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Great Barrington Waldorf High School As of July 1, 2004, the Great Barrington Waldorf High School was legally and financially incorporated as a separately incorporated school. The two schools, however, are educationally connected. Several teachers teach at both schools and the High School continues our tradition of excellence in Waldorf education, welcoming and enabling students to complete their journeys through 12 grades in Great Barrington. You may contact the High School at: Update from the
Great Barrington Waldorf High School Let’s say you are applying to college, and you have taken honors-level courses in all subjects. You’ve read Dante, Shakespeare and Emerson, and you’ve also read Susskind, Allende, Cisneros and Achebe. You studied organic chemistry, atomic physics and, on Hermit Island in Maine, zoology. You had roles in three or four plays. You’ve been to Munich or Lima once or twice, perhaps even spending a semester there as an exchange student. You have traveled each year to New York and Boston, and possibly even to Montreal. You can present a portfolio of not only writing and academic work, but also glassblowing, blacksmithing, pottery, woodwork and basketry. You’ve learned to bind books. You have spent at least a week or two on a farm, learning to work, get dirty and match the rhythms of farm life. You have also interned at, for example, a New York City newspaper or law firm. When you sit down for a college interview and the interviewer asks, so, how big is your high school class? And you answer, “six,” you have the officer’s attention. Colleges pay attention to our graduates, and middle school families looking toward high school should, as well. Our school is small, even tiny, but our students are competent, confident citizens of the world. We are, as many of you know, independent of the Great Barrington Rudolf Steiner School, but linked to it by the same serious regard for the value of Rudolf Steiner’s ideas about teaching and learning. We emphasize that these are radically different in high school from what they are in the lower school. No more dreamy paintings, no more class teacher, no more “good books.” Now it’s time for wireless internet and intellectual development. With a strong heart, developed in grades one through eight, students in high school can develop a strong and ethical head, one that can help them work to make the world a better place: more whole and less fragmented; more thoughtful and less dogmatic; more resourceful and less exploitative. By being legally and financially independent, each school, lower school and high school, can pursue its own course as it sees fit. We do hope, however, that GBRSS parents who want to preserve educational choice in the Berkshires, who value what we are and what we offer, will support us. Our faculty and trustees support the Great Barrington Rudolf Steiner School—most of us had or have children there. We know the value of the place. You could say that the unofficial motto of the Great Barrington Waldorf High School is, “You can have it all.” Our official motto is, “Seek truth. Develop imagination. Foster responsibility.” The Great Barrington Waldorf High School has three open houses scheduled this year, but you are welcome to visit us any time at 454 Main Street, Great Barrington, or seek us on the web at www.waldorfhigh.org. Call us at (413) 528-8833. |
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This year we have 18 students in grades
nine through 11; next year, when we also
have a senior class, our enrollment will
grow. We never want to have more than
about 60 students; if each class can fit in
a van, we can go where we like and the
numbers are in our favor. With more
than roughly 60 students, a school has to
provide facilities and resources that strain
a school budget until enrollment is well
over 100.