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Why Waldorf?
Our vision for education is easy to embrace. We help every student develop his or her unique gifts using a proven, holistic approach. Waldorf students become independent, creative thinkers who can act with a sense of responsibility and compassion.
Intentionally Raising Good Humans
At the Waldorf School at Moraine Farm, we believe a well-rounded education goes beyond academics and builds values like personal responsibility, kindness, and integrity.
As soon as you step onto campus, you can feel it: The Waldorf School at Moraine Farm is a distinctly warm and welcoming place. There’s laughter on the playground, music in the classrooms, and a sense of belonging and camaraderie among our students.
At Waldorf Moraine, we believe that a truly well-rounded education goes beyond skills and achievements to foster qualities like honesty, integrity, kindness, and compassion. “Schools that teach character education report higher academic performance, improved attendance, reduced violence, fewer disciplinary issues, reduction in substance abuse, and less vandalism,” writes teacher and best-selling author Jessica Lahey in the article “The Benefits of Character Education” in The Atlantic.
Like Lahey, many educators have found that teaching values can have a deep and long-lasting positive effect on a child’s education and development—as well as the culture at school. Here are some of the ways we raise good humans at Waldorf Moraine.
A Healthy Social Life
In our collaborative classrooms and across our school community, we nourish and value relationships between students, teachers, and families, explicitly teaching values like kindness and respect for others. When conflict arises, we treat it as a teachable moment, giving children the opportunity to learn about resolution and restorative practices.
Teaching By Example
At every age and grade level, our teachers model qualities like patience, kindness, and joyous working. In fact, a commitment to reflection, personal growth, and spiritual development is an essential part of what it means to be a Waldorf teacher. We bring our best selves to school, inspiring our students to do the same!
Sharing Responsibilities
We teach children to be good citizens of their classroom and community by giving them meaningful chores and responsibilities at school. Whether it’s sweeping the floor after snack time in kindergarten, taking 4th grade attendance to the office, or a middle schooler helping their first grade buddies learn to knit, we all learn to pitch in. In middle school, we encourage social responsibility through service work and volunteerism, both off campus and at WSMF.
Inspired by Stories
From kindergarten fairy tales to the myths and legends we read in the early grades, Waldorf Moraine teachers not only teach through stories, they use stories to illustrate and inspire qualities like kindness, bravery, and inner strength in their students. As children reach middle school, we study history through biography, finding inspiration in the lives of people who changed the world around them.
Meaningful Challenges
As children grow older, we offer meaningful challenges and more complex character-building opportunities, including outdoor expeditions, independently directed homework and research projects, and opportunities to perform in the school orchestra and in the annual class play. When we perform together, we learn that everyone has an important role to play.
In these and many other ways our teachers build kindness, compassion, and social responsibility in our students, intentionally nurturing good students who are also good human beings.
Learn more about what we do! Join us for a campus tour this fall!
Taught By Humans, Not Screens
At the Waldorf School at Moraine Farm, education is holistic, human-centered, and tech-free.
“Schools have spent tens of billions of dollars on classroom technology products over the last decade,” writes journalist Natasha Singer in a recent article in the New York Times. “Yet laptops and learning apps have generally not proven to significantly improve students’ educational outcomes.”
Singer, author of the book “Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools,” has spent years examining the ways that Big Tech moved into mainstream education amid a decline in student achievement and increasing mental health challenges. Today, many schools are racing to limit the influence of new technologies like AI while simultaneously trying to mitigate the negative results of an overreliance on screens in the classroom.
At the Waldorf School at Moraine Farm, we offer a distinctly different approach. Our methods are both time-tested and in line with the most recent education research, teaching children in the way they are hard-wired to learn: through human-centered and sensory-rich experiences that naturally encourage cognitive, emotional, social, and physical development.
As educators, building strong, trusting relationships is central to our work. Our teachers never use educational technology in the classroom, and we encourage families to limit tech and digital media at home, placing the emphasis on real-world learning and experiences, both in and outside school. Instead of relying on digital games and screen-based exercises to keep their students on track, our teachers plan engaging and experiential lessons infused with art, music, movement, group work, and hands-on projects.
Strong teacher-student relationships are linked to every measure of success in school—from reading comprehension skills to consistent attendance. And by learning to listen, to work with others, and to build trusting relationships with both adults and peers, our students grow into uniquely well-rounded human beings in an increasingly digital world.
Can you imagine your family being part of a school like ours? Learn more about our programs or sign up for a tour here. https://waldorfmoraine.org/admissions-welcome/admissionsevents/
