The Class 8 Gardening & Landscape Project
From time to time Waldorf Schools will break from their usual weekly rhythm to include unique experiences that further support the pupils holistic development. The high school experience fortnight is one such time.
For the next two weeks the class 8 pupils will work in the garden creating beautifully landscaped and functional areas. They will also engage in a period of forestry work. They will cut, log and dry wood that will be used by them in their class 12 year to fashion into a functional item of furniture.
These two projects meet the teenager who at the start of adolescence may typically feel disorientated and uncertain about their place in the world. Inwardly they are experiencing significant hormonal and neurological shifts. Their bodies feel unfamiliar and they are faced with existential questions that earlier childhood years protected them from. Working with the earth gets the increasingly lethargic teenager moving and boost endorphins and mood. Shifting the earth to creating landmarks that are functional and help orient the children in their geography of the school also fosters a deeper sense of community and belonging. The full cycle of planting trees, felling, logging and drying the planks assures the adolescent that with planning and hard work they are able to work with the earth in a productive and sustainable way and have a calculated and positive impact on their future.
Once this experience period has concluded the class will give a simple reflection of their work to their parents in the form of a choral verse.
Lauren McGuire
Class 8 Guardian
