revisiting particular instructional themes even once a year is not overly frequent.
Therefore, choose topics for the kids, jot them down, and revisit something related every year. [...]
The Main Lesson is one of the customs that, as a result of its popularity, has gained widespread acceptance in Waldorf schools.
"Our whole attitude from first to last will be one of dealing with the same subject of study for some length of time.
[...] but we deal for longer periods at a time with things of the same nature. [...] so that we keep the children busy for some time at one subject, and then, only when they have been engaged on it for weeks, turn to something else.
The Main Lesson is carefully and rhythmically structured so that the children have to listen, work independently, participate, collaborate and think at different times.
The subjects taught in Main Lessons are broad throughout the school and increase in diversity as the children get older. ( These practical and artistic activities are not 'added on' to the conventional modes of learning; they are an integral part of any lesson and the children learn through them in a multi-sensory way, developing practical understanding, imagination and creativity.
After the Main Lesson, there is a regular, weekly, year-long timetable of lessons in a variety of subjects including eurythmy, games, music, knitting, painting, wax modelling, form drawing, foreign languages and religion from Class 1 onwards, sometimes taught by the Class Teacher and sometimes by specialist teachers.
We try to timetable the more intellectual subject lessons in the morning wherever possible, while artistic, practical and physical ones are usually in the afternoon. "
It will always be a question of finding out what the development of the child demands at each age of life.
For this we need real observation and knowledge of Man.
The child up to the ninth or tenth year is really demanding that the whole world of external nature shall be made alive, because he does not yet see himself as separate from it.
In the form of stories, descriptions and pictorial representations of all kinds, we give the child in an artistic form what he himself finds in his own soul."
The content of the lessons in each class is guided very much by the developmental needs physical, emotional, cognitive of the children in the class.
If the content of the curriculum, and the method of teaching, can be aligned with the characteristics of each stage, then a wonderful symbiosis is created whereby the lesson touches on the deep concerns of the child and arouses his/her interest; and, because s/he can relate personally to it, the child is able to understand and take in the content of what is being taught.
Our teachers are trained first in the picture of child development given by Rudolf Steiner, and in observation skills, and then in the practical approaches needed in the classroom.
This being the case that every class, every child, every teacher is different in order that we can give our teachers the freedom to be authentic Waldorf teachers and, at the same time ensure that all of the children receive a rich, diverse, balanced, education that takes account of their individual needs and interests, enabling each one to achieve all that is possible for him/her, it is a central and essential requirement that all teachers who work at The St Michael Steiner School are trained in Steiner Waldorf Education.
The school has a structured system whereby our teachers mentor, observe, consult and advise each other, so that the College, which is predominantly made up of teachers, has oversight of the education being offered across the school, and is accountable to the trustees, and of course also to the children and students and their parents, for its quality.