WHAT MAKES RSHS DIFFERENT?
The heart of our school is our Waldorf curriculum and teaching methods.
It boils down to three words: what we teach; how we teach it; and when we teach a particular subject.
What
Our academic program has a depth and coherence not found in most high schools. In addition to year-long math and language track classes, core academic subjects such as Chemistry, Biology, History, Physics, special Math topics, and English are taught in immersive three to four week seminars called “Main Lessons” throughout all four grades. This means that students come back to a subject from a new perspective each year they are in high school, rather than having it for one year and not returning to it. Students therefore build up knowledge year over year, draw connections between subjects, and continue to experience all subjects as they grow.
How
We believe that lasting knowledge comes from experience. Whether it be a natural phenomenon, a literary text, or mathematical pattern, our method emphasizes careful observation followed by critical and imaginative thinking. We expect students to be engaged rather than passive, and they are rewarded not only with a deeper understanding of the subjects they learn but with the excitement and joy of discovery. Our Main Lessons are anything but dry!
Science classes at RSHS train students to observe carefully, perform experiments, and develop an understanding of the data they collect themselves and the phenomena they study. Unlike many schools that teach science through online videos and textbooks, our science classes have hands on laboratory sections. Our method teaches students to think scientifically and understand the lawfulness of nature. Many of our graduates go on to careers in science, including in engineering, life science, and medicine. Even students who do not go into the sciences gain highly useful skills.
In our humanities classes, we teach classic texts, but never because they are what has always been taught or because they are on a list somewhere. A classic isn’t an old book, it’s a book that’s always new. The questions and insights of Hamlet or the Ramayana are as relevant now as they ever were. We teach these texts at the appropriate age and in a manner that speaks to the questions high school students naturally have. We teach classics from the Western canon, but also from many world traditions.
We do give homework, but our students don’t do busywork or cookie cutter assignments. Our Main Lesson Books increase retention of information, train organization and study skills, integrate arts and academics, and allow students to make the subject their own. Some of our alumni tell us that they still make Main Lesson Books in college, because they find it’s simply the best way to really learn a subject well!
When
Our main lessons are arranged in a way that makes sense academically and developmentally. For example, students study Dante’s Divine Comedy in eleventh grade and not in ninth both because it’s helpful to have two years of background in order to really appreciate the book and because the themes of exile and isolation, meaning and morality, resonate far more strongly with the experiences of an eleventh grader than they would with a ninth grader. This principle underlies the whole structure of the curriculum. Our students thus receive something you simply cannot get from an all-elective curriculum: an integrated, coherent, comprehensive grounding in all the core academic subjects.
Main Lesson Across the Grades
Many people assume that what makes Waldorf schools unique is a focus on art. While we do love our art program, we are not an art school. At the high school level, the focus is really on cultivating thinking. Each year of the Main Lesson curriculum is geared towards developing a particular kind of intellectual skill, which, taken together, constitute a powerful training for college and for life.
9th Grade Main Lessons
Our ninth grade year trains powers of observation. It focuses on structure and transformation. Students learn about the chemical transformations in the carbon cycle in Chemistry and the social transformations of world revolutions in History; about the structure of the human body in Anatomy and the structure of human character in the Novel. They also develop basic skills: laboratory skills in the many hands-on labs in ninth grade Chemistry and Physics, geometric drawing and visualization skills in Descriptive Geometry, and grammar and reading skills in English classes.
- Chemistry: Organic Chemistry
- History: Revolutions, Pontiac Trail (Local History)
- Life Sciences: Anatomy
- Earth Science: Geology
- English: The Novel, History of Drama
- Physics: Sound, Thermal Physics
- Mathematics: Descriptive Geometry
- Aesthetics: History of Art I (Western), History of Art II (Asia, Africa, Americas)
- Trip: Farming (Life Science)
10th Grade Main Lessons
The tenth grade curriculum trains powers of comparison. Ancient History takes students back to the beginning, comparing how different cultures addressed the big questions of life in their creation stories and religious traditions, while The Epic looks at heroes from the ancient world who illustrate the ways different cultures struck the balance between the individual and the group (something tenth graders are always trying to figure out among themselves). In science, students study nature and physics by looking at opposites in tension and in harmony: acids and bases, opposed forces, human physiology, and weather systems. The Drama block helps to form the class into a whole by putting on a fully staged production of a Greek Tragedy.
- Chemistry: Acids, Salts, and Bases
- History: Ancient Cultures, Greek History
- Life Sciences: Physiology, Embryology
- Earth Science: Meteorology
- English: The Epic, Poetry
- Physics: Mechanics
- Mathematics: Trigonometry
- Drama: Greek Tragedy
- Trip: Surveying (Trigonometry)
11th Grade Main Lessons
The eleventh grade curriculum trains students in abstract, analytical thinking. Students work through the observations that led to the periodic table of elements and the atomic theory in Chemistry, study the mathematics of infinity in Projective Geometry, and do advanced lab work in Cell Biology. In History and English they study the historical and fictional pilgrims, explorers, and exiles of the Middle Ages, from Dante to Parzival, who went looking for purpose in life. They also study changes in Western thinking in the Renaissance through Shakespeare’s plays, and the idealism of Beethoven in History of Music. These humanities classes focus on topics that eleventh graders are already asking questions about. Finally, internships allow students gain work experience and independence. Eleventh grade is a challenging and impressive year that often forms the basis of students’ college acceptances and successes.
- Chemistry: The Periodic Table, Atomic Theory
- History: Medieval World, Modern Asian and African History
- Life Sciences: Cell Biology, Botany, Entomology
- English: Dante’s Divine Comedy, Wolfram’s Parzival, Shakespeare
- Physics: Electricity and Magnetism
- Mathematics: Projective Geometry
- Aesthetics: History of Music: Beethoven and Beyond
- Trip: Internships
12th Grade Main Lessons
The twelfth grade curriculum develops the faculty of synthesis. The World Literature and Italy blocks help students put together what they’ve learned in their studies of literature and history. As students prepare to go away to colleges and careers, courses like Faust, Transcendentalists, and afternoon electives in Russian Literature help them think through what they will do with their lives and who they want to be. In science, students study human identity by looking at DNA and the evolution of our species. The humanities curriculum culminates in the Italy Trip, in which students experience the art and history they’d learned about first hand, thinking, sketching, and meeting the Italians our school has formed connections with over the many years of this trip. The year ends with the Senior Play, a Shakespeare comedy in which the whole senior class works together to put on a quality production.
- Chemistry: Biochemistry
- History: The Transcendentalists, Italy
- Life Sciences: Evolution, Zoology
- English: Goethe’s Faust, World Literature
- Physics and Natural Science: Optics, Astronomy
- Aesthetics: History of Architecture
- Trips: Maine Trip (Marine Biology), Italy Trip (History, Architecture, and Art)
- Drama: Shakespeare Comedy