National Teachers’ Conference – July 2023
The joy, creativity and inspiration of Steiner teaching
Steiner Education Australia invites all teachers, teachers aides, assistant teachers, subject teachers and specialist teachers, parents and tertiary students to the 2023 National Teachers’ Conference. This July we will be holding the National Teachers’ Conference at Linuwel School, East Maitland/Wonnarua Country, NSW. Our sincere thanks to Linuwel School for welcoming SEA and teachers from around the country to their school. We are so pleased to be holding this conference face-to-face, and look forward to seeing you there.
We have a wonderful line up of inspirational keynote speakers and workshop presenters delivering thought-inspiring presentations based on the theme ‘The joy, creativity and inspiration of Steiner teaching’.
Workshop Focus
Geometrical transformations and nature
with Sophia Montefiore
Projective Geometry is specifically designed for Senior High School students, and it grows out of the form drawings practised in the early primary years. Form drawing is a precursor to the sacred geometry forms created with a set of compasses in later years. Projective Geometry encompasses all other geometries and involves high level thinking, careful constructions processes, and artistic relationships to the world around us. Olive Whicher described projective geometry as having a “clarifying effect on thought as a whole.”
This workshop on Geometrical transformations & nature will focus on different types of symmetries and ways of perceiving relating to projective geometry that can be taught at various stages from the upper primary and throughout high school.
Clay and its many therapeutic and joyous applications
with Tania Hungerford
Clay is an exciting medium on many levels. It builds will and resilience and helps nourish and heal our sense development. Clay works on integrating thinking, feeling and willing and it is a creative, formative, forgiving and therapeutic material, full of potential to not only give us joy, but to take us to our limits and to teach us about ourselves, to deepen our understanding of formative forces and of anthroposophical and pedagogical principles.
Sculptural modelling works on human development in many ways. The rich complexity of sense experiences enhances our abilities on a physical level, in that it increases sensitivity and skill in the way we use our hands. It works on our emotional intelligence when it challenges and pulls us, when we try to find meaningful expression, and when we try to overcome our own hurdles, whatever they may be. It also works on intellectual abilities and thought processes, particularly on flexibility of thought. It is an ideal material to work with the dissociating forces trauma experiences can pose.
Finally, work with this malleable material enhances our will to accomplish and complete tasks in other fields. Together we will explore a range of clay activities which are suitable for children at varying stages of development. This will range from simple but meaningful modelling of ‘pure forms’ and hand explorations to suitable simple figurative objects and methods.
For more information on these workshops and other workshops at the National Teachers’ Conference, please click here:
May 2023
