By Melissa Nilsen PhD
In 1921 Rudolf Steiner gave this verse to the first Waldorf teachers in Stuttgart Germany.
“May there reign here spirit strength in love.
May there work here spirit light in goodness.
Born from certainty of heart, and from steadfastness of soul,
so that we may bring to young human beings,
bodily strength for work, inwardness of soul, and clarity of spirit.
May this place be consecrated to such a task.
May young minds and hearts here find,
servers of the light, endowed with strength,
who will guard and cherish them.
Steiner charged his teachers with a powerful and humbling duty, to guard and cherish their students. Beyond educating the mind, Waldorf teachers strive to support the development of their students through a living and holistic education that enlivens the senses and balances the impulses of thinking, feeling, and willing. A living education such as the Waldorf approach empowers teachers to teach to the individual students according to their specific needs. But all teachers can do this by seeking deeper connection with their students, taking up the task of guarding and cherishing them as they educate.
But what does it mean to guard and cherish our students? To guard means to watch over and fiercely protect from harmful external forces. To cherish is to lovingly nurture, to treasure as rare, unique, and beautiful. How do we guard our students’ hearts and minds while cherishing their individuality, and their unique gifts, so that each one feels safely held and treasured as a vital member of the class community?
It isn’t always easy amidst the many responsibilities and duties teachers have. The daily meditative practices Steiner indicated, were designed to cultivate the inner capacities of patience, love, compassion, peace, kindness, gentleness, and goodness. All the capacities a teacher needs to build true positive and authentic relationships with each of their students.
Healthy student-teacher relationships are the foundation of academic success. While Waldorf teachers pioneered this notion, it has now become accepted in mainstream education research. Less common in education discourse is the notion that using contemplative practices helps teachers build the necessary foundation for caring relationships. This foundation consists of deeply knowing students and cultivating compassion and understanding for them in order to forge authentic interpersonal relationships. Within a vibrant and dynamic web of interpersonal relationships in the classroom, teachers are enabled to truly guard and cherish their students, delivering to them a loving and equitable education.
Equity in Education
The topic of equity currently gets a lot of attention in education policy. And for good reason. If success in the classroom is defined by students’ academic achievement, it is vital for teachers to understand what stands in the way of every student achieving to their optimal potential.
According to the California Department of Education (2023), an equitable education means that teachers and administrators, “recognize, respect, and attend to the diverse strengths and challenges of the students they serve.” An equitable education is an education in which every student gets what they need, not necessarily what all the other students are getting. This is because students come from a variety of backgrounds with varying academic foundations upon which they stand when entering a new class with a new teacher.
It is not equitable to expect all students to accomplish the same tasks at the same level, if they are not all coming to the class with the same academic background or with the same academic tools. Just as asking two people to build a ten-foot fence but giving one a saw, a tape measure, a box of nails, and lumber, while giving the other a measuring cup, mixing bowls, and a cookbook, would not adequately demonstrate the ability of each to build a fence, so is the same true in education. Students must first be equipped with the tools they need to accomplish the tasks set before them.
Consider a time when you were a young student and needed support to accomplish a task that your classmates seemed capable of doing on their own. Did you feel that you could ask for support? Were you given the support you needed in a loving way or were you denied support? Reflect on how this experience played out for you. If you were given the support you needed, what impact did that experience have on your motivation, your sense of self-confidence, and your desire to continue working? If you were not given the support you needed, how did you respond? What impact did the experience have on your journey as a student and a human being?
Some students may need very little instruction and support to be successful on an assignment while other students may need hands-on support and guidance throughout. An equitable education provides for all students in this way. But how can a teacher make sure that all their students are being appropriately supported, challenged, and served? Equity in education requires caring, observant, and reflexive teachers who put their students’ needs at the center of the learning process.
Reflect for a moment about whether you consistently consider your students’ individual abilities when you set expectations before them. Do you observe them when they work, looking for signs of frustration, apathy, overwhelm, or defeat?
Evening student meditations are especially helpful in honing observational skills and enabling teachers to see through outward behavior to the true essence of the child’s needs. Student reflections help teachers to develop their spiritual eyes and ears by seeing first a recollection of the child in their mind’s eye, remembered from the day.
The following reflective practice comes from Nancy Kresin-Price’s dissertation research on Goethean observation in the classroom.
One by one, recall everything you can about each child’s manner throughout the school day. How did each child dress? How did they carry themselves throughout the day? What did they eat for lunch, how did they respond to their peers and their teachers? Then, just as with Steiner’s seed meditation, imagine the child on a path of development. They are the age they are now but once they were an infant in their mother’s arms and one day, they will mature past adulthood and into old age. Remember that the moment that was observed in school was just that, a moment in a long, life journey.
Imagining the child through their life journey expands the picture you hold of them and offers a broader lens through which to observe their actions, attitudes, and behaviors.
Teachers who provide a truly equitable education in which students feel supported, challenged, honored, and respected, take a daily interest in their students, forging deeper levels of knowing and understanding. There are many roads that lead to this goal, but the guiding light on all of them, is love.
Love in the Classroom
Does the duty of guarding and cherishing our students require that we cultivate love for them? The notion of love in the classroom can be controversial for some people. Due to the wide ranging positive and negative experiences we each have had with caregivers, adult authority figures, familial, platonic, and romantic relationships, our own mental construction of what it means to love and be loved is as unique as a fingerprint. As reflexive teachers and human beings, it is wise to examine the unconscious feelings we hold and the subtle emotional triggers that arise when we consider our students and what it means to hold love for them.
Take a moment to consider how the word “love” makes you feel in the context of your class community. Do you feel comfortable cultivating love for each of your students and talking openly about this goal with your colleagues and your students’ parents? What inner ideas, or social constructs get in the way of talking openly about loving students? Are there any internal or external factors that make loving your students a challenge? Consider whether you believe that “love” benefits the classroom community. Do you think students work better and harder if they feel loved?
Whether defined as love, compassion, or caring, teachers who develop authentic relationships with each of their students have a greater positive impact on their students' lives. Some students make this an easier endeavor than others. But in deep observation, contemplation, and meditation, teachers come to see the spiritual essence of their students and know them more fully. Teachers can direct their meditations toward specific students and situations with the intention to cultivate positivity towards them, shifting difficult relationship dynamics and transforming struggle into loving compassion.
The meditative practice of Positivity comes from Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry by Arthur Zajonc but is grounded in Steiner’s declaration in How to Know Higher Worlds that “in every evil we must seek out the elements in it that allow us to transform it into something good.” As Zajonc states, “if we are to practice loving, we must learn to see what is worthy of love within friends, strangers, even enemies.”
Focus on someone you are having difficulties with. Consider the problematic aspects of the relationship. Try to zoom out from the focus on the negative and seek the higher motivation beneath the surface behavior that offends you. Look for the good in that person’s motivation. With some it may be difficult, but in the end, you will find this aspect in those who seem to oppose you. When you find it, hold onto it. Wish them peace, health, and joy in life. Practice loving kindness toward them in your meditation. Do not let any injustice blind you to the good that exists within that person.
Over time, little by little, the contemplative teacher will find they are better able to meet each student’s unique needs with love and compassion because the contemplative teacher is being held and supported not by their own will power, but by the inexhaustible sources of love, strength, courage, and enthusiasm that pour forth continuously from the spiritual world.
Steiner (1994) states in the first chapter of How to Know Higher Worlds that, “when we raise ourselves through meditation to what unites us with the spirit, we [bring to life] something within us that is eternal and unlimited by birth and death…meditation is thus the way to knowing and beholding the eternal, indestructible, essential center of our being.”
In the midst of a busy day, the unseen, spiritual dimensions of life are easiest to put off because their demands are not loud, like the worries of parents who want to see their children adequately prepared for college, the thinning budget of the school, or the daily conflicts sprouting up within the class community. The spiritual world is whisperingly quiet and infinitely patient. As Arthur Zajonc says in Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry, “attending to the interior is like turning to a meal that has been prepared by invisible friends who await the guest regardless of whether they ever show up. The table is always set, the banquet ready, but whether we remember to attend is up to us.”
When we take time, even a very small amount of time throughout the day to pause and meditate, we build up within ourselves an inner peace and calm about the small frustrations of work which will expand into peace and calm about even catastrophic challenges and daunting realities. In this way, teachers can be the forerunners of peace in society by creating peaceful classrooms where students can truly feel guarded and cherished.
Excerpts from, To Guard and Cherish: Contemplative Practices for Compassionate Education. Anticipated publication date: June 2024