As part of our ongoing commitment to providing service to Waldorf homeschoolers, we at Christopherus are pleased to be able to offer more and more resources for parents with older children and teens. We know that there are far fewer resources out there for these students and our hope is to help fill some of the gap.
High School Notes
Donna has been teaching at a Waldorf-inspired high school and is eager to create a whole series of High School Notes. These Notes will be fairly rough outlines, drawn from the classes that Donna teaches. Likely topics include Zoology, Comedy and Tragedy (now published), American Government and Poetry.
In the meantime, we have a list of high school literature texts, grade by grade.
Writing
One of Donna's real passions is for good writing (part of what underlies the Living Language book). She has taught writing classes for homeschoolers, in a Waldorf-inspired high school and via a local charter school in addition to teaching both of her sons at home into the high school years. She has also done remedial work with high school students in English on a one-on-one basis.In the past, Donna worked with homeschoolers via a Christopherus correspondence class called YoungWriters. Donna disbanded YoungWriters because she felt that much of her power as a teacher lies in the relationship with students in flesh and blood, in the playful banter, warmth and interest that can only really be cultivated when everyone's sitting in the same room together.
High School Resources
At present we offer the following resources for older students:
High School Literature
Christopherus Audio Downloads:
Waldorf High School at Home
Christopherus publications specifically for high school:
Publications with sections devoted to high school:
Recommended Reading for Teens:
See the list in our Amazon store
Student Work:
Homeschoolers' Work: High School
Articles:
Homeschooling Sons Through High School
Posts on the Homeschool Journey blog:
See the Older Children category. See also Donna's high school blog which she wrote during 2008 when her son was at home - full of useful links, review, suggestions and musings about teaching high school at home.
Waldorf at Home Forum:
Our Waldorf at Home internet discussion forum has a section for High School. Conversations have included "Bored Teens", "Piercings" and "Tough Love".
Waldorf High School Links:
Austin Waldorf School
Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School
In December 2006 we had a great study on the Waldorf at Home forum of an article by Craig Holdrege of the Nature Institute (a former Waldorf high school science teacher) entitled, You can find this article on the Nature Institute website.
Online Articles:
The Online Waldorf Library is a great resource.
Here are some recommended articles (all in PDF format):
Recall in Upper School Main Lessons
The Value of Art for the Adolescent
Parzival - the Journey of Adolescence
Towards a Sensible Kind of Chemistry: Part 1