Schedule

Sneak Preview: You aren’t going to want to miss any of this!

This is a sneak preview. The Wool Wood Wax Workshop Schedule is being built as speakers are confirmed. It is subject to change.

The workshop will be filled with the most interested and invested practical arts teachers (like you!) and we will all be learning from one another. If you would like to offer to teach a class for 2021, contact us.

• Tuesday through Thursday June 16 – 18, 2020
• Fort Collins, Colorado, USA
• There is both a minimum and maximum size for the event

	Day One	Day Two	Day Three
8:30 a.m.	(Doors and registration open at 8:00) Welcome Address followed by Welcome Circle Restorative Practice	Coffee and Crowd Sourcing (Get answers/ideas from a variety of colleagues to your biggest questions)	Book Club Conversations (Books for a variety of experience levels and interest; list available in March)
9:00 a.m.	Key Note The Role of Imagination, Intuition, & Inspirations in the Practical Arts, Thesa Callinicos, Art & Grade Level Teacher, Gradalis Teacher Training	Work Songs Choir Practice	Book Club Continued
9:15 a.m.	Key Note continued	World Cafe’ Conversation: How to Meet the Needs of Today’s Children? (One of the most requested topics)	Therapeutic Movement with Logan Nance
10:30 a.m.	Morning Snack	Morning Snack	Morning Snack
10:50 a.m.	Work Songs Choir with Sharon Docherty, Music Educator, Mountain Sage Community School	World Cafe’ Conversation cont.:	Therapeutic Movement Practice with Logan Nance, Mountain Sage Community School.
11:30	Small Group Work–Gather by grade taught.	Mid-Week Circus Arts Break!	X-Classes: You are encouraged to teach an informal X-class. (“If anyone wants to learn X, I am available!”)
12:15 p.m.	Lunch and Digestion Break	Lunch and Digestion Break	Lunch and Digestion Break
12:50 p.m.	Reflection Time (optional walk to Fairy Woods)	Reflection Time (optional school tour)	Reflection Time (optional walk to Cattail Chorus Nature area)
1:20 p.m.	Hands-on Creating Session: Weaving with Renee Schwartz, waldorfcurriculum.com Weaving:  A Continuous Thread Through Many Blocks and Years Additional Breakout Groups may be added as the registration numbers and volunteers to teach grow. To wit, Please offer to teach tool sharpening. Please offer to teach leather stamping.	Hands-on Creating Session: Clay Modeling Through the Grades with Thesa Callinicos.	Hands-on Creating Session: Working with the Will in the Woodshop with Barbara Albert, Mountain Sage Community School. Additional Breakout Groups may be added as the registration numbers and volunteers to teach grow. To wit, Please offer to teach drop spindle
3:00 p.m.	Afternoon Snack	Afternoon Snack	Afternoon Snack
3:20 p.m.	Creating Session continued	Creating Session continued	Collegial Work and Practical Planning Session
4:10 p.m.	Gather by Subject Taught: Sharing Project Ideas	Gather by Subject Taught: Sharing Project Ideas continued	Work Songs Choir
4:50 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.	Announcements and Closing Verse	Announcements and Closing Verse	Sending Forth and Closing Verse
Evening	Idea for something to do on your own: Who Gives a Scrap Creative Reuse Thrift Store for craft supplies; Take a brewery tour	Idea for something to do on your own: Free Outdoor Concert on Campus (food trucks, available): https://lagoonseries.com/	Travel safely and keep in touch! Registration for 2021 begins in January.

• Welcome Circle Restorative Practice

  Registration Table and Beverage Station open. Doors open at 8:00 and welcome circle begins promptly at 8:30. We will use Restorative Circle Practice to greet one another. This practice can be used in the Practical Arts classroom.

• Key Note Session with Thesa Callinicos

  

  Ithaca, Greece is the ancestral home and birthplace of Thesa Callinicos’ parents. Born and raised in South Africa, Thesa attended Johannesburg Teachers’​ Training College before graduating from Emerson College in Sussex England in 1969. 

  Thesa has worked in Private Waldorf Schools in Western United States for 33 years.  She taught handwork for four years. ​

  Since ‘retiring’ in 2011, Thesa has been mentoring and evaluating teachers in various Waldorf inspired charter schools and is currently helping to form the North Fork School of Integrated Studies, a school within the public elementary School in Paonia, Colorado.

  This summer Thesa will be teaching the fifth grade training and clay classes at Gradalis. 

• Work Song Choir with Sharon Docherty

  

  Sharon is a songwriter, singer and multi-instrumentalist who has been teaching music to children in both public and private settings in Colorado for over 20 years. She holds a B.S. in Music Education from Lebanon Valley College in PA and received her M.A. in Contemplative Education from Naropa University in Boulder. Sharon is dedicated to Waldorf education and has been involved with the state of several Waldorf schools, including River Canyon School in Grand Junction, as well as Mountain Sage. Sharon has a special love for teaching other teachers and holds a weekly teacher’s choir. You can hear Sharon’s band at http://www.souvenirthread.com/

  We’ll join our voices together to learn some traditional work songs that can be used to deepen the learning experience for a variety of age ranges.

• Small Group Work: Gather By Age Taught

  Working with others who may teach a variety of subjects, each participant will share ideas of how the ideas from the morning sessions could deepen and enliven the work that is happening in their classroom. The time will be started with a One Breath Sharing of ideas and end with generating an idea list for teachers to take home for practical application in their classrooms.

• Weaving with Renee Schwartz

  Weaving:  A Continuous Thread Through Many Blocks and Years

  

  Renee Schwartz is an experienced Curriculum Consultant specializing in progressive education. Trained in Steiner/Waldorf, Montessori, and Reggio Emilia approaches, she has received a B.A. in Philosophy from Smith College and an M.S. in Curriculum & Instruction from McDaniel College with a focus on Action Research in the classroom.  You can read more about Renee’s work here: waldorfcurriculum.com and switzerite.blogspot.com.

  Renee will bring her exhaustive research and knowledge of Waldorf curriculum to inspire us to deeply consider how to connect the Practical Arts curriculum to main lesson blocks. Using weaving as an example, Renee will share her experience of using handwork to tie into specific main lesson blocks for a variety of ages. She will share her project ideas for geology and mythology tapestries, too. Then we will spend the afternoon practicing tapestry weaving techniques on a variety of looms (some made by students) and exploring how weaving can connect to woodworking, pottery, handwork, paper craft and sculpture.

• Collegial Work: Sharing Project Ideas (2 day session)

  The most requested session from our pre-workshop survey. We will set aside time to share what is working in our classrooms. Small and big ideas are welcome. New project ideas are a topic of interest to your colleagues. You are encouraged to share:

  • A description of your best teaching lessons
  • Copies of your lesson plans
  • Your reflections on teaching, learning, and/or assessment
  • Examples of your students’ work (photos can be emailed in advance)

• Coffee and Crowd-Sourcing

  At the end of the prior day, you will write a classroom dilemma, question or wondering on a yellow pad. The next morning, while enjoying a hot beverage, your colleagues will write ideas, possible solutions, resources and additional wondering to your pad. You’ll receive a copy of all the ideas generated. You’ll go home with new ways to tackle your work and teach your students!

• World Cafe’ Session “How to Meet the Needs of Today’s Children”

  Using the World Cafe’ method, participants will explore three relevant questions over three rounds. By sharing and listening deeply we will generate and harvest what is happening now based in our observation of the children in front of us and notice where there is energy and possibilities for new practices, research and growth that would serve humanity.

• Mid-Week Circus Arts Break!

  Let’s have fun together…and maybe learn something to impress the people back home!

• Clay Modeling Through the Grades

• Book Club Conversations

  Pre-workshop book selections will be announced in March. We will break into small groups to consider questions about what we have read with others with like interests.

• Therapeutic Movement with Logan Nance

  

  Logan Nance holds a BS in Occupational Therapy from Colorado State University (1989), a Waldorf Early Childhood Therapeutic Educator Certificate from Gradalis Academy (2001), a Colorado Gardener Certificate from Colorado State University Extension (2018), and is currently enrolled in the Educational Support Certificate Program through the Association for a Healing Education.   Logan’s association with Waldorf Education goes back many years. She taught Pre-K at River Song Waldorf School for seven years and had a Waldorf-inspired Pre-K in her home for five years. Logan led the Kindergarten class at Mountain Sage and has been the Gardening Assistant. She is currently the First Grade Ready Games/Observation Coordinator and Educational Support Teacher.Mountain Sage and has been the Gardening Assistant. She is currently the First Grade Ready Games/Observation Coordinator and provides Educational Support for elementary and middle school students.

  Practical Arts are full of developmental movement and Logan will help us understand how the free movement of the body can translate to freeing forces for learning. She has a deep background in observing movement and identifying simple and fun ways to incorporate into the curriculum some specific movements that help children to develop. You will leave this session with ideas and resources to make your verse movement richer and more intentional. You will also be reawakened to the role that Practical Arts plays in the healthy movement of children.

• Therapeutic Movement Practice with Logan Nance

  You’ll be trying out some activities using tools you are likely to already have in your school or classroom to bring therapeutic and developmental movement to your classroom.

• X-Classes

  During the week you are going to discover strengths and skills that you can offer to others and find that other people are teaching or doing things you want to learn more about. This time is set aside for connecting people with others from whom you want to learn or can teach. After all, the experts in this field are going to be the teachers who are attending the workshop!

• Hands On Creating (Working with the Will in the Woodshop with Barbara Albert)

  

  As the 1-8 Handwork Teacher and the Middle School Woodworking Teacher, Barbara brings a broad range of practical skills with artistry and great care to students.  She also runs with the Middle School Cross Country Team (Go Dragons!) and helps with the Middle School Math Club.  She serves on non-profit boards in the community, reads everyday and is an enthusiastic figure sculptor, weaver, and creator of beautiful things from cloth, yarn and needles.  Barbara is a graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and received a master’s degree from Colorado State University.  She and her husband, Korey, are the parents of three girls, two of whom studied at Mountain Sage.

  Our pre-event survey had lots of interest in learning more about woodworking so we will set aside this time to explore bringing this material to children. Using a workshop method of teaching, you’ll have the chance to explore some traditional, and some non-traditional wood projects. You’ll hear how Barbara Albert, Practical Arts Teacher, Mountain Sage Community School started the woodworking program (without a shop) for $300.00 in a hallway and how that school brings reverence for the spirit of trees to students throughout the K-8 program. We’ll discuss the mood and attitude in the woodshop, sensory wood experiences and what wood can teach children. We will explore how wood works on the will. Oh what fun we will have!

• Collegial Work: Reflect together.

  As the largest gathering of Practical Arts Teachers from across the disciplines and ages, let’s take some time to reflect about what we’ve learned, how to share it with others and where we are going next. You’ll also have some time and creative tools to make some practical plans for your classes next year.

Continuing Education Credits

Attendees at Wool Wood Wax will be issue a certificate that you can submit for possible CEU credit according to your state’s rules for renewal of an educator’s license. Be sure to sign the attendance forms each day that verify your attendance and completion of workshop. The certificate specifically states the following:

• participant’s name
• date of the workshop
• name of the workshop
• contact/clock hours for the session
• name of presenter
• Wool Wood Wax representative’s signature

Please note: Rules for CEU credit are set by each state and are subject to revision and change. While we will do our best to provide you with the information you need, please consult your own licensing agency for the official rules.

Pre-Workshop Reading: Join a Book Club at the Work Shop!

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