Looking for a holistic approach to education? Rudolf Steiner College offers state-approved teaching programs that focus on the integration of the arts and self-development, according to RSC Development Director Arline Monks.

Founded in 1976, the Rudolf Steiner College is a Waldorf school based on the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), and opened as a “center for anthroposophical studies and transformative adult education,” according to its website.

“It’s one of the central and perhaps the leading teacher training centers in North America,” said Betty Staley, director of the High School Teacher Education Program. “People come because they want to become Waldorf teachers, they come because they are teachers already and they want to be renewed in their whole relationship to teaching.

“The purpose is to gain a sense of yourself, gain a new set of skills, a new perspective and go back out and give it to the community,” Staley said. “And that’s very exciting to see, that what they’re gaining here at the college is a new energy, a new perspective and give it to their community. And that will enhance not only their community, but it ripples out into a much larger sense of a society.”

At RSC, the first year is the foundation year, which is the first year of the full-time teacher training program and also a prerequisite for other programs, according to Monks.

“The foundation year is a program from September to May,” Staley said. “Students work with the philosophy introduced by Rudolf Steiner, with the arts and the self-development, and that is a kind of basis for all the other programs.”

They also offer the consciousness studies program that provokes students to look at their relationship to nature and try to discover what creates humanity and ways of new perception.

The full-time programs include the Foundations of Anthroposophy, the Teacher Education Program and Eurythmy.

According to Monks, “Eurythmy is an art of movement that is used as a performance, as an art and used therapeutically. It’s used in the Waldorf school and helps children with coordination. It’s very harmonizing, and it’s also fun.”

Another popular program is the remedial program, which is a one-year part-time program looking at ways teachers can work with children to prevent learning disabilities. It’s a program that helps teachers understand human development in a different way.

Michele Bennett has participated in the remedial education program and couldn’t have asked for anything more.

“The remedial program itself has been wonderful,” she said. “It’s been so eye-opening to myself and to my colleagues, and I’ve seen the changes in them.”

Bennett said the some of the highlights of the program included working through her own remedial issues and seeing a positive transformation after having gone through the process.

The school also offer courses during the summer for teachers who are unable to participate during the year.

“We have all kinds of courses in the summer that students come and practicing teachers come, which people from all over California come to experience Waldorf education in action,” according to RSC Academic Dean Patrick Wakeford-Evans. “They take back with them things for their own classrooms, inspiration mostly, and we have heard wonderful words from these people about how inspired they’ve been.”

Some of the programs offered over this year’s summer included Waldorf Teaching Education Program for Grade School or Early Childhood, High School Ninth/10th-Grade Focus and the Early Child In-Service program.

The college is located at 9200 Fair Oaks Blvd. with an extension in San Francisco that meets on weekends and at the Fair Oaks campus during the summer.

For more information, visit the website here. 

Photos 1-5 courtesy of Jim Heath.