Blog: The Light of Aurora

A Window Into a Teacher’s Summer Work: Preparing the Story Curriculum

14:55 PM - August 30, 2022

I completed Sunbridge Institute’s Grade Two and Three online courses this summer. These courses not only outline the curriculum for the grades I am preparing to teach, but they connect me to Waldorf schools and teachers around the country and the world. One of my favorite takeaways was learning about fables, a traditional part of the Grade Two curriculum in Waldorf education.

The fables, including stories from Aesop’s Fables, are taught alongside stories of legendary and heroic characters. An example is the legend of St. George and the Dragon, a story of how one man defeated a dragon to save a village. St. George and his heroic actions exemplify courage. In a similar story of bravery, The Lion and The Mouse shares the tale of a small rodent who befriends a lion and saves him from entrapment in a net.

Second graders are known for experimenting with mischief, to which parents of second graders can probably attest! So what better stories to guide them than the stories of exemplary people? As in the examples above, a fable can share helpful messages and teachable moments for students and the adults surrounding them.

The main focus of the Waldorf Third Grade Curriculum is to meet the needs of the child going through the nine-year change. “Children enter a more conscious state as they realize their inner world is separate from the outer world. Along with newfound confidence and competence may come feelings of fear and disconnectedness.” Stories of creation and humans struggling to make their way (as in some Old Testament stories) connect with this developmental stage.

One teaching trick I learned in my training was to set up the fable in advance but to refrain from explaining the fable or the moral of the story. As one instructor said, this would be akin to stopping every few minutes and explaining exactly what happened in the scene while seeing a play! Encouraging students to create their own mental pictures and connections is valued over telling them what to think.

I am excited to use legends, stories of saints, and more modern heroes in my teaching during the coming school year. It's inspiring that Waldorf teachers across the country are working to diversify which stories they elevate by including in their curriculum heroes like Ruby Bridges, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Autumn Peltier, an Anishinaabe Indigenous rights advocate from Canada.

I am also excited about the opportunity to teach the students how to draw different kinds of animals. Identifying and artistically representing an important scene from the day’s story in their main lesson books allows students to connect with each story on a deeper level. I plan to lead guided drawings by starting with simple shapes (a long oval for a body, a circle for a head, etc.) and building from there. The students may then choose which details from the story to add to their illustration. This year the class will also add written summaries of each story into their books.

Main lesson book illustration of the classic fable of The Lion and the Mouse

Do you have a favorite legendary person, modern-day hero, or fable? I would love to hear more from you! You can reach me at kronan@auroraws.org.

I’m looking forward to the upcoming year and seeing which stories resonate most with the class and individual students.

Kate Ronan is the Grade 2/3 combined class teacher. She holds a BA in Geography from Syracuse University and led outdoor education and place-based education programs for elementary students before joining AWS in 2020.