saturday night, we went to the kids’ school to see liesl’s 8th grade class perform a midsummer night’s dream. like they did when they studied renaissance history while learning and performing an opera (which i wrote about here), this last bit, they’ve been learning about shakespearean england (liesl’s working on a custom book about shakespeare, with sketches and a biography and a bunch of other stuff). the dad of one of her classmates is a theater professor at university of san diego. he edited a midsummer night’s dream (only shortening it to about 75 minutes, instead of the orginal 2 1/2 hours, not changing any of the lines), then met with the class over a series of weeks to explain the whole thing, including having them retell it in a modern context (and with modern language).
every one of the 24 kids in liesl’s class was in the play (something you sure wouldn’t see in a play performance at a regular school), and it was absolutely fantastic. so stinking funny. and pretty amazing to watch these 13 year-olds performing rhyming shakespearean english for 75 minutes without one gaffe.
i have a hard enough time speaking american english let alone remembering shakespearean english. impressive.
Very cool indeed! But the reason you wouldn’t see each child having a role in a public school is because they have more than 24 children in an entire grade level.
Not all of us are so fortunate to be able to afford such a private education, but good for you that you can as it sounds wonderful for your children.
oregonian — while i certainly consider myself fortunate to be able to make this choice in schooling (it’s still a big financial choice, btw), our school is full of families with very moderate incomes who just place a high priority on this over other things. it’s totally not a rich kids school.
Oh no, I didn’t have the impression that it’s just a rich kids’ school. In my neck of the woods, our neighbors send their child to a Waldorf school and it runs them $1,000/month. Even though we’re of ‘moderate’ income, there is no way we could afford that, and we DO put a high premium on education, too.
Mostly I was just responding to your comment that all 24 kids were in the play and that wouldn’t happen in public school. 24 kids for an entire grade level is waaayyyy different than the numbers in public ed, so, of course, Waldorf can do some things that others cannot.
It IS cool that your kids can be there.
i long for a Waldorf school for my children!!!
my daughter is 7 months old so we better start saving!