Developmental Themes
Learning within a Developmental Framework
Like most Waldorf High Schools, our program is organized into the four developmental themes indicated below. Each year’s approach represents an increasingly complex set of higher order thinking skills and understandings, preparing graduates for college and adulthood.
9th Grade
Educate the powers of observation through the study of polarities.
Theme: Polarities
As students enter high school, they are transitioning intellectually, emotionally, and physically. Many adolescents feel a conflict between the desire for affiliation and a sense of alienation. Our objective is to reflect these polarities in their educational experience. Students’ experiences of inner polarities provoked by these changes are reflected back to them in the carefully chosen school curriculum. In science, for example, students study the polarity of heat and cold; in geography, the collision of plate tectonics; in history, the conflicts of the world’s major revolutions; in the history of the theater, tragedy and comedy; in art, black and white drawing and printmaking. The objective is to train exact powers of observation and recollection so that the students can experience the steadiness of their own thinking in the often-confusing world of adolescence around them.
10th Grade
Educate the powers of comparison and contrast through a study of process.
Theme: Process
By 10th grade, many adolescents are actively seeking equilibrium and order. The curriculum explores equilibrium through the study of balance in natural and social phenomena. Students are expected to develop and utilize powers of comparison. These comparisons help bring order to chaos, balance to opposition and acceptance to differences. From order and balance, a new awareness can arise. For example, in chemistry, the principles of acids and bases and the introduction of chemical equations; in social studies, cultural similarities and differences and the development of civilization. These reveal the possibility of equilibrium arising out of the balancing of extremes. The objective is to help students find their own balance by discovering the process of balance in natural and human phenomena.
11th Grade
Educate the powers of analysis through individualized study.
Theme: Analysis—The Quest for Identity
The personal experience of many juniors involves a search for identity and independence. Out of the chaos of adolescence, students begin to form a new vision of themselves, and in the 11th grade, are often more ready to journey into the unknown. The curriculum delves further into purely abstract concepts in order to strengthen the student’s independent analysis and abstract theorizing. Existential questions and new depths in the inner life of thoughts, feelings and deeds may arise. Students begin to find their own paths in life.
12th Grade
Educate the powers of synthesis through integration of all previous learning.
Theme: Synthesis—Myself within the Community
Senior year recapitulates and synthesizes all the themes of the high school years. Students examine the relationship of humanity with the world. They live with the thoughts of great writers who have questioned humankind’s place in the world, by studying broad literary movements like British Romanticism and the Harlem Renaissance, and the American Transcendentalist Movement. Subjects synthesize many themes: World History, Environmental Science and Senior Essay. Assignments call upon the students to synthesize disparate disciplines. The senior play serves as a social and artistic synthesis of literature and history. The objective of senior year is the synthesis of the K-12 education and preparation for the next stage in learning.