Dispatches From the Autumn Season at Marin Waldorf School
Autumn is a splendid season in Lucas Valley. As we near the fall equinox, the brilliant sunlight, deep blue skies, and leafy green canopy of trees bring a special beauty to our campus. This year, we were also treated to a blistering late-season heat wave.
It’s been a busy, beautiful fall, with lots of learning in the classrooms and plenty of special events to punctuate the learning in the classroom. In late September, our families gathered beneath the leafy canopy of Grandmother Oak to celebrate the annual Michaelmas pageant, a festival that celebrates the unique qualities of the autumn season.
Everyone present agreed that this year’s pageant had a particularly beautiful tenor. Through song and verse we celebrate the arrival of the autumn season and kindle our inner light as winter approaches.
The pageant is performed by grades 2 to 8, with each class taking a role that is assigned to their grade; in this way, as children grow older, they will play every role in the pageant—making the experience a rite of passage. As with many of our festivals, the lessons of Michaelmas are also intertwined with the curriculum. For example, second graders, who play an important role in the pageant as the knights who tame the dragon, learn about Michael’s qualities of courage, compassion, and steadfastness as part of the larger second grade curriculum, through which they study the lives of inspiring people from around the world. On a deeper level, we can each think of the dragon as those things that prevent our awakening to our own humanity.
“Autumn is a time of transition. With attention, we can become sensitive to the subtle but profound changes in nature and notice what is called for inside ourselves to prepare for the coming darkness that winter brings,” explains MWS director, Megan Neale. “In many Waldorf schools in the northern hemisphere, Michalemas is the festival that celebrates and honors this transition and inner preparation. Many of the native people in California also celebrate this time, honoring the harvesting of the acorn that brings life and sustenance throughout the winter months. For the farmers, it is a time to begin to put the land to rest after an active growing season through the summer. There is preparation required for this transition to take place.”
Dia de Muertos
Last week, we celebrated the Mexican holiday Día de Muertos as part of the grades Spanish language program. In preparation for the event, students, teachers, and parent volunteers helped to create a colorful altar in the breezeway, filled with photographs of loved ones, flowers, candles, and decorative skulls, while the ceiling of was decorated with colorful papel picado.
On Thursday, we gathered for a beautiful Día de Muertos assembly featuring musical performances from grades 1-8—as well as a special surprise from the subject teachers, who performed a traditional dance from Chile. It was a lovely event and a showcase for our excellent Spanish program, which blends language instruction with study of and appreciation for world cultures. The event wrapped with hot chocolate and pan de muerto (bread of the dead), served to the crowd by the 7th and 8th grade classes.
Day of the Dead (El Día de Muertos or El Día de los Muertos) is a traditional holiday celebrated annually on November 1 and 2. While the holiday commemorates the dead, it often takes on a celebratory tone, as participants share fond memories and recount joyful stories about the departed. Click here to read more about Día de Muertos at Marin Waldorf School.
Diwali
In early November, our elementary and middle school students celebrated Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, with a performance by special guests William Rossel on tabla and Will Marsh on sitar. The 5th grade class, in complement to their studies of Ancient India, created a sand mandala in the breezeway, which was later added to by the 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 8th grade classes.