Advice to waldorf teachers, or at least to myself in 2010

As you may know, I left full time teaching around 2 years ago.  It was painful and hard, and in retrospect, the right thing at the time, but my God, it was awful.  My story now, is that I left being a class teacher, because I needed to spend more time with my family (true!) and wanted time to pursue storytelling (also true!) and to find my own direction again.  However, it is also that I was really, really struggling as a teacher.  Being in a lot of other classrooms over the past months as a substitute, I have learned so much about what I was missing.

I spent my first eleven years as a teacher working in one small, developing school.  I knew the families I was working with, and they knew me, and had watched me grow from a fresh-out-of-college girl to my full stature as a teacher and leader in the school.  My classroom style was tuned to working with small groups of students, 12 at the most, who came to me with a really strong early childhood foundation.  They could be left alone in the classroom for a few minutes while I stepped into the office to take a few deep breaths and check my mailbox. I had the freedom to throw out lesson plans and walk to the beach with my class when the weather was fine, and to construct my day-to-day curriculum as each year unfolded.  I am proud of my work at that school, and so very proud to have taught the amazing young people who came out of it -- if you know them, you know how fantastic they are. It was hard work, with many, many long meetings. The school brought out the best and worst in all of us, and it was like a big, noisy, argumentative family in many ways. 

I stepped into an established school, where I soon learned the school I came from was viewed by some as "not a real Waldorf school", and I tried to make it work.  Waldorf teacher training is focused mainly on understanding the development of human consciousness throughout childhood and adulthood; my training as a teacher was heavy on the "why" and intentionally sketchy on the "how."  I carried with me an assumption that any classroom issues stemmed from either a lack of proper inner attitude on my part, or on some constitutional characteristic of the child in question. The cultural differences led to a huge number of mistakes on my part, and the larger class and wider range of skills and temperament demanded a very different approach than I knew how to take. 

I lacked some key skills in classroom management, planning, and workplace etiquette.  On top of this, I had a child who was still nursing, and I slept around 5-6 hours a night.  This was a recipe for disaster.  My colleagues and I were not working from the same playbook; I was exhausted and ill; there was a disastrous "mentoring" visit from a master teacher.  In short, we all could have seen the writing on the wall from the beginning. I needed another 5 hours in my day -- three to sleep, two to plan. 

So, here is what I wish I had understood four years ago:

1. You need a plan for classroom management that stems from a goal that feels authentic and enlivening.  I tried a lot of classroom management strategies.  The problem with that?  They were strategies without a philosophy I could get behind.  It was like trying to base my presence in the classroom on the second story of a house without a ground floor.  Responsive Classroom would have been a really good choice, and I'd recommend working on a really clear picture of what a functioning classroom looks like, so you and your colleagues are on the same page. Very, very important.
2. It really, really helps to look at how the rest of the educational world works, and how other folks are teaching reading, math, writing, etc.  Waldorf has a rich, varied, and soul-deep curriculum.  So much is left up to the individual teacher, that it can be really, really overwhelming.  It helps to have some real understanding of the pace and scope of the schools around you, so you can speak with confidence with parents, and so that you can pick and choose best practices that address the needs of the children in front of you. That's the heart of Waldorf: the teacher needs to be free to address those needs and to teach well, and needs knowledge and resources to do so.
3. You need a lot of support.  A LOT.  I remember a fellow student at training who talked about a master teacher who started a talk about lesson preparation by saying, "So, friends, when you finish your dinner, and go into the study and close the door..." Get the support you need so that you feel like such a thing might be possible, even if it's before breakfast, or on Saturday, or whenever it is.  
4. Self.  Care.  I'm not just talking about your all-important Inner Work.  You'll hear all about that in teacher training.  What I didn't learn, was how to balance my life.  I didn't make good use of my prep periods, because that was the only time, most days, that I had any time to read, or write, or walk, or talk to adults other than my spouse.  So, then that meant trying to plan lessons at 9 or 10 at night after suffering through another marathon bedtime.  Did not work.  Please plan accordingly.
5. People are watching and judging all the time.  Everything you do and say, and they don't all want you to succeed, even if they say they do.  Assume you are being watched every single moment you are in the classroom, or the halls, or the office, or the teacher's lounge.  It sounds awful, but this was so much my downfall.  Waldorf teachers need a thick skin, and need to be good at seeming calm, cheerful, and serene.  I didn't do so well on this one, either.

I want to elaborate more on some of these, but I'm tired, and trying to get more than 5-6 hours of sleep a night.  My son finally started sleeping through the night 2 years ago, so I'm off to enjoy sleep interrupted only by cats, the dog, and my own ridiculous dreams...