Educational Goals

With the understanding that our students’ educations are not complete by the time they graduate at the end of eighth grade, the Pasadena Waldorf School strives for our students to:

experience a rich, broad-based, deep course of studies, cohesively conceived, progressing purposefully from year to year, imparting significance, relevance, and meaning regarding humankind, the earth, and cosmos, in the past, in the present, and in anticipation of the future. By definition this includes a broad spectrum of history, literature, science, foreign language, arts, practical skills, and physical education.

feel recognized as individuals, valued for their quality of character and not only their caliber of scholarship;

feel confident in themselves as learners, accepting of both their strengths and limitations, working to the best of their own abilities;

understand what it means to strive; to experience a sense of satisfaction in a job well done;

develop sound habits for living, and by this continual practice, to strengthen their will. This includes classroom habits, work habits, rhythmic marking of seasonal festivals, completing all tasks they start, returning equipment they use, and cleaning up after themselves.

experience reverence, appreciation, and gratitude to other people and to a beneficent transcendent power, whatever they conceive that to be;

conduct themselves with respect, cooperation, and courtesy towards self, others, and property;

acquire positive attitudes of acceptance of difference of cultures, preferences, abilities, ideas, social status, race, gender, etc.;

immerse themselves in experiences of nature without taking the trappings of urban life with them;

value and practice compassion, honesty, courage, and trust, but also joy and humor;

develop from imagination a foundation for flexible, sensitive, clear and creative thinking, open to the ideas of others, and steeped in interest and a sense of inquiry;

feel empowered to act, guided not by convention or peer pressure, but by their own convictions of right and wrong; to feel persuaded that individual human beings can make a difference;

learn how to function within a group and take personal responsibility for its social well-being;

practice service towards others and the natural world; and

leave PWS valuing, at some point, what they have received, confident about their next educational experience, and knowing they were loved and will always be welcome here.