Instead of traditional grades, MSS uses qualitative, holistic evaluations. This approach incorporates continuous observations of academic, social, emotional, and artistic growth. Our evaluations are based on daily interactions, project portfolios, and individual student presentations.

Children who transfer from a Waldorf school into a more traditional school setting during grades 1-3 will likely need to spend time over the summer refining their reading skills, as Waldorf schools’ approach to teaching reading is a more graduated approach. On the other hand, students often find they are more advanced in speech and language, social studies, mathematics, and artistic activities. Children moving during the middle and upper grades should experience no academic problems. In most cases, transferring students of this age group find themselves ahead of their classmates and with an eagerness to learn.

Waldorf education believes in introducing reading when a child is developmentally ready, typically around age 6 or 7. This approach prioritizes motor skills, oral language development, imagination, and a genuine love for learning. Although formal reading instruction is postponed, classrooms are abundant with storytelling and pre-reading activities.

MSS celebrates festivals drawn from various cultures to connect with nature’s cycles, reinforcing community bonds. These celebrations, present in the school’s calendar, include storytelling, food, and songs. Birthdays are also celebrated with great reverence.

Waldorf Education, established by Rudolf Steiner and Emil Molt in 1919, has its foundations in Anthroposophy. At the heart of anthroposophy is the belief that humanity has the wisdom to transform itself and the world, through one’s own spiritual development. To that end, Waldorf Education holds as its primary intention the ideal of bringing forth – in every child – their unique potential in a way that serves the further development of humanity. The curriculum, pedagogy, and teaching methods are design to nurture this potential.

Waldorf schools are not art schools. The curriculum offers a classical education in all academic disciplines that fully integrates that arts into its teaching methodology. Why? Because research continues to show that the inclusion of the arts in academia increases aptitude and creative thinking in areas such as math and science, and has a positive effect on emotional development as well.

Music education plays a significant role in Waldorf schools from grade one through high school. All students learn to play flute or recorder in first grade, and are encouraged to take up an orchestral instrument beginning in grade three. In many schools, wind instruments are offered as an alternative to strings in middle grades. Vocal music is also introduced in Grade 1, with the complexity of choral material increasing by grade level.

People assimilate languages most easily when young. The language “window” is recognized in Waldorf schools, and virtually all schools teach one or two languages beginning in first grade. At Mojave Springs, the foreign language is Spanish and begins in early childhood as young as two years old.

All sciences begging with simple nature experiences in kindergarten and the early grades, and advance with the study of acoustics, heat magnetism, and electricity in middle school to chemistry, biology, botany, zoology and moder physics in high school. THe emphasis is on direct encounters with observable phenomena – “Describe what happened. Evaluate what you have observed. What are the conditions under which the phenomena appear? How does this relate to what you already know?” Then students are asked to think through the experiment and discover the natural law that stands behind the phenomena.

Waldorf teachers appreciate that technology must assume a role in education, but at the appropriate developmental stage, when a young person has reached the intellectual maturity to reason abstractly an process concretely on his or her own, which is at around the age of 14. Society might challenge this principle, as many young children are well able to complete sophisticated tasks on a computer. The Waldorf perspective is that computer exposure should not be based on compatibility but on developmental appropriateness. While many applaud adult-like thinking in young children, we observe that child’s natural, instinctive, creative and curious way of relating to the world may be repressed when technology is introduced into learning at an early age. – Excerpt from NYTimes Opinion, 5/2014, Author Beverly Amico

Computers and digital technology are not part of the early grades curriculum, although mechanical technology and the practical arts are incorporated at all levels. In high school, computers and digital aids are used in the classroom as teaching tools across all disciplines, and computer-specific courses may be taught. All high school students utilize computers and digital equipment at home for research, to aid in their schoolwork and for in-class or school-wide presentations.

Waldorf schools are non-sectarian and non-denominational. They educate all children, regardless of their cultural or religious backgrounds. The pedagogical method is comprehensive, and, as a part of its task, seeks to bring about recognition and understanding of all the world cultures and religions. Waldorf schools are not part of any church. They espouse no particular religious doctrine but are based on a belief that there is a spiritual dimension to the human being and to all of life. Waldorf families come from a broad spectrum of religious traditions and interests.

These two educational approaches began with a similar goal: to design a curriculum that was developmentally appropriate to the child and that addressed the child’s need to learn in a tactile as well as intellectual way. The philosophies are otherwise different.