Annual Giving Fund

Fall 2022

Dear AWS Community,

We are about to embark on our 31st year of offering students an exceptional and well-rounded education at Aurora Waldorf School. Simply put, Waldorf education is transformational.

Over the last few years, many of us have felt the burden and weight of a world that is in need of much structural change. Waldorf education is a balm for the spirit: it reminds us to embrace our multi-dimensionality. And by doing so, it restores our hope that many unique pathways to transformation and change are possible. When we feel compressed by a dominant culture centered on rigid and conventional ways of learning, doing, and being, ‘the Waldorf way’ offers us something different: an invitation to transform. To transform ourselves, our imaginations, our realities, and our world for the better.

As an AWS alumna, my peers and I were given invitations of many kinds over the years: primarily solicitations to step out of our comfort zones. Each day, students at AWS receive invitations to try something novel and challenging, to be mindful of the present moment, or to practice a new skill. They might be invited to assess their own ethics, to become kinder and softer, or to change their mind and grow more flexible. The act of answering the invitation allows students to truly transform themselves and embrace growth as an ongoing, continuous experience. Waldorf education gives people an endless stream of beautifully iterative and shapeshifting reasons to live and evolve through really tough times. It achieves this by showing us what is possible: anything.

Woodworking, eurythmy, dance, beeswax and clay sculpting, tumbling, and class plays are all activities that teach us that we are capable of creating different shapes, becoming different things, and taking on different forms. Students at AWS learn that the qualities of mutability and multi-dimensionality are gifts: they can lead to positive change. In a culture that pressures us to reduce ourselves to one profession, one path, and one perspective, Waldorf education reminds us that we are allowed to embody multitudes. Let’s answer the invitation to create a world where all our different dimensions can be safe, celebrated, engaged, challenged, and included.

Over the past year, AWS began implementing a five-year strategic plan containing four pillars of commitment. Under the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion pillar, the school established the Linda Hoeg Memorial Scholarship for students of color, centered DEI topics in the curriculum, and initiated outreach with Providence Farm. Under the Environmental & Green Initiatives pillar, the LED lighting upgrades help make our building more energy efficient. The school garden is flourishing, and improvements to the playgrounds, wildlife meadow, and flower beds continue. Under the Access & Alternative Funding pillar, the Board of Trustees and committees are engaged in planning for future sustainability. Our enrollment continues to grow, and we now have a fourth Early Childhood class offering a 5-day option for Pre-K students. Under the Identity, Reputation, & Reach pillar, we celebrate the return of the lunch program headed by an AWS alum, and we are expanding our reach with a new Marketing & Communications Director.

All these transformations take time and hard work. This year, many of us are facing unusually high financial and economic pressures. I hope this letter finds you all coping with these pressures as well as you possibly can. If you feel so blessed and capable that you can give back to the AWS community, please join me in giving to the AWS Annual Giving Fund. Answer the invitation, if you can. Any amount is deeply appreciated. It’s a worthy cause to put energy and resources into the communities that help transform our world into a more equitable, just, and imaginative place. Aurora Waldorf School is one of those places.

In Community,

Kayla Czysz

AWS Class of 2005

Secretary, Board of Trustee