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RISING STAR PRIVATE HIGH SCHOOL

Cultivating Breath and Depth
Focus on academics, the arts and practical activities at Rudolf Steiner School

“My school creates Renaissance men and women—educated in all subjects,” said Kate Peterson, a 16-year-old senior at the Rudolf Steiner School’s Upper School on East 78th Street, just off Fifth Avenue.

Although her personal passion is volleyball, Peterson said the school’s art-infused curriculum has helped her cultivate an appreciation of that discipline, which is one of the school’s fundamental goals for all of its students.

Rudolf Steiner School is part of a worldwide community of more than 900 Waldorf schools that are based on the educational philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian educator, scientist and artist. Founded in 1928, Manhattan’s Rudolf Steiner was the first Waldorf School in North America. The schools aim to educate children by offering a broad curriculum that balances traditional academic subjects with artistic and practical activities.

Rudolf Steiner offers a rigorous, art-infused high school curriculum to its 81 9th- through 12th-graders. There are about 25 full- and part-time faculty members in the upper school who teach in student-centered, but teacher-directed classrooms.

Most of the school’s students reside in Manhattan, although Steiner also draws students from Brooklyn and the Bronx. Recent graduates have headed to schools including American University, New York University, Sarah Lawrence College, Skidmore College and the University of Chicago.

“A Waldorf education responds to the developmental needs of students and helps them grow academically, socially and artistically,” said Linda Sawers, chair of the upper school. The school also emphasizes cultivating imagination, she said, to help students anticipate how a project will turn out, how pieces fit together or how to visualize their own futures.

Every morning, high school students take a 90-minute seminar, called a main lesson, that gives them the opportunity to intensively study a subject, such as art history, mathematics or zoology. The daily seminars are followed by a more traditional program of English, foreign language, math, history and elective courses, as well as rotating afternoon labs in arts, crafts and science, alternating with music and gym classes. More than half of the high school students participate in after-school sports, including volleyball, soccer and track.

Additionally, the school requires 9th- through 11th-graders to contribute 20 hours of community service annually. Seniors participate in a three-week internship program in professional work environments related to their fields of interest.

Winnie Rubin, 17, a senior who has attended Rudolf Steiner since kindergarten (the lower school is on East 79th Street), appreciates the integrative approach to education and the strong sense of community. The bond between the school’s 1st-graders and 12th-graders is celebrated at the start of each school year in a ceremony when seniors present the youngest scholars with roses (the rose exchange is reversed at graduation).

Every year in high school at Steiner also includes a class trip. Ninth-graders study geology at an environmental center in the Poconos and 10th-graders work for a week on a farm in the Hudson Valley. During their junior year, students volunteer for a week at a residential community in Pennsylvania for developmentally disabled persons. Seniors help choose the destination for their five-day trip in May, which must have some community service aspect.

Kathy Peterson, the mother of senior Kate Peterson, said that Rudolf Steiner has allowed her daughter to blossom because of the breadth of topics students get to explore in great depth. “Her confidence has grown,” Peterson said, “because she has learned how to present herself and her work well.”

— Susan M. Sipprelle