CURRICULUM: Wilderness Education Program HELPING STUDENTS DEVELOP CONNECTIONS TO NATURE AND WITHIN THEMSELVES Since its founding the Santa Fe Waldorf School has emphasized outdoor education, teaching children to be adventurers and stewards of the land through distinctive wilderness experiences. Program Director Matthew Burritt says this part of our curriculum, "leads students into rich connections with the natural world to help foster connections between people, and most importantly, to oneself." Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf education, said that learning about oneself is easier "… in the quiet peacefulness, inner dignity, and charm of nature." With an abundance of wilderness areas within minutes of the campus, SFWS is ideally situated to incorporate the natural world into its curriculum. Class trips occur yearly up through the grades, so that by eighth grade, students may have camped in Chaco Canyon or Bandelier National Monument, climbed Wheeler Peak (the tallest mountain in New Mexico), and may have spent time rafting on a southwestern river among many other adventures, notes Burritt, who also teaches High School math and science and is the co-sponsor of the Class of 2025. In the High School, he says, students continue their wilderness education through experiences designed to help them develop from the outside inwards, through emphasizing community building and adventure challenges. The program started under the leadership of former SFWS teachers, Karl Johnson and Mary Freitas, in 2001. By 2004, the first senior class was out on solo with the changing aspen leaves and majestic ponderosa pines,
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The Grade 9 farm trip brings students closer to understanding the life of a farm and the realities of growing food.
says Burritt, and every senior class since has completed the wilderness solo with 2021 marking the seventeenth consecutive trip. In 2005, ninth and 12th graders started the school year with the tradition of traveling together to the Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center in the Carson National Forest. Then and now, the senior class welcomes the freshman students into the high school community. Says Burritt, this act of community-building becomes a "mirror" that the seniors use to consider themselves four short years ago, and compare themselves to how they are now. For the ninth graders, the wilderness retreat is an adventure filled with hiking, lessons about self-care, and how to sleep outside, all under the helpful guidance of the senior class with cozy casitas and a beautiful lodge to take the edge off, he adds. Later in the school year, the ninth-grade students go on a farm trip, which reminds them of their third-grade farm visit, and brings the students closer to understanding the life of a farm and the realities of growing food.
"STUDENTS FORM CONNECTIONS WITH THE NATURAL WORLD AROUND THEM, AND ONCE FORMED, THEN A PLACE CAN BE KNOWN, AND WHEN A PLACE IS KNOWN IT CAN BE LOVED, AND WHEN A PLACE IS LOVED...WE PROTECT THOSE PLACES WE LOVE."
Grade 10 students test their capabilities during a Chama River rafting trip full of fun and adventure.
