In most classrooms these days, you see students using computers and other technical gadgets as a regular part of their classroom day. One private Spokane school is resisting that. The Windsong School is a kindergarten through eighth grade private school that embraces a counter-cultural approach, based on the Waldorf education model.
SPR’s Kyrsten Weber talks with Windsong teacher Lauren Bergsted and administrator Jaycee Magee about their education paradigm and unique approach to technology.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Kyrsten Weber: For folks who don't know what Waldorf education is, would you flesh that out for us?
Lauren/Jaycee: Sure. Waldorf education is an educational pedagogy that came out of Europe in the 1920s after the World War as a response to the horrible events of that time and understanding that education has the power to impact the way that human beings interact with one another. From its foundation, Waldorf education was meant to be social in its very foundation to help people better understand one another and know what it looks like to live in the world together.
KW: Waldorf education, from what I understand, has far less technology integrated into it, correct?
L/J: Sure. From its inception, Waldorf education has not used technology in the classroom. And 15 years ago when the school started and we were talking with parents about limiting media exposure even in their own homes, it was considered kind of fringy.
And now we know in current brain research and kind of current discussions that are happening in education, we're taking a much closer look at whether there's benefit to ed tech in the classroom and also on the flip side of that, some of the things that we've lost because of this big increase in the use of technology in the classroom. Here at Windsong, you won't find a device used by students or teachers in the classroom at any point in time.
KW: So no computer, no internet search. A lot of use of the library, I would imagine.
L/J: A lot of use of the library, yep.
KW: Did you come out of a Waldorf background or did you come out of a traditional school background?
LB: I came out of a traditional school background. Both of my parents were public school teachers, but I also went to school before the internet.
KW: Did you teach in a traditional school setting or have you always taught in a Waldorf setting?
LB: Well, no, I have an interesting background. I was actually a pediatric physical therapist prior to becoming a parent and then joined this Waldorf interest group when we were looking at starting a school here.
And from there, became very interested in Waldorf education and went back and got a Waldorf teaching certificate and have been teaching since then. I'm interested in the perspective of teachers or parents who have come from a traditional school background with technology coming into Waldorf, what they observed in their kids and how they learned and how they consumed technology. I think we really approach it with intention.
I think that stands out. We really work out of the imagination, hands-on, social, emotional learning is really important as well. Your interaction with curriculum and your social life is quite different.
You've removed that barrier that's in front of you and you can really see the people in front of you, your coursework in front of you in a different way.
KW: What do you say to parents who are curious but think that level of restricting technology is detrimental for their students' future college and career prospects?
LB: I think we say that there's a time and place for everything. It certainly doesn't mean that children won't at some point in time, or students, I guess you could say, are going to come across technology.
And realistically, most of the parents who send their kids to our school have computers at home. Children are exposed to devices all the time. In our school, what we're hoping to build in students are capacities. And if you've built up capacities, you could take something new, like a computer, and use those capacities and soon quickly know how to use it.
My daughter moved from Windsong to public school this year in middle school, and her biggest complaints in the first couple of months were that the computer was really hard to use. We don't allow our kids access to computers at home.
But by November, December, I didn't hear anything else from her. So it took her a handful of months to be able to utilize a device that the rest of her classmates have been using for a very long period of time. It hasn't been too big of a hindrance for her.
KW: I know from having talked to college professors and also some high school teachers that the use of technology has in many ways hindered students' abilities to connect on an interpersonal level with their teachers, with their peers. Do you have students coming into Windsong who struggle with that at the beginning? Or are most of your students coming in at an early enough age that that's not an issue?
LB: I mean, I would say most of our students are coming in at an early enough age that we are educating parents and talking with families about media exposure. I can certainly say in the kindergarten, I see what social difficulties media exposure creates, even at that young of age.
And we're not talking about attention at this point in time. We're talking about this ability to use our imagination for play. And it can be very driven by whatever TV shows that the child has been watching that seem to really grab ahold of their brain in a strong way.
And it takes them a long time to kind of play out of that. But I would say most of our parents can really get on board on limiting media exposure. And then during the school day, the children and students have so much time to interact with one another and really have that face-to-face and undivided attention.
Because I'm also not, my attention isn't divided by this computer in which I'm trying to pull up content or my phone in which I'm trying to pull up content. I'm there.
KW: Has that been an adjustment for your child to move from Windsong into the public school setting and all of a sudden be immersed with technology all the time?
LB: Well, I think in some ways she's been really lucky because of the district that she's in and some of the more progressive things that we're seeing in public education where they're having a bell-to-bell, no cell phone policy.
She doesn't have a cell phone and that isn't a hindrance for her because the rest of her classmates in middle school right now don't have cell phones available to them during the school day. She did talk about the challenges of trying to learn through a screen instead of the teacher in front of her. She did recognize that she was very tuned into learning from a person.
And then this switch to trying to learn something from the screen has been a hindrance, but it's also been an opportunity for advocacy for herself. I tell her, if you don't understand something, you have to ask. Teachers actually do want to be asked.
KW: Do you think it's hard for students in a standard school setting to advocate for themselves if they're used to having their education given to them over a screen and then having to go to a teacher to ask for help?
L/J: I could see how that could be, where you're used to getting your content and your exchanges from this non-real device and then having to step out and be in the world in a much different way by talking to a person to advocate for yourself. When I think about it from an early childhood educator point of view, I think some of this, like being able to advocate for yourself when you're in high school with another adult, was did you have practice in your early years advocating for yourself with peers?
Like when we got rid of play-based education, we got rid of all of the practice that children had in kind of the friction that comes along with being with others. But part of that friction is having the practice of saying, hey, I don't like what you're doing or hey, I don't want to play that or how about we play like this? And I think at that young age, that's what advocacy transforms into when you get older, like this little bit of self-reliance. I know the next steps to solve my problem and also a bit of self-confidence because they have successes with that.
KW: Is play-based education an integral part of what you do at Windsong?
LB: Yeah, so our early childhood program, which is mixed age, which is something that you used to see in the 80s when I went to school, but certainly you see a lot in Europe where you have children who are three to six years old all in a classroom and that's considered kindergarten. We are completely play-based, which means there are child-led times during the day and then we're also building up the foundational skills that you need for academic learning, being able to listen, being able to sit in a chair for a certain amount of time, being able to use your hands for writing.
Those are woven in, but a lot of the time we support the children playing with one another. We understand the brain is developing in a certain way during this early childhood years and we actually rob the brain of getting to develop in that way when we start with explicit and kind of formal learning. So at Windsong, formal explicit learning is delayed until the first grade.
KW: So at what point do students start getting homework?
L/J: Oh, we don't do homework until third grade. Your first homework is to make your own lunch. Yep, that is the homework.
So you start with in third grade, that's your first piece of homework is every day you're responsible for making your own lunch and bringing it to school.
The Windsong School is located on the Mukogawa U-S campus just west of Spokane Falls Community College.