S1 EP8 - Seventh Grade
On this week’s episode of Anthroposophy Today, Scott and Sarita—a certified Waldorf teacher with 25 years of teaching experience--talk about the Waldorf seventh grade classroom.
ENTERING ADOLESCENCE
Seventh grade is the year when the children are twelve-going-on-thirteen years old and beginning to enter adolescence. This is a period of metamorphosis for the children, which Sarita describes as “a time of germination, incubation, and then transformation”. She further elaborates that it is not just on a physical level that the children are experiencing rapid growth, but that on a soul and psychological level there are many things shifting beneath the surface.
At this age, children tend to develop physically at a faster rate than psychologically; this is a time when some physical and emotional awkwardness may be observed, a result of the psyche playing a constant game of catch up to keep in time with the development leaps and bounds being made by the physical body. Girls in particular shoot up at this age, with boys generally experiencing their big growth spurt a little while later. This disparity is familiar to class teachers and parents who have boys and girls of this age, and often makes for “interesting” social dynamics as the gap in maturity levels widens (between boys and girls, but also from student to student, regardless of gender and depending on their own personality and rate of their growth).
The seventh graders are more social than they were even in sixth grade and begin to immerse themselves in their social life and the lives of their peers more than ever before. Sarita says that you may observe children arriving at school earlier than they used to, so they can spend time with their friends in the classroom before class begins. Even homeschool parents, whose children are not interacting daily with a large group of their peers, will notice their children are more talkative and social, even the introverts.
Another challenge new to this age is that the children become so focused on themselves, their peers, and their social life, that they are perfectly happy to ignore any adults—including their teacher or homeschool parent—completely. As a teacher or homeschool parent, your challenge is to find a way to draw the children back to the lesson, without demanding the attention be focused on you.
Sarita stresses that it is very important for the teacher or homeschool parent to observe and to listen. She encourages teachers and parents to keep an eye or ear pricked when around the children; don’t actively eavesdrop, you’ll make the children uncomfortable and self-conscious, but engage in an activity of your own and keep half of your attention on what the children are talking about. Usually, and especially at this age, they are so in their own world that, unless the teacher or parent is painfully obvious about this kind of harmless listening in, they won’t even notice you’re there. By observing the group of children in this way, you will learn a lot about the social fabric and social dynamics of the class. This, Sarita says, is an invaluable exercise which will inform your decisions about what material to bring to the class. What story does the class need to hear this week? Is there a specific child in the class who, from your observations, you feel might benefit from a specific story or kind of lesson? There is so much available material to choose from, and with each main lesson block lasting only three to five weeks, there is precious little time—this is why it is so important to know your class intimately, be constantly checking in with and “reading” the children through indirect observations like this, and allow what you perceive to guide you in selecting material to best serve the children in your class or your home.
Sarita also touches upon her experience with phone usage at school. In her experience, phones are a great distraction to the children, and allowing their use at school is allowing a form of disrespect to the space that the teacher or homeschool parent is painstakingly creating for study and learning. For both children and teenagers, it is a terrible distraction to have this enchanting and irresistible little machine at their disposal all day, and a terrible waste of the teacher’s time to be constantly competing with the phones for the attention of the students. The children are at school to be present, to engage with their teacher and their peers, and to learn; while technology is embraced by Waldorf when it serves the aforementioned purposes, it is also put back into its proper place when it interferes with learning, as it does when children are allowed to carry their phones with them throughout the day.
ASTRONOMY
When we teach astronomy in seventh grade, we begin, as always, through observation. First, we look up at the sky; then eventually we learn about the cosmos from charts and graphs and books. But we begin from a point of wonder. In high school, we will tackle the more complicated aspects of astronomy, but in seventh grade we introduce the subject of the stars and the planets in such a way that the children as excited by them, their curiosity is awakened, and they begin asking questions for which they thirst to find the answers.
This is a poem which Sarita says she loves to use for seventh grade astronomy, not only for its beauty, but because it expresses so perfectly what the children as experiencing as this age.
When I Heard The Learn’d Astronomer
by Walt Whitman
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
“Who wants to measure the heavens and stars just as an exercise of measurement?” Scott asks, “One wants to be lit up by the majesty of it, the wonder of it, and then go off and study it out of a keen interest in it—that’s the whole point (of this approach).”
Sarita loves using poetry and verses like this to inspire the children and help them to connect to the spirit of what is being studied, but she says there are many other creative ways to apply this concept of using art and literature to deepen the class’s understanding of the subject at hand. Cooking, music, dance, poetry, literature, painting, sculpture—use your imagination and find ways to bring the subject you are teaching to life for your students, and they will not only be engaged and excited by the learning process, but they will retain the lessons for a lifetime.
Astronomy in particular is a subject which reflects a strong theme in the seventh grader’s life, which is why it can have such a powerful impact on the students if it is taught with reverence and a sense of beauty and wonder.
Just as the astronomer looks out into the world, burning with curiosity and brimming with questions about the stars and the mysteries of the universe, so the child at this age looks inquisitively out into the world, full of a thirst for discovery and gripped by a strong sense of internal transformation.
BIOGRAPHY
As the children become more interested in the world around them, and more social, they become more interested in other people. You will hear the children at lunchtime and during recess chatting with their friends, asking what they did over the weekend, where their families will go on holiday over the summer, what books or movies they’ve enjoyed recently, or what they eat at their house for supper. Here is where we introduce biography as a way to study history in a new, more personal way.
In general, Sarita says, a teacher will select one or more historical figures which relate to the subject being studied. In the astronomy block, two people whose biographies may be useful and interesting for the teacher to present to the class are Ptolemy and Copernicus. Ptolemy’s biography can be studied as a way to understand his theory of the earth as the center of the universe; later, you can transition to studying Copernicus, who challenged Ptolemy’s worldview, and ultimately led to our present understanding of the universe, of the earth and other planets revolving around the sun.
These biographies can be treated in the same way storytelling was, beginning in early childhood: one biography told over the course of a few days or a week, and enriched by other accompanying activities relating to the story, the time period, the person in question and their achievements, in order to allow the children to deeply connect with the subject matter.
HISTORY: AGE OF DISCOVERY
In seventh grade history, we cover what is broadly referred to as “the age of discovery”. This period encompasses the crusades to the renaissance, Tudor England, and the events leading up to the colonization of the American continent.
In ninth and tenth grade, we will delve more deeply into this time period, but in seventh grade we introduce them and lay the foundation. At this age, the children are coming out of their shell, emerging from their own little cocoon in the larger world around them. This impulse to explore the world and forge new relationships with the people around them is reflected in the impulses which led to the historical events of this age of discovery, and consequently this is a perfect age to introduce the study of this time period.
There is a wonderful book by the author Charles Kovacs on the subject, called The Age of Discovery, which provides an overview of world history for the Waldorf seventh grade (including the Crusades, the Renaissance, Saladin, Joan of Arc, Columbus, Magellan, Queen Elizabeth I and Francis Drake). We would urge our readers to seek it out, as it is a great resource from an experienced Waldorf teacher.
Another resource—and not just for seventh grade—is Torin M. Finser’s excellent book “School As A Journey: The Eight-Year Odyssey of a Waldorf Teacher and His Class”. Scott recites an excerpt from Mr. Finser’s telling of the story of the fascinating and inspiring Joan of Arc, and Sarita describes how to encourage and guide important discussions in the class about this moving, eternally relevant story.
COMBUSTION, MECHANICS, NUTRITION AND HEALTH BLOCKS
Some of the subjects studied in seventh grade are combustion (as a precursor to chemistry) mechanics (which serves as a course in “pre-physics”) and nutrition and health.
The child’s new abilities in observation and critical thinking are put to good use through a series of experiential activities and experiments the class performs to learn, in the mechanics block, about levers, pulleys, and various apparatuses and devices that utilize the principles of mechanics.
Their newfound interest in their bodies makes this the perfect time to talk about nutrition and health in a way they might not have been ready for before seventh grade. Again, these subjects all serve as introductions to the more complex versions of these subjects they will study in high school; these introductions prepare the child’s mind and soul, through experiential learning, for later more advanced conceptual and theoretical study when they are a few years older.
For further reading on chemistry in the Waldorf classroom in middle school, we would direct the reader to David Mitchell’s “The Wonders of Waldorf Chemistry”, which also contains biographies of many famous male and female scientists throughout the ages which you may use with your class or children at home.
ALGEBRA
Finally, it is in seventh grade that the study of algebra is introduced. Many teachers will choose to begin studying algebra from a historical perspective, through biography and history as we previously described. You may begin by studying ancient Arabia, and the people who discovered these new kinds of magic math. There is a mystical aspect, a magic, to the search for the unknown which algebra represents. It requires a person to stretch their thinking, open their mind to new, complex processes such as “solving for x” and “balancing the equation”.
While many adults shudder at the memory of their own experiences studying algebra in school, it can be an inspiring, eye-opening, and deeply satisfying for the children to discover this whole new world, and to step into it boldly to search for the unknown.
It is with this attitude of the brave pathfinder, the bold explorer, the fearless pioneer that the seventh graders and their teacher embark upon this next chapter of their journey. Golden childhood has ended and been mourned, exciting adolescence has begun, and a universe ripe with discoveries lies in wait.
Thanks for joining us, and we’ll see you next week for our discussion of eighth grade!