Where the Clocks Tick Differently

«That one is bright red. I want that one,» says Mika and he climbs one step higher up the old wooden ladder so that he can reach up to the top of the apple tree with his arm outstretched. Meanwhile, classmate Elif is tending to her favorite lamb's stable and mucking out. It's Tuesday morning and, like every day, the two of them have started their school day at Dickten Farm. It's around a 20-minute walk from the Windrather Talschule, which the two third-graders attend. And the clocks tick a little differently there. «In the summer months, the lower school always starts its days at the farm we work with. First everyone sings together, then they work on the farm until breakfast is ready in the classroom,» explains Cécile Hertel.

The Windrather Tal valley in Velbert blends into the hilly landscape between the southern Ruhr area and the Bergisches Land region and is home to half a dozen organic farms. The school of the same name was founded there in 1995 – as one of the first inclusive Waldorf schools in Germany. Bärbel Blaeser has been there from the very beginning and took over a first class last school year. From the very beginning, she was particularly keen to rethink the shape of time in everyday school life. Blaeser is convinced: «School has to change, even Waldorf schools!» It is the content that should organize the days, not the structure. Since it was founded, the Windrather Talschule has been attended by students with and without special educational needs. For Hertel and Blaeser, children with inclusion needs are little seismographs that indicate and draw attention to when something is out of balance for everyone or something is not right – the course of a school day, for example. «Children simply live differently in time and with time than adults. We want to take this into account,» says Blaeser.

This intention is reflected in various ways in everyday life at Windrather Talschule. For example, there is no school bell to mark the beginning or end of a lesson. Instead, the transitions from one unit to the next are seamless up to sixth grade. This is possible because all classes are taught and supervised in teams. In the lower grades, the class teachers often work together with integration assistants. «This model allows subject lessons to breathe, so they can grow from shorter to longer over the course of a block,» says Hertel.

The faculty also wants to take the seasons and their different demands on the biorhythm into consideration. That's why the school days start in the spring and summer months on the neighboring farm, while from fall to Easter there is a craft activity in the school. The students take part in this, sometimes as a class and sometimes in cross-class groups. The decisive factor is the topic.

The seventh to tenth graders start each day with an artistic unit – until breakfast. Only then does the respective block start for them. «Meals are something very important for us. They structure the day, they span the arc from one unit to the next,» reports Hertel.

Despite all the unusual aspects: The time structure at Windrather Talschule has not been completely dissolved. Blaeser and Hertel, the two long-standing members of the school community, are keen to emphasize this. Rather, it is a well-known and open secret that lives on in their school and makes all the difference. «The famous fifteen minutes of playtime – you have no idea what it does,» says Blaeser, adding that children and young people themselves naturally like routine and regularity. «That's inherent in them and that's why they are very reliable in the way they organize their time,» adds Hertel.

Handling the daily organization more flexibly, responding to dynamics and needs, requires a special kind of perception and cooperation from the faculty. The subject teachers join the class teachers, who are always there, for their units. They take in the mood in the class, try to interpret it, ask themselves whether the majority is still so much in the flow that an end now would be too abrupt, or whether fatigue has already spread, a change of topic could now bring new momentum or would only be appropriate after a short breather or an activity phase. In order to analyze this again and again, they enter the classroom and join in with whatever is going on – be it manual work or eurythmy. Blaeser and Hertel believe that it makes little sense to prepare for a lesson for a long time. Instead, they say, the teachers involved need to coordinate with each other for brief moments. «We have an incredible number of door-to-door conversations to find out what's going on with the children and to discuss what they need at the moment,» says Hertel. Sometimes it's simply the serenity to leave situations as they are. Hertel thinks of a boy who spent almost an entire morning on the shelf of a classroom when she says this. «Maybe he just needed space to himself, some seclusion, peace and quiet, a better overview,» she speculates. And in the end, he came down all by himself – when he had to go to the bathroom.

Blaeser and Hertel say that they used the idea of inclusion when they founded the school to question the school as a whole. The result was three pillars that have shaped the school in Windrather Tal ever since: Playing, learning and working. At the beginning of the 1990s, there were hardly any role models they could look to for guidance. One of the few was the Solvik School in Järna, Sweden, which was founded by the teacher and composer Pär Albohm and where so-called intuitive pedagogy is practiced. The founders traveled there to find inspiration for their own school. They consider schedules to be more of a necessary evil in order to manage the professional activities of adults. They are not based on the needs of the children. According to Blaeser, the teachers who work at the Windrather Talschule are not there in spite of, but because of the new timetable – even if it demands a lot from them here and there. On the whole, the staff is constant and the fluctuation is lower than at other schools.

Pär Albohm once said in an interview: «In healthy processes, results are always a kind of ‹positive waste›. Children are here and now. Adults should learn that from them.» The so-called positive waste at Windrather Talschule is not least the good grades that the students achieve year after year. Students almost never leave the school without a diploma, and often have a high school diploma (Abitur) in their pocket. «The way we organize school actually frees up children and young people for learning. Learning needs to be thought of in a more long-term way. I don't think it's crucial that all students always absorb everything they encounter, but that they can find access from time to time and really connect. There can be breaks in between. During puberty, for example. Some temporarily become little satellites and are barely accessible, but that comes back,» Hertel shares her conviction.

A moment that confirms the two women in their work would happen almost every year at the summer party. On the last day before the start of the summer vacation, the entire school community traditionally gathers in the dining hall to say goodbye. It is then so full that hardly a leaf can fit between the individual people. «For children with inclusion needs in particular, but also for everyone else, this is actually an imposition that cries out for turmoil and chaos,» says Blaeser. But nothing of the sort happens. Instead, year after year, there is a «blissful silence», a «contented calm», the two report. «The children and young people come and want to do school with us,” say Blaeser and Hertel.