Toward Wholeness in Education

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Authors
Herman Hilker, Kaiya Noelle
Issue Date
2019
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
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Research Projects
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Abstract
In the beginning stages of this project I knew I was interested in learning more about Waldorf Education and exploring a Senior Individualized Project that would help launch me into my life after graduation. As I started exploring what it would mean to create a work of art based on my passions about education, I began doing research on Waldorf Education, specifically. As I delved into the specifics of the Waldorf Curriculum I realized that the work I would create must be interactive. The uniqueness of Waldorf Education must be experienced in order for it to be understood. One of the first works that primed the ultimate project was an interactive work that compared the Waldorf Approach to teaching the letters of the alphabet to a more traditional approach. I set up a table with the Waldorf Approach to teaching the letter B on one side with colorful beeswax crayons, a story, an illustration, a poem to recite, and blank paper for free expression. The other side of the table included the public school approach which included No. 2 pencils and black and white workbook sheets with a tracing activity. Viewers were invited to interact with the table and experience the differences between the two teaching styles. It was after this work that I realized that my interest is not only in Waldorf Education, but in a broader sense, I wanted to explore the diverse qualities of education systems and the ways in which education can be exclusionary. I decided to address this topic by targeting individual experiences in all different kinds of educational systems. I then created a work in which I posed questions related to personal experiences in education that could be responded to via paper and pen and submitted in a collection box. I followed up the previous body of work by creating a large chalkboard and using answers from one of the questions of the previous work—“what was the most valuable lesson you learned in school?”—to prompt participants to teach a lesson using the chalkboard. In creating these processes, I realized that the primary focus of my work must be to spark a thought, idea, reflection, question, conversation, and action related to education systems and experiences within them.
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37 p.
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U.S. copyright laws protect this material. Commercial use or distribution of this material is not permitted without prior written permission of the copyright holder. All rights reserved.
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