Vision Fast instructor and guide
Jeffrey Duvall welcomes student
Yoko Okumura back to camp
after she completed her 24-hour
solo fast, blessing her with sage
and prayers of gratitude.
January 2005
Death Valley Class Trip
A Waldorf School teacher remembers his most transformative experience in — and out of — the classroom.
by Eric Utne
I never intended to teach, but a couple of years ago, I literally got the “call.” After arriving at a high school graduation party for a friend, I rounded the corner to the backyard of the house, when two teachers from my children’s Waldorf school spotted me. “Eric! You should teach!” they cried out.
They had just been discussing the imminent departure of one of their colleagues and wondering who should succeed him. I laughingly brushed them off: “No way!” But a seed was planted. Over the next few days, the thought of teaching at my kids’ school turned over and over in my mind. After all, I had taken a one-year sabbatical from Utne Reader to “find, feel and follow my heart,” and here it was, three years later. I realized that something inside me had leaped forward in response to the challenge, declaring, “Yes! I should teach! I want to teach! If it’s right, I will teach!”
Five days later, I was signed up to be the 7th-grade class teacher at City of Lakes Waldorf School in Minneapolis. In Waldorf schools, the class teacher ideally stays with the same class from 1st through 8th grade. My mission was to teach the class for two years, getting them through the challenging shoals of the transition from childhood to adolescence.
A Day To Remember
The most memorable incident of my teaching life happened in 8th grade. The theme for the 8th grade in the Waldorf curriculum is Revolution, and we had one from the beginning. On the first day of school, one of the students spat in a girl’s face. The next day, a girl who had been in the class since kindergarten told me she was no longer willing to put up with mean treatment from other female classmates and was leaving Waldorf for another school. I was shocked and dismayed. It was like losing one of my own children. The class was in chaos.
I had been contemplating the theme of “revolution” during my summertime teacher training and was considering introducing a form of group conversation to the class called “council.” That night, I decided the time had come. I made preparations, collecting a candle, a cloth and some objects from nature to make a centerpiece for our conversation circle. As I was driving to school the next morning, I switched on NPR. The date was September 11, 2001.
When the children arrived, I told them as much as I knew. The second tower had just been hit and there was some speculation that terrorists might be involved. I told the children this would be a day they would never forget. I then led them into council. We left our basement classroom and climbed four stories to a darkened room on the top floor of our school. There we sat in a circle on the carpeted floor as I lit the candle and laid out the ground rules for council: Listen from the heart; speak from the heart; no cross talk; no rehearsing what you’re going to say; passing without speaking is OK.
The kids showed up beautifully, speaking with a heartfelt sincerity I hadn’t witnessed in them before. To my surprise, none of them talked about what was going on in New York — I don’t think the events were real to any of us yet. Instead, they talked about how they wanted to treat each other and be treated. There were strong emotions present and a few tears flowed. There were no accusations and no blame. I was so grateful to have this forum available at that moment. While much of the rest of the world had turned to the horrifying images in the media, we had turned to each other.
Desert Solitaire
The class interpreted the revolution theme along two parallel tracks: vision and initiation. These two would come together on our class trip to Death Valley. It was clear from our earliest discussions in the fall that this expedition would not be an initiation so much as a rite of passage. During our Human Fertility block, the students investigated and wrote reports on coming-of-age ceremonies for 13-to-14-year-olds in traditional cultures. Throughout the year, we had rich discussions in our Tuesday and Thursday morning councils. By Memorial Day, we were ready for the journey.
We departed Minneapolis at 6am on Monday, May 27, and arrived in Las Vegas by 7:30am. We rented three minivans and headed for the desert with our chaperones Mary Hatch, Bill Peters and me at the wheels. As we crossed the lowest point in North America, near Furnace Creek (350 feet below sea level), the temperature reached 110 degrees. We joined our leaders, Jeffrey Duvall and Mary McHenry from the School of Lost Borders in Big Pine, California (www.schooloflostborders.com) and were pitching our tents beside Baker Creek (8,000 feet above sea level) on the eastern slopes of the Sierras by late afternoon.
During the first two days of camp, the kids were unusually rebellious. They ignored our leaders’ safety instructions to stay on our side of the stream. Two boys ventured beyond our clearly defined perimeter and scampered up a steep, rocky mountain ridge, causing a concerned Jeffrey to go up after them.
Everything came to a head Wednesday morning. First, Jeffrey’s wife Mary exploded at the kids during council for “risking my man.” We spent the next two hours learning about possible dangers we might encounter on our Vision Fast: scorpions and rattlesnakes, sprains and breaks, dehydration and sunstroke, wild animals and weather, and on and on. At the end, we stood in a circle, cutting sections from a piece of green twine and tying them on each other’s wrists to affirm our commitment to “going for it, in safety.” Jules, the best athlete in class, went first. Just as he was tying the twine around Evan’s wrist, he fainted. It was perfect: the least likely to wilt literally took a fall for the group. Jules recovered quickly, but the class got the message: this was serious business that demanded our full attention and cooperation. A needed shift had occurred.
That afternoon, we drove into the Inyo Mountains and established our base camp, then headed north along the ridge line to make a pilgrimage to the oldest living trees on the planet — the Bristlecone Pines. We were back before dusk, found our fasting spots, marking them with a bandana and a gallon of water, and gathered for our “last supper” and council. During our council, just as Cal was about to speak, a scorpion crawled right through the middle of our circle. No one even flinched. We were stating our intentions for the next day, and Cal had declared months earlier that he wasn’t going out to fast because, “Ninety-nine percent of people in America never went through any initiation and never fasted, and they’re perfectly normal.” None of us expected Cal to participate, so we were all surprised when he spoke solemnly and determinedly: “I’m going out” (long pause) “because I don’t want to.”
The next morning at sunrise, everyone went out to fast alone. We spent that day and night apart in the wilderness, facing the heat, wind, hunger and thirst, the dark, and our own fears and loneliness. And everyone returned at dawn, alive, healthy, and whole. Standing at the “Threshold Circle” for their return, I was filled with tears of gratitude for their bravery and safety, and for the support the parents had sent us during their simultaneous vigil in Minneapolis.
By the time we got home and experienced our tearful and joyful graduation festivities, I realized that my band of anarchistic brigands had transformed into a tight-knit, mutually supportive family. It was a great and rare privilege to witness these young men and women, my “li’l varmints,” develop sincere interest in and care for each other through deep listening.
Teaching is the hardest work I’ve ever done. My respect for teachers, whether in public or private school, and at whatever grade level, has grown enormously. I didn’t have a clue about the challenges and stresses teachers face every day. Or the satisfactions. I learned more teaching (especially using the Waldorf curriculum) and being with these kids than from anything else I’ve done in my life.
They say we teach what we need to learn. As I said earlier, I was on a quest to “find, feel and follow my heart” when invited to teach. So it makes sense that I taught my students to listen to, and speak from, their hearts. It’s exactly what I needed to learn. My students gave me my heart. It’s the education I always wanted and never got, until teaching, that is.
Eric Utne is the founder of Utne Magazine and author of Cosmo Doogood’s Urban Almanac.
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