Martin's Dream Came Alive This Summer

by Marianne Perchlik

I first felt called to teach to specifically overcome the history of injustice that I observed was impacting everything I cared about. I gradually came to realize this injustice shared one fulcrum: racism.

I chose Waldorf Education because I believe we cannot overcome this history without a deeper understanding of the soul and spiritual nature of life and humanity. Arts are tools for developing a healthy soul capable of a thirst for justice, capable of remorse, capable of compassion. Artistic activity accesses courage that can speak to the flow of unconscious, demoralizing, habitual cruelty and builds the capacity for action. A whole human being can speak from an empathetic heart.

Healing History & Called to Action

The wounds of history will need the healing balm of all kinds of practical arts: gardening, culinary arts, weaving, knitting, sewing, as well as drawing and color experiences, and all kinds of visual art, dance, movement theater arts, singing, music, etc. All of these experiences are embedded in Waldorf Education for the express purpose of healing and evolving the human soul.

When George Floyd was murdered for everyone to witness I thought that this was a moment when enough people have awakened to the bald truth that the dream of our United States is built upon a forceful, calculated, continuous, cruel history of injustice, a foundation of devastating, relentless abuses and knowing premeditated intentionally cultivated and perpetuated racism.

Our Orchard Valley Waldorf School has always represented an effort toward an inclusive community. From the beginning, we have been dedicated to offering an accessible Waldorf program and for 17 years our community has worked tirelessly to make our program accessible to anyone who seeks a Waldorf Education.

More recently, we took up a deeper examination of systemic racism in our habits and the Waldorf Movement. Last winter as we examined our school, reinforcing our existing Diversity Statement, Land Acknowledgement, and other overt policies, it became clear to me that our gestures were empty without real action.

The Dream Awakens

I felt prepared and willing to take up the task of creating a Waldorf Anti-Racism Summer Camp. I had been studying the life of Harriet Tubman for years; a model of compassionate action, defying stereotypes of gender, race and age, dedicated to love and to justice. And I was aware that I could call upon a former colleague to support the camp by offering eurythmy which I believe to be the most curative force in Waldorf Education. 

In a deep wintery moment, as I contemplated the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr., I could imagine on our beautiful, glorious campuses - campuses we are privileged to inhabit and direct - Martin’s Dream of black and brown children playing and learning alongside white children in joy, happiness and freedom. With the responsiveness of colleagues and interest from families in our community and beyond, we were able to offer two week-long camps; one at the Child’s Garden campus and one on the main campus of Grace Farm. 

Our Camp: Intergenerational Conversation & Participation

The camp took up Martin’s Dream. We took up in more detail the early life of Harriet Tubman, whose original name was Araminta (affectionately known as “Minty”). I knew our camp must support parents in growing the capacity to meaningfully engage with students on these matters. This must be an intergenerational conversation. 

Each day we took up part of the heroic story of Minty. Preparing a presentation including silk marionettes, verse, eurythmy as well as singing and poetry. Our students and parents created a living representation of the childhood of our heroine.

Of the families who were attracted by the theme, some of those parents actually work in the field of equity and justice. Three of those families had never heard of our organization and were willing to come because they recognized the necessity and importance of the theme.

Children everywhere were already suffering from the limitations of the pandemic, and the increased awareness of Climate Change and racial injustice. And we have known that the rates of anxiety, depression and youth suicide have been escalating rapidly since well before the pandemic. Including parent participation and engagement was essential.

Camp Reflections

The camp included children many of whom were siblings from rising Kindergarteners to 4th grade. The questions and conversations surrounding our preparation were deep and compassionate with a generous amount of nature exploration, active games and free play. 

On the last day, I asked the students, “Why have I brought us all together on a beautiful summer day to share in such a sad story?" Immediately a rising 3rd grader answered, “because of Martin’s Dream.” Before I could respond, a rising 4th grader stated, "Because it’s still going on."

At Child's Garden, we had 10 campers and one Mentor in Training; six of these students were Child's Garden alums who now attend public school. The other four participants, and the 13-year-old Mentor in Training, were attracted because of the theme from the larger community.

At Grace Farm we had nine campers also; six were Orchard Valley students, two of whom were newly enrolled having recently moved to the area. One student formerly had attended Early Childhood programming and was now attending public school. Two were from the larger community attracted by the theme.

Campers from Orchard Valley's Early Childhood Summer Program attended the final presentation of the Martin's Dream Camp. We were also able to incorporate culinary arts and gardening activities at the Child’s Garden where students harvested black currants for preserves and helped prepare roasted purple potatoes and multicolored carrots, as well as harvesting snap peas for shared snacks. Sharing different colored foods offered a sensory experience of encountering differences and became a launching pad for noticing more explicitly how we react to encountering differences in something ordinary like sharing food.

Visions for the Future

In 1996, my husband and I were VISTA volunteers and we created a Service Exchange for High School students in Middlebury and Rutland areas. We created an MLK Service Celebration offering diversity training, African dinner and dancing, and community service to elders in Rutland. In Middlebury, through the support of the I Have A Dream Foundation, we offered a student exchange between families from Middlebury High School and Hartford High School in Hartford, CT for long weekends in October in Middlebury and April in Hartford. Participating families offered homestays and we shared in community service efforts in both communities. 

I can imagine this kind of summer programming at Orchard Valley in the future after the pandemic ends, where we can share the beauty of our campus with urban children and sow seeds of friendship among children of different races and colors. I can also imagine hosting a similar African meal and dance with diversity training around the celebration of MLK and possibly at the Montpelier Grange.

For next summer, I would very much like to consider offering Martin's Dream Camp again and continuing to work with the theme of Martin's Dream through puppetry, movement, verse and song as we did last summer, possibly including a Gospel Music camp. I would also like to provide scholarships for families of color.

My Journey With Racism & Waldorf Education

The privilege of my education demonstrated to me the climate of institutional racism that was the industry standard for all colleges and universities. I noticed, for example, the outright absence of any authors apart from white male authors as an English and Theater major.

“Thankfully, because of one “Women in Literature” course, I had the opportunity to read Toni Morrison at 19 in the late 1980s. In Law School, I studied the civil rights movement case by case. I read the overt, calculated, intentional policies to destroy and dehumanize the native people of the United States. I studied with one of the most prominent professors in the country who was revealing the disproportionate incarceration and execution rate of African Americans at that time in the early 1990s.” I know. I’ve known.

I started teaching at The Initiative; a Vermont Waldorf High School that operated on the campus of Goddard College for 4 years. The entire initiative was based on creating an inclusive environment for youth to face and overcome this ruthless history, for the evolution of a humanity capable of stronger loving relationships. 

When the Initiative closed I returned to working with new parents, and very young children; work I had done in a private practice of Childbirth Education, Parent Education and Doula Service. 

Another reason I began teaching with High School students was because it is what Rudolf Steiner recommended. Working with teens as their soul body bursts into being between the ages of 12 - 21 demands that we face and tame the unresolved burdens of our own soul. 

“When children come to the age of puberty, it is necessary to awaken within them an extraordinarily great interest in the world outside of themselves. Through the whole way in which they are educated, they must be led to look out into the world around them and into all its laws, its course, causes and effects, into men's intentions and goals — not only into human beings, but into everything, even into a piece of music, for instance. All this must be brought to them in such a way that it can resound on and on within them — so that questions about nature, about the cosmos and the entire world, about the human soul, questions of history — so that riddles arise in their youthful souls.” - Rudolf Steiner, Education for Adolescents, 1922

(Education for Adolescents, by Rudolf Steiner, was published by the Journal for Anthroposophy in Spring 1979 from excerpts of a lecture given in Stuttgart on June 21, 1922)

Alumni Reflections

by Julie Henderson

Julie Henderson was one of the early founders of Orchard Valley Waldorf School and had such a passionate vision for the land and what could be made manifest for the children of our community. We are so blessed to have her presence still resonating in our school community even though her children have long since graduated. Her sharp intellect and commitment to the school are both inspiring and deeply comforting. We invited Julie to share her story and journey with Waldorf Education and Orchard Valley.

My introduction to Waldorf education came at a talk given at the Child's Garden by a former kindergarten teacher. What I heard that autumn evening changed, in an instant, how I thought about my three-year-old daughter’s developing mind, about parenting, about school. Through the many years that followed, my commitment to Waldorf education never wavered. Even when it was delivered imperfectly, I held fast to my understanding of Waldorf principles: that this form of education strives to meet the child where they are, developmentally; that it values each child for the gifts they bring and helps the other children see and appreciate these; that a child is a being not just of mind, but of soul and spirit; and that they have capacities for thinking, feeling and willing, that can be nurtured and cultivated at the right time and in the right way. I came to recognize that the teachers were acting with intentionality, borne of an understanding of the true human being. Every lesson, every activity, arose out of this shared perception. The purpose? To educate children with love, that they might go forth, in freedom, to meet their particular destiny in their full potential. 

Pictured above: my daughter, Piper French, was in the first graduating class of Orchard Valley in 2008. She went on to Lake Champlain Waldorf High School and then Brown University. My son Eli French graduated Orchard Valley in 2012 and went to U32 and then Colby College.

My daughter first attended Morning Garden, then two years of mixed-age kindergarten. At the time there was no Waldorf grades school in central Vermont. The nearest option was the Green Mountain Waldorf School, in Wolcott – a 45-minute bus ride away. Many previous parents had utilized this option, but for a small group of us, we could not imagine taking that step. 

The Child’s Garden had a single classroom of twenty children and did not have the capacity to start a grades school. Our parent group forged ahead on its own, advertising – the old-fashioned, pre-internet way – with posters that read: "Seeking A Waldorf Teacher, Interested Families, and A Space." This impulse had surfaced a few times previously in the central Vermont community, with no success, and I was told later that some thought our poster naïve, even audacious! 

But the cosmos aligned, the time was right, and the year was 2000 – a time for many new beginnings. The wonderful Miss Jacqueline Gabe appeared to teach a first grade with seven students, in a rented house on land in Berlin. So much excitement for this first class! Parents contributed incredible amounts of energy and resources to bring this dream to fruition; it was a time of awe, gratitude, great fun, and goodwill. 

Three Rivers School co-existed peacefully with the Child’s Garden for several years, only adding another first grade three years later. There was both interest, and resistance, in uniting the schools. Each school was growing and needed more space, and it became clear that the best way to bring the two together would be to find a property with room for both. A third entity took up this effort, looking for properties and financial support. After an intense, brief fundraising effort, the group successfully purchased the amazing Grace Farm campus at auction in August 2003. These were heady times, both exhilarating and exhausting, as renovations were made to the farmhouse and the former dairy barn. Countless hours were spent in meetings and workdays, with parents and community members working so hard to create this new school. Nine months after beginning co-habitation, the Child’s Garden and Three Rivers School merged, and The Orchard Valley Waldorf School was born. Those of us present experienced the profound privilege of being part of a truly creative act.  

Still, there were more years ahead of monumental effort at continuing renovations as well as developing the school’s infrastructure. Support continued to flow from the spiritual worlds in manifest ways - how else could seven families and one teacher have started a school that grew, at one point, to 120 grades students? I learned that this support is ever-present if only we seek it. 

Over the years, I have seen the number of students and families expand and contract. I am continually grateful for - and delighted by - those who find their way to this education, this community, this place. I am in awe of the sacrifices families make that their children might be here. I know they must understand, or at least sense, what is being offered to their children. So much more than academics! The artistic and practical activities foster strong soul forces in the growing child. Love and reverence for the world and each other develops strong social intelligence. There is much at work in the world against our higher human impulses, and helping the child develop their whole being enables them to meet these obstacles and distractions. I continue to support Orchard Valley because it is so important to me that children – all children – have the opportunity for this education. 

I have witnessed the school’s transitions and challenges, the arrivals and departures. It is not the same school we started twenty years ago. It is being re-created, over and over, by new groups of parents, teachers and staff. It is an evolving, living entity grown from seeds planted decades earlier. I always understood that Three Rivers, and then Orchard Valley, stood on the foundation laid by the Child’s Garden. But only after years in the grade school did I come to deeply appreciate that Orchard Valley would not have come fully into being without the Green Mountain Waldorf School having gone before. After it closed, teachers and families flowed to Orchard Valley, strengthening the faculty and expanding the base of committed Waldorf families. I began to recognize that there is, indeed, a time for all things, and what we do today will bear fruit in the future, even if at present we cannot imagine what form that will take. The school today is a moment in this flow, evolving to meet the needs of the times. My hope is that the impulse at the heart remains, while the vessel of the school forms and reforms through time. 

I knew nothing about Rudolf Steiner, or anthroposophy, (the foundation for Waldorf pedagogy) when our family began its 15-year journey with Waldorf education. I only knew that what I heard at that very first parent talk I attended was true. Those truths were augmented and reinforced over the years through the wise guidance of teachers and the thoughtful reflection of other parents. I have witnessed our two children grow into caring, responsible, confident and capable young adults. I am forever grateful for what they received through Waldorf education, and for the way it shaped our family’s life.”