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When the first Waldorf School opened in 1919, it pioneered a new way to educate children: one which could inspire humanity, peace, and goodness in an ever-changing and complex world. Over the last century, Waldorf Education has become the fastest growing education model across the world with more than 1,100 schools and 2,000 kindergartens in over 80 countries across the globe.

Waldorf100 arose from an international desire to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the inauguration of Waldorf Education and to deepen our connection with one another through a series of projects. The festivities will culminate with an Anniversary Celebration on September 19, 2019.

One of Waldorf100’s projects is the World-Wide Postcard Exchange, where every Waldorf School around the world will send personalized postcards to every other Waldorf School by the end of 2019. These postcards, decorated by students, show the receiver something about the author’s country, school, or self. Richmond Waldorf School students have begun creating postcards and receiving them from schools across the US, Europe, Asia, and even New Zealand!

To display the network of schools, each Waldorf School will create a world map on which the cards will be visible, showing where each card came from. Our World Map has been painted in the gymnasium — stop in next time you are here to take a closer look.

Want to help us make this possible? Mailing 1,100 postcards across the world is expensive. If you would like to support us with a donation for postage, please get in touch with .

Keep in touch with the Waldorf100 movement and all of the projects to celebrate the Centennial at https://www.waldorf-100.org/en/

The World Map in the RWS Gym will eventually display all the postcards we receive.

This April, Richmond Waldorf School celebrated the one-year anniversary of the purchase of our new building. With summer upon us, we are taking time to reflect, to dream, and to work. As we look back on how far we’ve come, we are inspired to dream about how far we have yet to go: to truly embody our mission as a school that provides an education that inspires peace and purpose.

Halfway through summer we can be proud of the progress we’re making: our first season of a full-fledged summer camp and early childhood program; a beautifully lazured rainbow hallway; a newly divided classroom; an inspiring Board-Faculty retreat.  At every point we are encouraged by the vision and dedication of our faculty and volunteers.

On a larger scale, the Waldorf Education movement also continues to gain momentum and is actively celebrating the Centennial anniversary of Waldorf Education with ongoing projects to unite and connect the 1,100+ Waldorf Schools across the world. Stay tuned for later posts for how RWS is involved in Waldorf100 efforts.

There is much to share, so follow the blog this year for a closer look at the action and impact of Waldorf education, both here at home and across the world. We hope you will stay tuned for our journey.  Until then….

In a lecture from  Soul Economy and Waldorf Education, Rudolf Steiner spoke about how a teacher’s creativity feeds the students’ souls.

“If you tell students what you found in books—no matter how lively you may be—if you tell them what you have read and perhaps even memorized, you will talk to them like a dry and desiccated person, as though you did not have a living skin but were covered with parchment, for there are always death-like traces in one’s own being of what was thus learned from the past.

If, on the other hand, you are creative in your work as a teacher, your material will radiate with growing forces, it will be fresh and alive, and this is what feeds the souls of children.”
[p. 162]

Throughout my career, I have found this to be true.  Whenever I create something original—stories, plays, birthday verses, blackboard drawings—the students respond differently than when I re-create something from another source.  Not only that, creative work feeds my soul as well.

In fourth grade, students develop their writing skills by copying the teachers’ compositions from the board; by creating their own compositions, play scenes, or poems; and by taking dictation.

When I create a composition for the students to copy, I try to render the topic in clear, succinct, expressive prose, so that the children will absorb those important stylistic aspects and become better writers.

When the students create own original work, they prepare by talking about the subject, so that when they write, they are just ‘talking on paper.’

When I create a dictation, I write passages that benefit from repetition, since each part of the dictation needs to be repeated until the children can write it from memory.

In our current language arts block, the students have been hearing some of  the Norse myths.  During this block I decided to challenge myself to compose dictations in the form of poems that reflected the Norse poetic style that features half lines with two stressed syllables and alliteration that is sometimes reflected in succeeding lines. The strong rhythms of Norse epic poetry reflect the Norse peoples’ search for power; the alliteration their search for resonance between people, objects, and events.

Here are poems I wrote for the children during the past two weeks:

Gullveig the Golden
Haughty and gleaming, the beautiful maiden
Entered the hall where all the gods sat.
Grief had she brought to the dwellers of Midgard;
Gold lust and greed, unhappiness great.
Spears threw the gods, but they could not pierce her,
Three times they tried to burn her alive;
But Gullveig the golden could not be vanquished;
Curses and war she brought to the gods.

The Duel
Swift through the sky rode Thor the Thunderer,
Ready to battle Hrungnir, the huge.
Fast flew the hammer, Mjollnir, the mighty,
Seeking the giant’s enormous hard head.
Straight flew the hone hurled by the giant,
Hit by the hammer, it broke into bits.
Down fell the giant his head burst asunder,
Pinning the god beneath his huge leg.
Furious Thor lay there held fast by his foe,
Until his son Magni released him at last.

Miraculously, each of these poems was ‘composed’ quickly in the morning at school before the children arrived. I say ‘composed, ‘ but I take little credit for their composition. Like in many other instances,  I simply served as a voice for the muse that whispers her wisdom in the ear of all teachers who are privileged to drink from the living spring of the creative word.

And here are some more examples of creativity in action: blackboard drawings from this block.

Roberto Trostli
4th Grade Class Teacher

The founder of Waldorf Education, Rudolf Steiner, said: “Color is the soul of nature…and when we experience color we participate in this soul.” The use of color in Waldorf Schools is something that cannot be missed, and is one of the many defining features of Waldorf. Color is a way of expression and connecting our emotions with the world in which we live. Color is the emotional life of nature, and seeing color in school engages our souls and feeds our creative spirit.

Colors play an important role throughout the child’s phases of development, and it is common to see lazure coloring in a Waldorf School. The treatment of lazure is a beautiful, translucent water coloring which allows those who experience it to see beyond the walls and to “breathe” beyond the surface of the wall. Some have said that lazuring allows for “soul space” in the school and fosters the creative and imaginative spirit that we nurture in Waldorf Education.

We are amazed by the beautiful hallway and classrooms at Richmond Waldorf School that feature the unique lazure technique. Many thanks to master lazure artist Charles Andrade who spent several days creating a beautiful work of art in our main entrance and hallway. The flowing progression of color leaves a lasting impression on all who experience it. Thank you, Charles, for your beautiful work. We will treasure the feelings your art evokes for many years to come.