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Shane Haniff |
| Profile: Shane Fame Alexander's blog has been growing for the past 30 years but has been on the net for the past five. In its third or fifth format, Shane feels like he's happy with what he's doing now. Life stuff along with a bit of culture, news, music and art. Everything that he loves all on one site. Graduating from the Toronto Waldorf School in 1996, Shane feels like the artistic teaching he gained from his six years at the school, have driven him to do what he loves the most in the creative fields. From broadcasting, to journalism, to graphic arts Shane has accomplished a whole lot in the past 13 years fueling his creative energy - mainly thanks to Waldorf education. | |
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The Days Before Summer at Waldorf
June 29th, 2010 | View Comments | Posted in Blog, Private Schools, School Life, Waldorf by Shane Alexander
From the first day of school it’s the day that everyone looks forward to. Kids, teachers alike. Maybe the parents, not so much, but I know the kids did for sure. They took everyday in. Appreciated it. Went through the yearly motions of the tests, field trips, sick days, snow days, late nights studying for this one day of the year.
The last day of the year. The beginning of summer vacation.
At Waldorf, we had a few things to look forward to before the big day of Freedom. The prom where the whole high school was invited to. The grade 12 play. The class trip. It brought the class together knowing that most of us would be going our separate ways for the next few months and maybe not returning for the following year. We were a close bunch. The last days meant a lot to us. More »
Tags: Canada, Education, learning, Our Kids Go To School, Parenting, pre-school, private elementary school, private school, school, teacher, teachingWaldorf Art Tournament will fund trip
May 10th, 2010 | View Comments | Posted in Blog, Dance, Arts, Music, Private Schools, School Life by Shane Alexander
Every year at the Toronto Waldorf School, the grade 8 class come up with some creative idea to raise money in order to take a last journey as a whole unit before they all enter the high school stages of their life. This year, the grade 8 class have come out with an awesome and very creative idea. The Art Tournament.
“Artists have to work in a new setting. They are working in a large space with other artists. They are working while being observed. They are donating their work. They are working within the limits of 90 minutes.” sez the press release. “The audience has the opportunity to live with the art they fall in love with. The art will be auctioned and it will be affordable! They will be able to live with the beauty, inspiration and joy of the work of art for years to come.” it continues.
The youngsters are raising money for their class trip to the Yukon. The Art Tournament will take place May 16th at 4:30pm. All artists from 14-65 are welcome to participate. For more information, check out the TWS site.
Tags: all-boys, all-girls, alternative education, boarding school, Canada, co-ed, co-educational, college, Cool Classrooms, daycare, Education, elementary, High School Age, learning, Our Kids Go To School, Parenting, pre-school, private elementary school, private school, private school athletics, school, student, teacher, Teaching, Technology, WaldorfIn Memory of Aman Mohammadian
April 7th, 2010 | View Comments | Posted in Blog, Private Schools, School Life, Travel, Waldorf by Shane Alexander
At Waldorf, a class over 30 kids never happens. 26, 27 people tops. Out of those 27 students, a good share of them had been with you for the whole ride at the Toronto Waldorf School. All 12 years. In my day, all 13 years. We become a close knit bunch. A family. We learn together. We eat together. We travel together. We camp together. We ski together. We do a lot together during the school year. Sometimes, I thought we spend more time together as a class than a class in the public school system. I’m sure I’m right. Someday I’ll find out for sure. In the 6 years I attended Waldorf I made some wonderful friends. Some have come and gone. Some are still around. Some share a bond with me that’s tighter than ever.
Then there’s others. Enter Aman Mohammadian.
Aman came to us two weeks into our Grade 11 year. The day before he arrived, our adviser Leed Jackson warned us of this new person entering our close circle. He put up the name on the wall. We were starting to laugh as there were so many letters in his last name. Leed was showing aggravation that his hand was getting tired jotting down letters that would soon create the name of our new classmate. …A.D.I.A.N…Finally! Done.
“Aman Moham-mma-di- whatever. I’m sure he’ll be cool” I whispered to my friend sitting next to me.
The day came. I met Aman. Cool? Um. I guess. If you like guys who wear winter jackets in a hot fall morning that clashed with his ten year old shirt and even older looking pair of acid washed jeans.
I somehow was paired with Aman to show him the ropes. Teach him the Waldorf way. The more I spent with him, the more I got to get to know him and started to really like the guy. My friend Philip and I started to hangout with Aman over the following few months and we quickly started to even chill after school, too. We started to form our own little clique.
It was all coming together.
Aman was the first person in our crew to get a drivers license - This is when the trouble began. After school the crew would get into his brand new Pathfinder and cruise to the mall, the donut shop, the park. Wherever. Anywhere to show off our freedom and that we were getting older. In the first two years with Aman in his new we bonded.
After a while, everyone knew that the front seat was mine. Anyone who would call for Shotgun would get looked at. However, sometimes, I didn’t want to be in that front seat. As a new driver, we got in a couple of crashes during his first few years on the road. I was there for all of them.
The first one happened while a bunch of us were going to grab some early dinner during our last all-night dress rehearsal of our Grade 12 play, JB
. We all got in to go the nearby mall ten minutes away. Girls in the back. Aman and I in the front. I had just gotten a haircut the previous day and my girlfriends were playing with my fresh new hairdo. The car was getting loud. Aman was getting upset. Finally, he yelled `Everyone shut up’. As he did that he forgot that there was a red light in front and forgot to hit the brakes. He hit an old Dodge.
Everyone stopped. We all got out knowing what this might mean.
Aman got out of the car to give the driver we hit our info. Ended up being a nice young lady. Aman pleaded with her not to do anything as his mom would find out. He pleaded to her knowing that she must’ve been in this same situation not long ago. She looked at her car. Noticed that there wasn’t too much damage and agreed. To this day, I don’t think Aman’s mom or brother knew about that accident in May of ’96.
I received a note from an old teacher of mine from High School shortly after Aman’s death last April. He noted that he heard a song that he thought that Aman sang at our little school get togethers and our monthly open-mic series called The Wooden Ship. I heard many other memories people have of Aman over the past year. I’m just happy that I wasn’t the only one Aman left a lifelong imprint on.
In Waldorf, your classmates become your family. Some, you never talk to but only every 5 years or so when you bump into each other. Others, you talk every few months over a beer or coffee. Then there were people like Aman. Someone who you will never forget – as much as you want to forget his plaid winter jacket and acid washed jeans.
Your family misses you, Aman.
It’s kinda hard with you not around
Know you in heaven smilin’ down
Watching us while we pray for you
Everyday we pray for you
Till the day we meet again
In my heart is where I keep you friend
Memories give me the strength I need to proceed
Strength I need to believe
Waldorf School Receives Glowing Report
April 6th, 2010 | View Comments | Posted in Blog, Private Schools, Students, Waldorf by Shane Alexander
Here’s some good news I read today. Thought I’d share..
Tags: alternative education, Canada, co-ed, co-educational, Cool Classrooms, Education, High School Age, learning, Ontario, Our Kids Go To School, private school, private school athletics, school, single-sex, Special Needs, student, teacher, Teaching, WaldorfThursday, March 04, 2010
I am happy to report that the TWS (Toronto Waldorf School) high school completed another very successful inspection by an Education Officer from the Ministry of Education on February 5.
We are inspected every two years and have, since 1975 when the high school opened its doors, maintained our status as a fully accredited institution. We have always been permitted to grant the Ontario Secondary School Diploma and our university-bound students leave our high school with the pre-requisites they need to continue their post secondary studies.
This inspection was far more rigorous than usual because of the number of new credit granting institutions that have arisen in Ontario in recent years and allegations that not all credits meet Ministry standards. We have consistently received high praise from the Ministry for the quality of the education we provide, and this year, under even greater scrutiny, we again received an excellent report. Indeed, our inspector said that she wanted to share with us her “sixth sense” impression that, apart from what she could conclude through the review of our course descriptions, rubrics, tests, exams, student work and meetings with teachers, Katharina Dannenberg (our High School Administrator) and myself, she observed “students are healthy, happy to be at school, and engaged in learning. There is an interactive atmosphere, good interaction with teachers, with each other and through-out the high school.” She was also very impressed with how confident students were in interacting with her and how clearly they were able to articulate what they were learning and how they were being evaluated.
I am aware that many lower/middle school parents have not yet had a child in high school in Ontario and are not necessarily aware of changes to Ontario high school curricula in recent years. I am planning to host an “everything you want to know about how high school works in Ontario and what enhancements are provided by a Waldorf High School education” evening in the near future. Please contact me at if you would be interested in attending such an information evening.
Helene Gross, High School Faculty Chair
Healthy eating at Waldorf
March 30th, 2010 | View Comments | Posted in Blog, Dance, Arts, Music, Events, News, Private Schools, School Life, Waldorf by Shane Alexander
Humus makes me think of Grade 11. Every time I eat it, I think of grade 11. Whenever I think of any type of herbs, I think of grade 12. Sprouts? Lunch time in Grade 8. Tofu? Grade 7 memories come flooding back. Way before it was cool to be healthy and to be vegan, I learned about good eating at Waldorf school.
I think the school had more veggies than carnivores.
As a huge carnivore who loved my weekly McDonalds burger and shake, coming into Waldorf, I never really heard of herbs, sprouts and dishes you can make with chickpeas. It was all about mean meat, brawling beef, fatty fast food fetishes, and cavity candy chillouts.
When I got into high school and took Life Skills, we learned how to cook. Not bake, like most schools do. But cook. Cook dishes that were healthy.
Enter the humus.
I learned about a whole new appreciation of new foods. New tastes. New smells. I learned to try everything at least once. I learned this green stuff wasn’t That bad after all.
Increasingly after my high school days, I have taken on a liking for more nutricious foods. Fast forward a decade later, and I’m basically a part-time vegetarian. Not because it’s the In Thing to do these days. But because it’s the right thing to do. The healthy thing. It was my days at Waldorf experiencing these new tastes and smells that got my stomach accustomed to the spices and sprouts and mashed up veggie dishes that I enjoy so much now.
I hear there’s a dance troop going around town these days urging kids to eat healthy and making raps about healthy eating. Funny how so many years ago, Waldorf didn’t have to do that. We just did it.
It was a lifestyle thing.
Waldorf’s legendary Village Market is still open every Saturday at the school located at 9100 Bathurst Street in Thornhill. Click Here for more info.
Tags: alternative education, Canada, co-ed, co-educational, Cool Classrooms, Education, elementary, High School Age, learning, Ontario, Our Kids Go To School, private elementary school, private school, school, single-sex, student, teacher, Teaching, TechnologyCatching up with Jesse Cook
Waldorf education has housed many future well known artists. Many celebrities take their children to the school.
Quick fact: Friends star, Jennifer Aniston started her grade school education at the Steiner school in New York before she went off to the “Fame” high school for the performing arts.
At the Toronto Waldorf School, one of its most well known children is guitarist extraordinaire, Jesse Cook. Known for his fast fingers and unique style of rumba flamenco, Cook attended the school in Thornhill, Ontario from grade 4 to grade 10. ” We were the fourth Waldorf class in Canada, the guinea pigs”. Recalled Cook. “I arrived shortly after they had moved into their own building. Construction was far from completed, Every time it rained we put out buckets to catch the dripping water. Parents where volunteering on the weekends to help finish the school. It was a very communal atmosphere.”
“Today, Highway 7 and Bathurst”, where the school has been located since it opened in 1968, “is surrounded by suburbs, but back then the school was hidden deep in the woods in the middle of nowhere.” Jesse remembered. “ I traveled 2 hours each way on a myriad of streetcars, subways and buses to get there. My family lived in The Beach in the east end of the city. Today it seems crazy to me to have traveled so far to go to a school when there were two schools within a half a block of my house. But when I was nine the Waldorf School was my salvation.”
Salvation? Two school around the corner? Why Waldorf though? “I never seemed to fit in at regular schools. If I wasn’t bored, I was failing, or both. Waldorf had me hooked from the second I walked in. It was ceaselessly stimulating. We were forever drawing, singing, building, listening to stories, learning, dancing and playing. It wasn’t until I was older that I learned that those stories were The Iliad, Beowolf, the biography of Leonardo da Vinci, and other subjects I would study again later in university.”
Waldorf always seems to know how to hook the young eager mind into learning what they thought they never wanted to learn.
We all know how Waldorf sparks the creative side of the individual, but how about the other parts of life? “When I was young,” Cook revealed. “Waldorf’s emphasis on keeping children young, surrounding them with sounds, scents and recognizing the importance of play, stood at high contrast to what was going in my local public school. There, we were told to sit still in our seats, read our textbooks and do our homework. Waldorf fostered within me a love and fascination of the world around me, it’s history and physiology that stays with me to this day.
Public schools seem to be changing. Today, my son is in a public school and much of what he is learning more closely resembles curriculum at the Waldorf School than what they were teaching at my local public school in the 1970s.”
With eight albums deep including his latest, Rumba Foundation, I had to ask Cook about his inspirations and what got him to write. Had Waldorf been part of that creative play he would share with millions years later? “We had a wonderful music teacher at the school, but my serious music studies always came from outside the school.” He divulged. “The Waldorf School’s benefit to my career was by providing me with a well-rounded view of all the arts. Once you specialize, it is easy to become completely absorbed by music and lose perspective on what you are doing and how it fits into our world.” How about his creative journey on how he makes a track? ”An important part of the creative process is leaving time to experiment and play.” Cook continues, ”With the structure of modern recording being what it is today, it is easy to find yourself under the pressure of the clock. The recording studio is an expensive place and you are billed by the hour. Then there is the pressure from your record label to produce a new CD every eighteen months. It is hard to be inspired, vulnerable and emotionally honest when you are under that kind of stress.” He then shared, “Early on in my life, I built a recording studio in my coach house so that I could mitigate that pressure and be creative whenever I pleased. A workplace, like a school, is an important environment and can help or hinder your growth, even as a big person.”
And as a big person now, looking back at the days at Waldorf, what were the positives and negatives of Waldorf? ”Knowing how to dip your own beeswax candles and crotchet your own recorder case, very useful skills in the 21st Century.” Jesse joked about the positive aspects of the learning experience. ”I have met many ex-Waldorfians over the years and one of the common traits seems to be a confidence and comfort with having an outsider’s perspective. That might not be everyone’s cup of tea. But for me, living in a world of 6 billion people, surrounded by ever-growing urban sprawl, big-box stores and multinational corporations, I value people who can make up their own minds about things, regardless of whether they are part of general consensus or the latest trend.”
Very true.
How about the negatives? “I can’t speak to today’s Waldorf schools. But in my day, the emphasis was definitely on the arts. In my case it was great, coming from a family of artists heading in that direction too. But for other kids in my year who wanted to go into more academic fields, the school was not providing them with enough of a well-rounded education. Several friends who went on to become doctors and veterinarians, realized what their education was lacking and left the school after grade 10 so they could attend schools with stronger science programs.”
Today what would you say to parents who want to send their kids to a Rudolf Steiner based education? “I think it really depends on the kid on the school and on whom they get as their Homeroom teacher.” Cook advices. “I have friends whose kids have gone to Waldorf schools with varying results. As you might expect, some were unhappy and decided to pull their kids out after a period, while others were (and are) ecstatic with the results and recommend the school to everyone they meet. If someone is seriously considering the school, they should see it for themselves, perhaps even try their child in the school for a few days to see if it is a good fit before they commit.”
Jesse Cook is currently on a Canadian wide tour hitting such cites as Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, Montreal, and Vancouver from now till the end of next month. For all Cook news and the full concert schedule you can check out his website here.
Tags: arts, Dance, Arts, Music, Toronto, WaldorfGiving Back
T
V. Radio. The Internet. Chatting with friends. This week it was everywhere. The news. The disaster. The terrible tragedy that happened in Haiti. Every story makes you sadder. Every tear makes you want to do more. Help. Donate. Try to give back. I put out a challenge to my Facebook and Twitter pals to match my $10 donation at Plan Canada (click the link to make a donation yourself). I feel like that’s all I can do. I feel like that’s all I want to do and am able to do more. Because I live in Canada. Because I’ve been lucky. I’ve been brought up with a good groundwork around me. Amazing parents. Two wonderful sisters. An awesome family. I’ve been able able to acquire some of the best friends in the world. I always have dough. I have a roof over my head every night. I got shoes, shirts, hats, new music, a computer. I’m well off. This is the exact reason why I feel like I know I can do more. However, using the mediums I do have access to, I’m doing what I can under the current circumstances I’m in.
Have I always been like this?
I started to listen more to the news after my Grade 11 Social Studies class. That year, that class inspired me. It wasn’t always the chats we had. Or the things we learned about. But it was what we did. We took action. We went to a local Native reserve and learned about the troubles they were having at the time with the Canadian Government. We went to Homeless Shelters and talked to the people there. We toured Toronto and made a point to notice things we usually won’t see. The poverty. The street kids. It opened my eyes. I started to read the newspaper. Dug deep into the stories I found intriguing.
Since that year, I always made a point to help out. Be it with a charity, a local organization. Every year I looked around and chose the place I felt needed my help the most. I don’t always talk about these things, because I believe that charity is for the self and not to be broadcasted, but other times, it needs to be talked about because its learning about what you do inspires others. Just like I was in that spring of 1995.
Tags: social mediaThe Waldorf Experience
January 5th, 2010 | View Comments | Posted in Private Schools, School Choices, School Life, Waldorf by Shane Alexander
Welcome to 2010! I hope your holidays were safe, joyful and creative while spending some quality time with your loved ones.
While looking for inspiration for this weeks article, I stumbled upon this two-part documentary about Waldorf Education. I thought I would share it with you since many enjoyed the video I posted a few weeks ago from TED. Hope you enjoy.
Once again, Happy New Year.
Part 1
Part 2