Where do they go after Berkshire Waldorf School?

A+ Students and A+ Citizens

Students at Berkshire Waldorf School enjoy a hands-on curriculum based on Waldorf education founder Rudolf Steiner’s understanding of child development. Designed to nurture and engage the whole child physically, cognitively and emotionally, Waldorf education is also a social education, so students grow in a balanced way individually and among their peers.

Integrated with rigorous academics, Berkshire Waldorf School elementary and middle school students practice instrumental and vocal music, games and movement, farming and outdoor learning, foreign language, and arts such as woodworking, knitting, painting, and clay modeling. Each grade performs a play every year. The process by which students learn emphasizes imagination, scientific inquiry, multiple intelligences and open-ended creativity rather than rote learning and testing. The goal of Waldorf education is to establish within each child his or her own high level of academic motivation and excellence, to prepare students to succeed at their choice of high school and college and to reach their full human potential.

Meeting the students, one sees right away that they are happy, healthy, engaged, poised and kind. Clearly, they love learning. But how do they fare academically, in the long run?

After graduating from eighth grade, Berkshire Waldorf School students may go on to our affiliated Berkshire Waldorf High School or well-regarded public high schools in the Berkshires, where they consistently place into AP classes. Our graduates also matriculate to nearby independent college preparatory schools. What’s remarkable is how they step into these opportunities: with courage, creativity and community. Here’s a look at Class of 2020 acceptances.

Other independent schools our graduates have recently attended include: Emma Willard School (Troy, NY) Interlochen Academy for the Arts (Interlochen, MI) Miss Hall’s School (Pittsfield, MA) Putney School (Putney, VT) Suffield Academy (Suffield, CT) Walnut Hill School for the Arts (Natick, MA)

“Being personally acquainted with a number of Waldorf students, I can say that they come closer to realizing their own potential than practically anyone I know.”

 Dr. Joseph Weizenbaum
Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“If you’ve had the experience of binding a book, knitting a sock, playing a recorder, then you feel that you can build a rocket ship or learn a software program you’ve never touched. It’s not bravado, just a quiet confidence. There is nothing you can’t do. Why couldn’t you? Why couldn’t anybody”?

Peter Nitze
Waldorf and Harvard graduate
Director of an aerospace company

“Waldorf education draws out the best of qualities in young people. While this is not an instant process, the values they learn provide a lifelong platform from which to grow.”

Gilbert Grosvenor
President Emeritus of the National Geographic Society

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