My journey starts with my own school experience. When I was in high school, I was very disengaged. Reflecting now, I see that this wasn’t completely my fault. My father had previously suffered a brain aneurysm that impacted his frontal lobe and affected his mood and behaviour. He was quite unstable and unpredictable, which made home life very disruptive. My father couldn’t work, so my mother took on extra hours.

Naturally, wanting to help, I took on more around the house. This led to me having a lack of appreciation and respect for many of the private school rules that I found petty and insignificant in comparison to the rest of my life. As a result, I was viewed as a difficult and argumentative youth. Given my situation at home, I couldn’t see the point or purpose in these rules and really didn’t have a great deal of respect for stiff rules and unnecessary authority.

I reflect now and wonder how my life during this time might have looked if I’d had teachers who embodied the Steiner philosophy—teachers who cared deeply about their students and viewed outward behaviours not with judgement, but with curiosity and care. I have one very strong memory of a kind-hearted teacher stopping me after class one day, looking me in the eyes, and asking if I was okay. My response was to break down, as I hadn’t realised that in many ways, I wasn’t quite okay and how much I had needed to be asked that question to realise this. I still shared no details with this teacher, but I have never forgotten her kindness and the difference that a teacher can make in a student’s life.

From there, I continued my journey, always with a desire to help young people but I was a bit lost. Then one day, years later, on a walk with a close friend, she mentioned a course that she felt was “very me.” It was the Steiner Teacher Training two-year course. As I listened, I felt more and more that this indeed was the course for me. I enquired, went in for a meeting, and soon I was enrolled and beginning my training.

As I worked through the content, spending each morning in a Main Lesson-style lecture, learning about the epochs of humanity and the anthroposophical picture of the human being, I felt as though I was having my own condensed Steiner school experience. I noticed how these lessons touched parts of my being, working through and bringing to light areas of myself that had been left unhealed by my mainstream childhood education. It wasn't one subject that was healing but the wholeness of the overall approach and that it meets the human on such a deep level. That whilst engaging in the content I felt I was activating the part of myself which holds vitality and memory, the part of my being that’s not necessarily conscious, but where experiences are processed through creativity. This experience showed me the power and depth of this education system. It revealed just how essential and profound the work is, and how important it is to experience it in childhood.

After this journey, I wholeheartedly experienced and believed in the famous quote by Rudolf Steiner:

Receive the child in reverence, educate them in love, and send them forth in freedom.

How lucky we are that this educational philosophy exists.

- Kirilly Tait 

Class 3 Teacher