Michael Wilt, Class Seven teacher, recently looked back at a photograph of his students from two years ago, when they were Class 5 children. His teaching life at Sunrise, daily observing these same children, did not prepare him for the photo’s evidence of transformation right under his nose. He was startled by the apparently sudden signs of maturity: round grade 5 cheeks have melted into the faces of beautiful young lads and ladies.

If pubescence is a sprouting, flowering springtime for a child’s physical self, her/his mind is also setting buds. In Waldorf studies, the burgeoning readiness for intellectual thought finds room to expand through new subjects. Perspective drawing, first met by this class in September, allows material expression of the student’s new ability to think ‘outside the box’, and to deal with new depth in their thinking and expression. Algebra encourages their budding capacity to deal, literally, with "unknowns", in their complexity and possibilities.

Following their initial encounter with sciences through physics in Class 6, grade 7 students now embark on their first chemistry adventures. And I do mean adventures. In service of investigating combustion, Class 7 has dug a hole in the earth out in a farther corner of the school grounds and lined it with fire brick. The task at hand is to load the pit kiln with charcoal and some marble or limestone, ignite the whole, fan the flames with a Shop Vac in order to maintain a combustion temperature of 2000 degrees Fahrenheit for five hours, and thereby chemically transform the stone into quick lime!

Encounters with this kind of physical phenomenon are conducted through open-ended observation. This is because the goal of Waldorf scientific education is to open doors to independent and exploratory thinking in the student’s own minds, rather than to graft onto their brains a static, established theory wrapped in a ribbon of closure.

The developmental task of exploring new regions of thought and reason is mirrored in grade 7 history lessons as well. This year, students get acquainted with the beginning moments of Western Europe’s spread across the earth in the ‘age of discovery’, and get a taste of the Renaissance period in Europe itself. Working with geometry and drawing 2-dimensional images that evoke three dimensions link the students with this moment of Western culture’s development. As it happens, in grade 6 this class "stayed in Rome". This year, therefore, the children are currently on quite a time-travelling journey through the Middle Ages to make it to early modern Europe and the beginnings of its profound and still resonating impact on the entire world’s peoples.

Speaking of the Medieval period, later this month the class will perform its play about a true Medieval archetype, Joan of Arc. Mr. Wilt says it’s a serious play with flashes of silly humour - without which the play would paint a very inaccurate picture of his group. The students’ goofiness, innocence, and youthfulness will get a chance to come through in the midst of a challenging drama with lots of dialogue and speaking parts. The complex dialogue, strong characters, and large number of speaking parts reveal another trait of the class: a very strong group of girls, and many strong characters.

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