A Culture of Care

A culture of care

How a Sandpoint school survives and thrives in a pandemic

· SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

By Ammi Midstokke
Reader Contributor

At a Sandpoint Waldorf School board meeting in mid-August, a group of faculty, parents and board members tried to have a civil discussion about the future of their children. They also tried to talk about the livelihood of the children’s parents. And the health risks posed to elderly members of their family or the community. And masks. And the financial viability of a private school during a pandemic. 

For so many tender subjects to be placed on the same table in the same moment seemed to pose perhaps the greatest health risk. No punches were thrown, no names called, no arguments had. Perhaps it was because everyone was there for the same reason: To do their best to ensure a safe learning environment in which the students, staff and families could thrive. 

Waldorf teacher Christopher Lunde instructs eighth-grade student, Isadora Gilchrist, on observing the physical properties of water. Photo by Ammi Midstokke.

To this end, the school created a COVID Task Force in the spring. The task force spent the summer months researching, problem solving and calling every single family in the school to ask for their personal input, concerns and needs when it came time to return to school. 

The responses from families were everywhere on the spectrum from demanding a more sterile environment to refusal to wear masks. While the task force knew it would not be possible to meet all needs, the common thread of keeping the children in school would become their priority. They took the information they had carefully collected and created a plan.

As it is with COVID-19 policies, they generally mandate Plans A, B and C because the scenarios are complex, often require urgent response, and must consider diverse and changing needs of a community. Their plan was created with the shared intention of keeping students in a classroom and group learning environment as much as possible, while also preventing the spread of the virus through the school and larger community. This meant determining ways in which to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Panhandle Health District guidelines on social distancing while simultaneously educating an entire school of pre-K through eighth-grade students.

It is fair to say that this community has a unique demographic spread in which its members’ values are widely different, if not sometimes in opposition. As the plan developed, the conversations about implementing the plan were interwoven with a delicate sharing of opinions. Delicate, because opinion-stating can seem rather a dangerous act these days. 

Something different happened in that meeting, though. Parents lamented raising children in fear. Administrators worried about the social and emotional development of children associating mask wearing with shame. The task force responded with the theme of creating a “Culture of Care.”

A Culture of Care is an idea that has been used in the corporate world to improve employee relations throughout a hierarchical organization. It was arguably a shift in consciousness when statistics and research pointed out what we inherently know as humans: If you take care of people they are happier, have improved work performance and ultimately they care about the organization thus making the business more successful.

This isn’t new to Waldorf education. In fact, much of Waldorf education theory is based on the importance of the individual within the community, where a Culture of Care is not second nature, but fundamental. A verse read at assemblies states it with gentle lines:

The healthy social life is found, when,

In the mirror of each human soul,

The community finds its reflection,

Care is, or should be, all-encompassing and one must not meet particular criteria, political sway, age or ideology in order to be deserving or worthy of care. The extreme division that we see in our current socio-political and economic climate requires more care. This is expressed when consideration and interest in those humans, value systems and needs takes place, and then manifests into a culture of inclusion. 

Thus the Sandpoint Waldorf School applied its mission to its foundational Culture of Care and came up with a plan that considers the emotional well-being of students; their educational development; the health risks of teachers, parents and the Sandpoint community; the financial implications for families staying home to educate; and more. 

We can see the result of this in the back field of the Litehouse YMCA, where the organization has allowed the school to install an outdoor learning lab for students. The classes, small in number, are spending their days in rather romantic white structures where colorful silk scarves blow in the late summer breeze. The odd potted palm tree rustles. Wooden benches with bright pillows spaced widely apart remind one more of a decadent tea party than a classroom. Were it not for the clean chalkboard, teacher’s desk and occasional row of beakers, one might mistake the classroom for a humbly decorated wedding venue. 

The children sit happily in their pods, remaining with their classroom throughout the day, and free from the burden of wearing a mask — unless they are required to be in the school building, where all staff, students and visitors are required to wear them. (Indoor schooling, for example, was necessary this week due to the pall of wildfire smoke blanketing the region.) The students laugh and play, sing and learn together as they always have, only the setting is far more picturesque — perhaps even fairytale-esque. 

The curriculum has been carefully adapted to allow for distance learning should students, classes or teachers have a need for quarantine. The first weeks of class in the upper grades have included additional typing and technology lessons to enable students to easily transition from a classroom to a home environment. Additional teacher assistants have been acquired to help students who are educating from home to ensure a successful learning experience for all. 

The creativity, effort and collaboration that has gone into keeping the school a viable option for the community is a testament to a Culture of Care. It demonstrates both the flexibility and adaptability needed as a nation struggles to respond to a pandemic. Most of all, it is a refreshing reminder of how caring about each other can be the foundation of a solution to a seemingly unsolvable problem. 

Ammi Midstokke is an author and columnist for the Sandpoint Reader, The Spokesman Review and other publications. Her daughter attends eighth grade at the Sandpoint Waldorf School.

Sandpoint Waldorf School expands its outdoor learning to mitigate spread of COVID-19

BONNER DAILY BEE
| September 12, 2020 1:00 AM

At the Sandpoint Waldorf School, as at most schools across the country, returning to school in the midst of a pandemic looks quite different.

After almost six months away from their campus, SWS students arrived on Wednesday for the first day of school to classrooms inside spacious tents in the field behind the Litehouse YMCA. Instead of heading into the school building, students in first through eighth grade found their classroom tent with benches, desks, bookcases, chalkboards and, in some cases, log rounds as seats. A gentle breeze wafted through the tents allowing for easy ventilation.

Each tent is eight-sided allowing for a flexible, open and airy classroom. When the teachers wanted the students to engage in movement activities, they only had to step outside the tent where there was ample space to form a large circle.

“The choice to move the classrooms outside was a quick decision when we looked at the COVID transmission rates in an outdoor setting. With so much of our curriculum involving movement and time outside, it seemed to be a very natural and gentle transition for both students and our faculty,” said Julie McCallan, the school’s educational director.

Although the decision was easily made, the act of creating this simple arrangement required a lot of coordination and collaboration. From the moment, the school suggested the concept of the outdoor learning lab in tents, Tammy Campbell, branch executive of Litehouse YMCA, was very supportive.

“I believe this kind of creativity, and these partnerships, will allow us as the YMCA and our community to thrive and succeed.”

The YMCA will be able to use the tents when they host the high school swim meet later this summer for parents and teams.

The parents were also a major player in making the outdoor learning lab possible, SWS officials said. They built and painted chalkboards for each tent and brought in log rounds for the benches. The week before school they erected the tents. When the Labor Day wind storm blew in, the parents came running, literally, to help drop the tents in the morning and then returned to put them back up again in the evening, even repairing and replacing some of the poles that bent in the process. By Tuesday, the day before school, the tents were ready for the teachers to move in, each adding their personal touch to them.

The transition to teaching in tents has required a lot of creativity and flexibility from the teachers, as they figured out what is essential for each day’s instruction and how to utilize the outdoors to broaden the student’s experience of the world.

Fourth grade teacher Clare Stansberry said she views it as a time to connect students with nature in a deeper way. “Outdoor education is an opportunity to connect students to the place they live and expand their resilience in the face of all the elements,” she said.

The faculty are thinking out of the box and turning adversity into an opportunity for change and growth. Rather than having students crowded indoors in the woodshop, woodworking teacher Shaun Deller took his students on a walk to the nearby slough to identify trees. The wind storm had blown down a large cottonwood tree which provided the students with limbs to carve. For her first botany lesson, fifth grade teacher Yvette McGowan took students on a walk to a nearby garden where they could observe mushroom propagation. Upon their return to their tent they wrote their observations in their journals.

The pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students return to school on Thursday. While their classrooms are still indoors, they will be spending much of their day outside playing. Ryan Rayniak, one of the mixed-aged kindergarten teachers is planning two full days away from campus each week, these adventure days will allow the students to explore the park, the slough, and the nearby wetlands and forests. Dressed in layers and rubber boots, and carrying snacks, water, and extra clothing in their backpacks, the children will be ready for whatever the weather brings, SWS staff said.

Schooling during a pandemic is fraught with unknowns and challenges, but the Sandpoint Waldorf School is hopeful that being outdoors as much as possible will help mitigate the spread of COVID-19 while offering the students a rich and creative learning environment.

In this, they said the goals of the YMCA and the Sandpoint Waldorf School align: to offer programs that help build a healthy spirit, mind and body for all. Both organizations are nonprofits that are committed to making our community and the world a better place to live, work and play.

SWS Reopening Plan: A Culture of Care

Dear Sandpoint Waldorf School Community,
 
2020 has been a year fraught with change, uncertainty, and struggles as we strive to  comprehend the complex effects of the pandemic on the physical well being of  millions and on the social fabric of our country and our world. This has had a profound impact on our children. They need more than ever an education which honors childhood; an education which  nurtures children in body, soul, and spirit ; an education which  gently guides them in developmentally appropriate ways toward  becoming who they came here to be, becoming human beings with compassion for others, the ability to think clearly, and the strength of will to manifest their dreams.  At the Sandpoint Waldorf School, we remain committed to this task.
 
Our mission has not changed, but how we create a safe space for our children and for their families has changed.  Our protocols have been drafted with this at the forefront and our teachers will introduce these protocols to the children in an imaginative, age-sensitive manner which makes it clear that they are about a culture of care, about concern and care for others, not about judging or shaming others or fear. Together, students, teachers, staff and parents, we can join together in caring for one another.  
 
Throughout the spring and summer, we have been constructing a plan for our return to school, a plan with health and safety, the education of the children, and our core values at the center.  This effort required research, creativity, common sense, and wisdom.  In this letter, we share the product of that work in a document that has been reviewed by the faculty, the directors of the board, and the medical professionals in our community: SWS Reopening Plan: A Culture of Care
 
In developing our plan, we reviewed the best medical and public health guidance available and mapped that information to SWS’s values, especially the fostering of the emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being of our students and the conscientious care and consideration of all members of our school community.  At SWS, these values are exemplified by our dedicated faculty and staff who are invested in each student as a unique individual on their path toward developing their own gifts and attributes and overcoming the challenges that face them. 
 
Mitigating Health Risk 
Our goal is to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 on the SWS campus.  To do this, we need to be scrupulous about hygiene and complying with local, state, and federal safety guidance.  As a practical matter that means we need to be observant about our children and ourselves exhibiting signs of illness, be conscientious about:

• Limiting our exposure to illness through large-group activities and travel

• Practicing good hygiene with  frequent hand washing and the disinfection of surfaces

• Everyone older than early childhood must  wear face coverings on campus when the level of community spread warrants it and  social distancing or outside activities are not possible.

 These actions represent a vital, shared, and sustained responsibility.  We need to practice these activities not only for ourselves individually, but for our students, our faculty and staff, and our family members, some of whom are very vulnerable to illness.  
 
Together we can keep our children on campus by embracing and practicing A Culture of Care.
 
In Service,
Julie McCallan
Pedagogical Director on behalf of the SWS Covid Task Force

Click here to read our SWS Reopening Plan

Congratulations to our 8th grade graduates...

SWS Class of 2020 Graduation

Usually we urge the whole school to attend our eighth grade graduations, not only to celebrate the accomplishments of the class and mark their rite of passage, but also to witness the culmination of the eight year journey through a Waldorf school.  This year, due to the pandemic, the gathering had to be small, just the families of the eighth graders, Ms. Shaffer (their teacher), Ms. St. Pierre (the Drama teacher who gave a commencement speech), and myself (who handed out the diplomas).   

The ceremony was at Camp Eureka.  Parents had decorated the small outdoor stage with flowers and veils that caught the gentle breeze.  Families spread out  picnic blankets or lawn chairs, keeping a six-foot distance between each family unit, to savor their own picnic dinners before the ceremony began at 6:45 pm.  

Starting with the students who had joined the class most recently, Ms. Shaffer then shared a tribute and wish about each student with heartfelt inspiring words that let each student know how clearly she saw them for who they are now and who they are becoming. After her tribute, that student came up and addressed the audience, giving highlights of his or her journey, transformations, aspirations, and gratitude.  

As each student was showcased, the evening grew cooler and families drew on sweatshirts or huddled under sleeping bags or blankets, and the woods seemed to close in, sheltering us in a sacred space.  After the speeches, the  students sang an uplifting song together, received their diplomas one by one from me, and then said goodbye and thank you to Ms. Shaffer, just as they had at the close of class each day for eight years.  

There were cupcakes for all, but the darkness was deepening, so as they were being eaten, we were also packing up.  Everyone felt grateful that graduation happened in person, and  as one grandparent said as we walked back to the cars, the ceremony was a positive, hope-filled reprieve and antidote to the insecurity and anxiety of our current moment in time. 

William Greenway, an alumnus from the class of 2015, filmed the evening--his second battery dying just at the last diploma was handed out.  Below is a link to the video  so that you, too, can be inspired by the beauty and the wisdom of the class of 2020 and their teacher.  

https://youtu.be/hZIyVk9k4dY

Submitted by Julie McCallan