“As a toddler, Gabriel was meeting most of his milestones, but we were worried about his speech. He was saying a few words but then he kind of stopped. He was not picking up more and not using the words that he had.”

Deb Renna joins the faculty as Head teacher of our Early Childhood program. She comes to Otto Specht with a lifetime of teaching experience: first as a preschool teacher for children with Special Needs in Ridgewood, New Jersey, and then as a kindergarten teacher at Green Meadow Waldorf School (GMWS).

This was written by a high school student, working on persuasive essays. He was asked to choose and support an argument through this essay. Andres, you have convinced me!

This  is a meditation on our unique school seen through the poetry of our diverse students.

In 1924, 5 years after the first Waldorf School opened its doors, Rudolf Steiner gave a series of lectures regarding education.

Lost in my thoughts of the day, taking a moment to enjoy this newly arrived fall light as it filters through the slowly shedding limbs of trees forming the canopy covering the path, I am snapped out of my day dream world at the abrupt sound of someone coming around the bend on their way down the path. 

I began working with the Immune Sequence in October 2019 when I offered a course through Eurythmy Spring Valley to the public to prepare for the cold and flu season.

The idea popped up in a staff meeting one Tuesday afternoon while we sat, looking at each other with blank faces and wondering how we were going to go on as a school in the time of Covid 19.

At the beginning of our mandated sheltering-in-place as COVID19 spread through New York, I was stumped at how I could continue to bring the content of eurythmy to my students through an online platform.

To what do we feel connected?  Of all the specifics that make up our daily rhythms and life realities, which do we connect to in a direct way. 

Just months ago, we were preparing our young people for a world we thought we recognized. Since then, the global pandemic brought pieces of society as we knew it to a screeching halt, interrupting social and economic activity, and turning education remote.

We look around our campus and see beauty everywhere, our gardens bursting with life and color, with lessons our students left behind as seeds and soil months ago.

When Demeter, the Greek Goddess of harvest, grain, and fertility, lost her daughter, Persephone, the Goddess of springtime and vegetation, she cast the world into a great famine. 

On a cold, November day, a group of very excited students from Otto Specht School and Endeavor 21+ entered Tiger Schulmann’s Martial Arts Headquarters in Elmwood, NJ, admiring the equipment, the framed magazine covers and photos of champion fighters trained by TSMA.

After a lovely mild and bountiful summer the medicinal garden continues to grow medicinal herbs and flowers, which will be transformed into various products in the weeks to come. 

This year marks 100 years of Waldorf Education. Worldwide, Waldorf Schools and related institutions are being asked to come together in celebration of the first 100 years and to look towards the next 100 years of Waldorf Education and beyond.

Sunflowers don’t grow in the deep shaded forest; they grow where conditions meet their needs, where they can become, with all the potential that once was locked inside the hard shell of a seed.

Some of the students in the Garden House High School program are approaching graduation from High School and  are ready to transition into programs that will prepare them for adult life, with more focus on independent living and job skills.

In the nearly 10 years that I have worked at Otto Specht School, I have grown quite accustomed to speaking and writing about the unique approach of the Otto Specht School,  the benefits of Waldorf Education, and the incredible unfolding we see in our students year after year.