Waldorf Learning Support
Bringing Love to Learning for a Lifetime
Our Mission
In support of ease of learning for today’s student population and functional school-wide interventions, Waldorf Learning Support strives to guide teachers in Steiner Waldorf inspired schools toward excellence by giving a solid theoretical foundation along with a variety of practical classroom strategies. Our aim is to provide anthroposophical, neuro-developmental and up-to-date pedagogical information coupled with opportunities for teacher self-development in artistic, movement, inner work and social areas.
OUR VISION
Collaborate with teachers around the world to bring ease & joy to learning for all children.
Our Work
A threefold approach to learning support
The students, the teachers & the parents
Support of learning for an individual child over the age of seven needs to consider the environment of each. In this view, we strive to continually renew and deepen our learning for working with the students, the teachers and the parents with the following in mind:
- For the students, our aim is to address each student’s developmental situation with a focus on supporting incarnation into the structural physical body–meaning the skeletal, muscular and nerve systems–and into three-dimensional space that opens the window into the two-dimensional space of school work on paper and books. We strive to address this development via universal developmental movements, as well as Extra Lesson activities using beanbags, wool yarn, copper rods, copper balls, paper, crayons, paints and other tools.
- For the teachers, our focus is to address the pedagogical use of classroom activities based on developmental movements and Extra Lesson movement, drawing and painting exercises. This includes how to implement, adjust and move forward with the many activities according to the ages, capacities and student challenges in each group/class.
- For the parents, our focus is to consider options for supportive outside interventions according to various developmental needs of children depending upon individual development. Along with this we teach movements and helpful activities that are best done on a regular basis in the home.
Basic for this three-pronged approach to learning support is that the learning support teacher learns to distinguish which activities are essential for use in individual lessons with a student, which activities are excellent for use in groups/classes, and which are best done in the home with parent supervision (after the student has learned the activities from the learning support teacher). Along with this it is important for learning support teachers to learn to recognize when the primary issue is best referred for outside evaluation/intervention–for instance, craniosacral therapy, eurythmy therapy or medical care. In these cases, it is valuable for the learning support teacher to guide the teachers and parents of the student to seek out other professionals before coming for individual Extra Lesson sessions.
Emphasis on why, how & when to implement support work
WLS instruction covers the importance of keeping the focus for individual lessons on essential movement, drawing and painting exercises from The Extra Lesson. The WLS-trained instructor learns to teach and carefully guide each individual student’s abilities towards continued timely development, as well as how to support teacher colleagues and parents/guardians in the efficient use of exercises for practice in the classroom and at home. This makes it possible for Extra Lesson and other integrative exercises to be efficiently included into the daily work of the classroom, as well as in the home, so that all students benefit from these highly effective exercises, individualized for their continued healthy path of development.
The WLS three-year intensive training emphasizes instruction in why, how and when to implement a movement program, whether for individuals, small groups or classrooms.
- WHY: this means that we give in-depth lectures on indications from Rudolf Steiner and others regarding human development, anatomical insights to understand this development, and implications for learning caused by hindrances in this development.
- HOW: means we give clear indications of how to implement a program step-by-step, whether for individuals or groups. This aspect includes how to set up a program according to an individual’s or group’s ages and abilities, how to monitor student progress and adjust the activities as needed in pedagogically appropriate ways, and when to move to new activities so each student remains motivated and development moves forward.
- WHEN: this aspect has to do with timing–both within the classroom and for individual lessons. Experience has shown that timing and frequency of learning support activities within the day, week, month and year–with consideration for the rhythm of the subtle bodies and of sleep–affect a difference in the outcome. A trained sense of timing examines student performance and the effects of the carefully chosen exercises, leading to gradual adjustments to maintain an appropriate challenge for each individual student. This means learning to keenly observe the performance of exercises and adjusting as needed in order to effectively continue support for the student’s regular path of development.
Our History
The Beginnings of Extra Lesson
After completing her class teaching years, Audrey McAllen was called by colleagues to give educational support to individual students from grades 3 and up who were behind in their learning. As she worked with individual students she discovered that many of them had difficulties with their fine and/or gross motor development.
At the time of her original Waldorf teacher training in the early 1940s, The Study of Man was not yet translated into English. Instead, the training included the study of Steiner’s Anthroposophy, Psychosophy and Pneumatosophy—with a focus on the first of these, “Anthroposophy,” given by Steiner in October 1909. These lectures, plus insights gained from other Steiner lectures, built the foundation for McAllen to develop movement, drawing and painting exercises that would become part of the Extra Lesson approach. Her study focused on the invisible, archetypal forces that underlie all human physical development and its relationship to our Earth. McAllen gave us the specific Steiner lectures for study in order to deepen our understanding of the background to Extra Lesson. Joep Eikenboom, Steiner Waldorf Class Teacher in the Netherlands for 40 years, has made major contributions to guiding our study by synthesizing these and further anthroposophical lectures into his book The Foundations of Extra Lesson.
The Extra Lesson: first edition published 1974
McAllen was asked by Else Göttgens to write down the exercises she developed. The first edition of The Extra Lesson was published in 1974. In the late 1990s, McAllen asked Ingun Schneider to expand on the latest edition; 1998 brought the first of these expanded texts. The most recent, seventh edition was published in 2013.
By the early 1980s, McAllen started traveling to teach her insights and approaches to Waldorf teachers and trainings in UK, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand and USA. In 1990 she hosted a conference for teachers already introduced to her work with the goal of supporting the start of trainings for teachers to specialize in Extra Lesson. Teachers from USA, the Netherlands, and UK were present—with phone contact to a teacher in Australia. In 1991 Rudolf Steiner College (RSC), Association for a Healing Education, the Extra Lesson Association in Australia and a group in the Netherlands started educational support trainings.
The Extra Lesson around the world today
Since then, trainings based on Extra Lesson were initiated in Brazil, Canada, Germany, Hungary, India, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, Spain and Taiwan. Today, South Korea (KWELG) has newly established a robust WLS Extra Lesson training now in its second cycle under the coordination of Juhyun Ha. Establishing their first WLS cycles are: MWLS–Malaysia, coordinator: Janet Ong , and Institut Rudolf Steiner–France, co-coordinators: Veronique Adler (France), Fabienne Pigeon (Belgium) & Alexandre Hayoz (Switzerland).
For over 27 years, Ingun Schneider developed & directed the Remedial Educational Support program at RSC. In 2009 she was joined by Kris Boshell who trained to become her co-director. The twelfth and last cohort at RSC celebrated its graduation in August 2017. In November 2017, Waldorf Learning Support started it first cohort in San Francisco, California. Ingun & Kris thus continued training learning support teachers in this rigorous, anthroposophical program and are now working with the third cohort, with the fourth scheduled to begin November 2025.
While Joep Eikenboom was always an appreciated contributor to each of the 12 cohorts of RSC’s Remedial Educational Support Program, Joep is now a WLS core instructor. His unique ability to bring Rudolf Steiner’s work into clear view in the WLS program is integral to our deep commitment to anchor the WLS curriculum in Rudolf Steiner’s indications for human development.
WLS aims to maintain the rigor and strength of the work that came before, while reimagining new initiatives for this work in response to the increasing and ever changing support needs of all students in classrooms today. Working under the sponsorship of Waldorf Teacher Institute of Chicago, an Associate Member of AWSNA, allows us to continue our commitment to working out of Anthroposophy, maintaining high standards of programming. Visit our programs pages to discover the new and exciting ways WLS is carrying this work into the future to reach your students today.
“To integrate the human being and the world as part of this developmental process, this is really the whole reason for our earth incarnation…it is only from the Earth that we can gain the forces for the future” (1989 A McAllen)
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