Emerson Waldorf School would like to invite valued members from the local homeschooling community to partake in the joy and wonder that is Waldorf Education.

This is the time for the adolescent to begin making decisions based on their life experience.  Thus, in class, 9th graders will engage in course work that invites them to explore, examine, discover, and ask the “What?” questions.

They want to know what is in the world around them, in all of its marvelous and bewildering variety.

What is the nature of each phenomenon, and how each is distinguished from others? Contrasting polarities are a satisfying way to learn about the qualities of things, and to develop analytical thinking.

The high school curriculum is sensitive to the tremendous developmental changes taking place at this time in a teenager’s life. Your ninth grader is plunging with new intensity into the materiality of their bodies even as they’re being liberated into the immateriality of abstract thinking. This inner tension is reflected back to them in the study of such outer phenomena as heat and cold in physics, the age of revolutions in history, and the collision of tectonic plates in geology. The focus is on observation and facts, helping ground students’ emerging capacity for abstract thinking in the realities of the world around them.

Each morning grade 9 Waldorf students start with a two hour main lesson block. These blocks run for 3-4 weeks and are devoted to in-depth study of a topic from the curriculum.

Waldorf education engages the head, the heart, and the hands.  Students will create their own Main Lesson Book during their course of study.  The main lesson book is central to the educational work we do with the students. The marriage of text and image is such a beautiful process, and the students take it in in a way that supports and reflects their individual personalities.  Now, in high school, students are given a great deal of freedom in their main lesson books, particularly in the humanities.Here are some examples of high school main lesson book illustrations…

Currently, we are inviting homeschooling 9th graders to register for classes for our Fall 2011 Semester and for our Spring 2012 Semester.  This is a pilot project offered to home-schoolers as a way of participating in our high school curriculum.  Included on the website is the following information to better understand the course, and a registration form. The course fee ranges from $300-$350 per class.

•    Classes Available
•    Homework and Class Expectations
•    Course Registration Form

We have a developmental curriculum with courses that are appropriate to a specific age group.  For this reason, students registering should have a birthday between January 1996 and December 1997.  There are a limited number of spaces for each class.

If you have additional questions, please contact Mary Leonhardi, Director of Enrollment at:
(919) 967-1858 x 14 or admissions@emersonwaldorf.org.