CCS is once again offering a summer colloquium for teachers who are interested in working collaboratively. The week offers an opportunity to explore new approaches, to strengthen teaching skills and to take the time to deepen our understanding of the challenges facing education today.
This year we have chosen to focus on the etheric, the role it plays in child and adolescent development and what we can do to strengthen it in our own teaching and in the context of a school or learning community. In light of the changing nature of the experienced life-world with the ubiquitous presence of digital media, it seems important to come to a deeper, more practiced relationship with these forces of life and vitality as they express themselves in nature, in the human soul and in the spirit.
In one of his early characterizations of the etheric, Rudolf Steiner described it as a non-bodily formative activity where nothing is separate as in the physical but “everything exists in living, weaving motion”. This fluid, differentiated yet non-separate formative force is a great riddle. It is a qualitative, rather than a quantitative presence in the sense world. We can recognize its expression yet its nature remains elusive.
Is it possible to come to such an understanding of this source of living formative activity that we are able to work creatively with it in our encounters with children, young people and colleagues?
Robert Sim, Beth Weisburn and Kristin Buckbee will offer sessions based on their attempts to bring a greater consciousness of the etheric to bear in their teaching; Jon McAlice will lead the studies. To register or for more information: www.findingcontext.org