Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Suncoast Waldorf School teaches the fine art of life

Students at the Palm Harbor school learn by doing, not memorizing.

By JANE MADDEN WELCH, Times Correspondent
Published January 23, 2008

Barbara Bedingfield is the founder and a teacher at the Suncoast Waldorf School, which opened in Palm Harbor in 2006.
	[Joseph Garnett, Jr. | Times]

PALM HARBOR - Not long ago, Elaine Blodgett's two young sons would scream when she turned off the TV.

"Now they don't even ask me to turn it on anymore," she said.

Blodgett, who lives in Palm Harbor, attributes the change to her sons' study at the Suncoast Waldorf School, a private, nonprofit, nonreligious school where parents are encouraged to reduce or eliminate television and computer games.

"Research is stronger and stronger that television is making children passive," said Barbara Bedingfield, who founded the school and teaches third grade there.

When Shai Ringer and her husband decided to move to the Tampa Bay area, one criterion was locating a Waldorf school for their 5-year-old daughter, Gretchen. There are only a handful of Waldorf schools in Florida, although there are more than 700 worldwide.

The Ringers moved to Tarpon Springs and enrolled Gretchen in kindergarten at the Suncoast Waldorf School in August.

"The children are really given free rein to come into themselves," Mrs. Ringer said. "They get to experience art and nature, to pick out new skills they wouldn't get in public schools."

The Waldorf method of education was developed by Rudolf Steiner in 1919 in Stuttgart, Germany. It emphasizes the development of body, soul and spirit through art, music, drama and movement.

The Suncoast Waldorf School opened in Palm Harbor in 2006 in a former day care center. The homelike environment of the classrooms includes mostly natural products..

The Suncoast Waldorf School has about 100 students in kindergarten through seventh grade. The school is supported by tuition, which ranges from $3,800 to $10,000 annually.

Knitting begins in the first grade. German and Spanish are also introduced. Handwork includes baking bread, working with beeswax, playing stringed instruments and painting with watercolors. In middle school, students learn astronomy, geology, physics, chemistry and botany.

"The way you reach the children is to bring education as an art, rather than memorizing something out of a book," Bedingfield said.

Bedingfield, 66, became aware of Waldorf Education in the mid 1980s. She taught in Florida public schools for three years, but was impressed with the Waldorf approach and started laying the groundwork for the school in 1991.

In 1998, Bedingfield opened a Waldorf kindergarten in a space rented from the Unitarian Universalists Church in Clearwater, where she still maintains a parent/child playgroup and kindergarten class.

"We like to say 'Head, heart and hands,' "Bedingfield said. "Every lesson has those elements."

FAST FACTS

Suncoast Waldorf School

Main campus, 1857 Curlew Road, Palm Harbor

Kindergarten and parent/child play group, 2476 Nursery Road, Clearwater

(727) 786-8311

www.suncoastwaldorf.org

[Last modified January 22, 2008, 21:49:18]