Welcome to Waldorf: Kassel Edition

At the end of March/beginning of April about 200 teachers from 24 different countries around the world met in Kassel, Germany for the second annual International Refresher Course Week, a conference for upper school teachers in Waldorf schools.  The focus of the 2010 conference was class 11. The courses offered for the week covered all subjects that eleventh grade Waldorf students take -- math, science, art, history, English, and even music.  This was a perfect fit for us since both Mike and I had both music and English classes in the upper grades.  I, in particular, had the 11th graders for English.

Annelie had gone to the conference last year and had been raving about the event since October.  She was especially excited because Peter Lutzker, one of the main presenters at the conference, was also teaching the two English courses being offered during the week.  Peter, originally from New York, has been teaching English in Germany for about 25 years.  He has authored many books (which Annelie had recommended to us when we dove into this job last August) and also co-founded English Week in Germany, an event which Annelie and most Waldorf English teachers adore.

Our train arrived at the Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe station before Annelie's train made it from Wolfsburg.  It became apparent as we got closer to Kassel that north-central German's weather had been quite different from the warm spring climate we'd been luxuriating in for the past week.  It was absolutely shocking to look out at the passing landscape on the train and see snow on the ground.  We were not expecting to have to go back to our winter coats.  Coming from the south we had no travel problems, but hopping off the train we quickly learned that things were not so nice from Kassel on up.  The boards showed that trains from Berlin were delayed by two hours.  When Annelie finally joined us at the station she shared horror stories of first getting to the Wolfsburg Hauptbahnhof in the snow and then the travel by train. 

Fortunately our hotel was not too far away and it didn't take us long to get there and get unpacked.  Getting up to the school from the hotel for the first time, however, was another matter.  We had free city-wide transportation passes from the hotel so we could take the tram system up the giant winding hill up to the school, but we accidentally hopped the wrong tram in our hurry to get to the check-in site and ended up having to trek up-hill in the rain for twenty minutes.  Fortunately we arrived with time to even catch a simple supper of bread, cheese, and fresh-cut vegetables between getting signed in and hearing the welcome speech and the opening lectures for the week:  teaching the concept of infinity to 11th graders and teaching history beginning with the year 1000.

The conference was held at the Waldorf School of Kassel, which had expansive grounds and many big buildings.  The first thing you notice when you step onto school property is the sound of running water.  The school has a lovely brook running through the campus.

The school grounds evoked a distinct Waldorf feel -- the shapes of the buildings were less rectangular and regular and nature was very present.  We crossed this bridge to get to our classes every day.

Over the week Mike and I attended only a few lectures outside of our subjects of English and music.  We had a set schedule that was more-or-less the same each day:  teaching Shakespeare with Peter Lutzer first thing in the morning; coffee break; large-group lecture; coffee break; general music ideas; lunch and mid-day pause; "Poetry and Drama in Performance" with Lutzer again where we worked on and acted out scenes from Shakespeare (or poetry in some cases); coffee; and other seminars that went late into the evening.  The conference was set up so that participants attended the same seminars or classes all week.

Mike and I really enjoyed Peter's seminars.  First of all, it was absolutely delightful to hear someone speak English in a non-British or European accent -- even if he is from New York.  Besides being an all-around nice guy (who's first degree was actually music performance for french horn), he is a great teacher with good ideas.  In the morning seminar he basically led us through a year of 11th grade English in five days and every day we did things that the students would do in class -- creative writing exercises, reading, answering (after formulating) review and homework questions, and eventually -- the climax of 11th grade -- working on Shakespeare.  I definitely used some of his ideas and papers when I did a very short unit on Shakespeare and his A Midsummer Night's Dream with my 11th graders at the end of the school year.

Peter's afternoon seminar was really an exercise in drama.  There is no better way to get to know Shakespeare than to use the material the way it was meant to be used.  So after learning various warm-ups for acting/performing, we divided up into groups and were assigned a scene to work on for the week and present on the final day.  Mike and I ended up in the same group and were assigned the play Pericles, a lesser known tragedy of which he wrote the last three of five acts.  Mike took the role of King Pericles who, after countless tragedies, succumbed to silence and depression.  I played his long-lost daughter, who everyone believed dead.  A fellow teacher from Estonia, Triin, played the king's most trusted adviser and friend.  Our scene was the very end of the play where the king slowly realizes that his daughter is sitting in front of him and speaks for the first time in years.  It was very strange working on and presenting this scene since I am not one who likes public speaking, much less acting.  At the same time, both of us definitely stretched ourselves and gained a lot from the experience. 

The other seminars and lectures were a bit hit and miss.  For example, the music one was interesting, but it was actually geared towards younger children.  It also focused more on experiencing musical effects and sounds rather than concrete ideas in music.  Many of the large group lectures were science and math centered so we skipped those.  We did attend a few history lectures which were at times good and at others a little too... long-winded and circular in nature.

If we weren't too exhausted after our seminars we spent the evenings hanging out with Annelie and the teachers she'd met at previous conferences.  The first night, for example, we met up with a small group of teachers from Norway who taught subjects ranging from English and literature to mathematics and biology. 

Fortunately for us, all the Norwegians had fantastic English.  Later in the week we met the entire group of Norwegian teachers.  An older gentleman teacher came and joined our group later and began a conversation in German with Mike.  After a few minutes of confusion Mike asked if he knew English and the response was, "Of course I can speak English!" (Unfortunately, the jovial indignation in his intonation cannot be captured here.  Suffice it to say, it was hilarious.  -M)

Probably the most hilarious evening was that before the day of our drama performances with the following exchanges between Mike and Petruchio (I can't remember his real name, but he and Annelie's scene in the Drama workshop was from The Taming of the Shrew) when Mike found a little bug in his wine.

Mike:  Oh no!  There's a bug in my wine!  (Mike fishes him out onto a napkin) ...And he's still alive!  He's drunk!

Petruchio:  Oh, that's Gus!  He's the house mascot.

 And later...

P:  You didn't kill Gus, did you?

M:  No, I released him.

P:  Oh, good -- because you're friends now.  At least Gus thinks so.

Isn't it nice that Mike knows how to make friends in every corner of the world?