Kassel, Germany. Waldorf upper school is a realm of development, because our rapidly changing world is calling for new content and forms of teaching. It is important for upper school teachers to exchange ideas. The Teachers’ Seminar for Waldorf Education in Kassel and the Pedagogical Section at the Goetheanum in Dornach, supported by the Association of Free Waldorf Schools, are dedicated to this.
In order to facilitate intensive encounters between senior school teachers in a global context, the Teachers’ Seminar for Waldorf Education in Kassel has been organizing the International Training Week for senior school teachers for many years. From April 12 to 17, 2025, a World Upper Secondary School Teachers’ Conference was organized in Kassel for the first time. The theme was: “Understanding is translating—teaching as a translation process.” Nearly 300 colleagues from 35 nations enjoyed the richness of the program and dealt with possible teaching materials in a committed and concentrated manner (with a focus on the 11th grade).
The joy was great: in addition to warm human encounters, there was the experience that the shared view of young people and the tasks of shaping teaching create a real community. With puberty, many young people not only enter a time of turbulence, but they also begin to seek and defend their points of view with optimism, keen interest, strong judgment, and high ideals. In view of the ecological, civilizational, and political challenges, pupils need open-minded, competent, and proactive teachers who can help them develop their relationship with the world, discover their own self-expectations, and take responsibility for themselves and the world around them.
Both in the plenary lectures and in the didactic seminars, artistic courses, and discussion rounds, it was possible to experience cultural breadth—an unbiased view of anthroposophy was cultivated and the dialogical relationship with nature was explored.
Through contributions from different countries and from different perspectives, the participants broadened their own horizons on the basis of mutual perception and the opportunity to individualize Waldorf education locally in a modern, cosmopolitan, and competent way while preserving the specific cultural influences.
After more than 100 years, Waldorf education has developed into a worldwide school movement. Not as an imitation, but as an ongoing translation, it can grow and develop in encounters with other cultural contexts. You could experience something of this in Kassel.
More Lehrer Seminar and The Goetheanum Pedagogy Section
Translation Charles Cross
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