A Student's Perspective

This was written by a high school student, working on persuasive essays. He was asked to choose and support an argument through this essay. Andres, you have convinced me!

Otto Specht is a great school for everyone. I am a student here in the Specht high school. I came here last January and before Specht school was horrible. Otto Specht has had a good impact on my life.  

First  Otto Specht made me into a calmer person. One way I got calmer is because there is a swing in my classroom. Swinging in my class makes me calm because I focus better while I'm moving. Another reason it made me calmer is because we go on hikes everyday but have plenty of time to relax. This makes me calmer because I need to rest in order to strive. Being calm makes me into a better person because it helps me not get angry. When I'm angry I don't learn well.

A second reason Otto Specht has a good impact on my life is because it's easier for me to do my responsibilities here in school, like my school work, because I'm calmer and teachers have patience. For example, Mrs. Chin stays patient during processing. She doesn’t yell, she doesn’t say “hurry up” and she knows how to teach people who have a hard time learning. Sam also stays patient in the same way as Mrs. Chin. For example, sometimes I lay on the couch during music and meditation, and other times I walk around the room. Sam understands that that’s part of who I am. He has compassion and does music and meditation every day, no matter how tired I am. 

The last reason Otto Specht has changed my life is because it makes me happy, because people are kind, and it makes me feel happy about myself. An example of kindness at Otto Specht is when people dont treat you like you're nothing. For example, people treat each other with respect, like all the time. I feel good about myself all the time because of that kindness and respect in the whole community. Feeling good about myself makes me feel happy and makes it easier to work hard.

In conclusion, OSS changed my life, and we can learn that environment is the most important quality in a school.

The Diverse Nature of the Otto Specht Forest

This  is a meditation on our unique school seen through the poetry of our diverse students. The characters are named from trees, like Beech and Laurel, W. Spruce and Sugar Maple, because they and their families make up the outreaching branches of our school. 

The days here are like whole seasons in slow motion, the months like lifetimes, and students grow and change with a night’s sleep making a fool of time altogether. That’s what I think anyway. I’m a teacher here, Mr. Cherry Blossom Bloom.

BEECH

Beech is a student, a lot like everyone else: all trying to learn something and better ourselves, but so different in his capacities. He used to say, “I can’t”, but this year he’s been writing poems like this one:

I like the white snow falling cold on my tongue 

My soul trying to keep me warm from the wind

I play in the snow packing snow balls to play.

The wind talking, swirling through the sky.

When Beech saw that he’d written that poem he shouted, “I did it! I wrote a poem!” That’s Beech, self-doubting and incredulous, encouraged and proud of it! 

CLEMENTINE

Our Clementine is an unmatched pearl: charismatic, cultured, complex and unstring-able. She reminds me of that other great melancholic, Don Quixote, when she wears her stone stubborn face and alludes to the classics. She revels in the sounds of speech and converses casually with anyone in her original renditions of French, Japanese, German, Spanish, Swedish, Dutch.. whatever you like. Her musical milieu is impeccable. She performs long, hilarious moments of improvised recitative. She puns with immunity. Never wanting attention she can’t seem to avoid it.

I heard trumpet crooning, I heard trumpet moaning.

That I heard is the trumpet crooning and moaning

I see the trumpet

The Trumpeter is Louis Armstrong 

And he’s feeling sad

He’s feeling too blue

I was listening to the music I was dancing to the music .

Feeling happy

Glad

Hopeful

LAUREL

Laurel walks during class. Just gets up and walks through a room. He’s thinking, creating something, the character he has to become in order to live into understanding. His desire for knowledge is palpable, though learning is itself an unwelcome chore, so information enters by way of the circuitous paths he carves through the room. It’s like he is creating his own school wherein he learns by way of techniques honed through hours of avoiding the known routes to knowledge in favor of those which he and only he can travel. And, you know? It works for for him. Why stand in his way? 

I’ve known trees

I’ve known trees who love, care, worship, fight, eat, cook and clean

With branches that grow and give hibernating animals

Life and warmth.

My soul has grown into a

Heart of a tree.

It’s beating like a bird,

Beautiful like my family

Trees survive, hard times

Trees and families

My heart has grown from hard

Times like the tree. 

W. SPRUCE 

W. Spruce arrived with a new haircut this week. He’s all lanky, limbs akimbo, a teenager who moves in an untethered way some trees might envy for its freedom. And still other trees would not. Easygoing, quick to smile and laugh for mysterious reasons, W’s eyes are never quite still, always reading the room for danger or opportunity, or who knows what? Always curious.

I.

The teenager with autism’s bars are reads 

(Thus) works understanding.

They are chained by write understanding 

Raucous

How will they break free?

Reading, understanding, sickness

II

Sunflowers are happy

They eat the sun

They revive the spirit 

They understand my senses 

Red barn likes him

The river friends him

SUGAR MAPLE 

Sugar Maple may seem rootless but don’t be fooled, her tendrils spread in all directions seeking any suitable support. She runs with the elephants, the peacocks and the ponies; she sings arias to the pencil sharpener. And in a separate state of awareness she questions and answers questions in multiple dimensions, on multiple timelines. No longing for the past, nor pressing to the future, she strides through the present with confidence, lending credence to string theory. 

The sound of the music is trying to upset

The sounds yes is Yearning and orange

The sound of the music is trying to upset.

I see together and dance Around.

See together and dance Around.

Be feeling America.

In dance around.

Heaven is together dance around.

P. ARTHUR CEDAR

In these three years, P. Arthur Cedar has reached a formidable height; towering over our forest now, we’ve watched him grow in both body and mind. Storms which once threatened to pull out his roots, now meet him and lose their power sometimes. Siren sounds on the wind and airwaves alight on his branches. And as he learns that not every wayward song needs singing, so we will see him in all his pride standing in his place, watching the world below with all the serenity he deserves. 

I am the monk the king

The monk is bad and good

A little bit of both

I dream about helping people

I tryed (obsolete) to be onast (

I hope to find power

GINGKO

With her flavonoids firing and her terpenoids triggering, Gingko is healthier than a horse and thoroughly untamed. Science dates her ancestry back 270 million years, so we are patient with her education, some things simply take time. Meanwhile wisdom works its way through her eyes as she studies you openly and honestly, searches for humanity in you; and as she knows you in a moment’s glance she reflects your love... or not. 

I am squire

I am musical

I dream of making sorrow disappear 

I make an effort to be kind

I hope to find love

I am squire

Farm and Garden as an Essential Curriculum

Lost in my thoughts of the day, taking a moment to enjoy this newly arrived fall light as it filters through the slowly shedding limbs of trees forming the canopy covering the path, I am snapped out of my day dream world at the abrupt sound of someone coming around the bend on their way down the path.  It takes us both a moment, upon entering the now shared space of the world, to recognize each other.  She, who is my next door neighbor, quickly reaches for her mask in a startled manner.  We laugh as we pass at the initial discriminating, protective reaction, which still feels strangely hostile despite having become so commonplace.

Rudolf Steiner spoke of changing times to come in his post WW1 future; of catastrophic conditions like poorer soil, and foods with decreased nutritional value.  He spoke of the need for free thinking individuals to face the challenges ahead.  In his indications for the Waldorf pedagogy, he charged the incoming teachers through the context of the curriculum to try and "put the children in the right soul mood" to face these challenges so that they may be able to create new systems and ways of doing things.  In doing so, we teachers take on the monumental task of bringing our students into a balanced and healthy life, equipping them with the necessary tools, and educating and preparing their future selves to carry the torch of humanity forward.

Well studied in history, a keen observer of the present, and with an incredible gift of future insight, understanding before most others where the road was taking us, Rudolf Steiner, with much intention and purpose, included Farm & Garden in the original design of the Waldorf pedagogy we practice today 101 years after the opening of the first Waldorf school.  Steiner fully understood, not only the value of exposing youths to wonder, to the work of the farm and all of its inherent lessons, but to the fact that the farm and garden acts as one of the last forms of true humanistic education available to us all.  Although originally proposed as a subject among many, being a person of holistic points of view, I can easily assume Steiner saw the possibilities of weaving all the other subject matter the students were receiving into the Farm & Garden class, as we do in Otto Specht School.  From grade 1 to 8 and beyond, there are numerous opportunities for students to apply the content of their other lessons into real world situations through the farm and garden work.  Through these avenues the students engaged in Waldorf pedagogy have their capacities of intellect and physicality encouraged and cultivated, but most importantly their feeling life is awakened and engaged. In activating their soul life through the work and learning on the farm, and weaving into that work their studies and endeavors in the classroom, the academic work is further made alive and real for the students.

But it is also much more. Not only do the Early Grade children find the forms of the letters in the forest and in the bed rows of the fields, or the 3rd graders build wigwams and tipis harvested by saplings in the woods, or the Middle schoolers forage for mushrooms after a big rain and help create a Medicinal Plant Glossary by studying plants grown in the garden and turning them into different tinctures and balms, or the Upper Grades apply their physics knowledge of leverage while splitting logs and digging rocks out of empty field space in preparation for growing food to help supply the Cafe and Hilltop with Biodynamic produce, but they are learning, albeit unbeknownst to them at the moment, something far greater, more lasting and according to Steiner over 100 years ago, more imperative. They are learning what it is to be human. They are learning what it is to be a part of humanity.  They are being educated for the future.  For their future selves. For the future of humanity in the ever shifting world.  

And why one may ask?  The answer is that agriculture- the science or practice of farming, including cultivation of the soil for the growing of crops and the rearing of animals to provide food, wool, and other products, is innately a social endeavour.  Food and drink is common amongst people of all color, religion, belief or creed, and in this, it is binding, unifying.   Farm and garden work requires independence and collaboration.  It requires delayed gratification, patience, care, intention, creativity, observation and perseverance.  It requires hope.  Hope that our work today will not in time be in vain.  It requires communicating and respect. It requires love and thankfulness.  Why do we include Farm & Garden for every grade, often first thing in the morning, 5 days a week?  Because it reminds us of our humanity, teaches us to be human, and offers opportunities to come together without fear, with open heartedness, with love and respect for each other in our mutual pursuit of life.  And perhaps, if we do our jobs well enough, our students and ourselves will be prepared for the times at hand when it is easier to be afraid, to recluse, to avoid each other, to divide and separate.  They will be prepared to stand together and find the much needed 'new methods' and solutions that will lead generations to come progressively forward and upward in the endlessly unfolding future.

Waldorf 101: The Essentials, Part 1

In 1924, 5 years after the first Waldorf School opened its doors, Rudolf Steiner gave a series of lectures regarding education. The question he posed at the start of these lectures was the following: “What is the role of education and teaching to be for the future in terms of both the individual and society?” He pointed to a widening gap between what we know in terms of information, and what we have lost in terms of knowledge of the human being and the implications this had for the future of society and the environment. Over the next century, Waldorf Education became the fastest growing independent school movement in the world and one year ago, this centennial was marked with worldwide celebrations. As we looked into the world of September 2019, and as we turned our eyes towards the next 100 years, while we celebrated the ideas and ideals of Waldorf Philosophy, its now global reach, and the contributions to society Waldorf graduates have made, we also faced more difficult questions of where it has failed in meeting the needs of a changing world - and why? Just 6 months later, schools were shuttered, global lockdowns kept us apart, and every vulnerability, disadvantage, and inequity built into our society for years, was magnified. 

The pandemic’s first shockwaves had us all diving into the unknown with the urgency to do what needed to be done for our students. We logged on, we sent packets, we created content, whatever we could do to keep connected, to carry on. Though we may not have had much time to ponder them yet, major questions concerning the future of education loomed in front of us. In the age of remote learning, as information systems replace teachers, would education survive?  One year after the celebrated centennial and with a new glimpse of the future landscape, we must return to the self reflection that began a year ago with the courage to find answers. What, in Waldorf Education, moves us forward through changing times, without losing relevance, holding our course against the rip tides of societal trends so we can be responsive and not reactive? As we returned to in-person schooling this summer and fall, the answers to these questions felt present, palpable, living in the soul of our work, more noticeable perhaps in contrast to the months of separation. 

When Rudolf Steiner gave his indications for the Waldorf curriculum, they came out of a direct connection to human development and an understanding of the human being that is not just physiological and intellectual but that is inextricable from soul and spirit. Teaching, Steiner told us, must come out of this understanding and through the relationship of the teacher and student. “This relationship to the teacher—the activity of the hidden forces between the child’s heart and that of the teacher—is the most important aspect of the teaching method.” This is what was so clearly present when we returned to school this summer and fall. Every day, our faculty and staff meet our students with love and appreciation, inspired to bring meaningful and appropriate content. At Otto Specht School, our students often present us with puzzles; capacities that have developed outside of the usual framework and timeline of human development, with incredible gifts and heightened intelligences, developing alongside blocked pathways of expression, and diverted connections. By understanding the developmental processes and by building strong relationships, we allow each student to guide us in his or her education. As Steiner said, “Thus, from week to week, month to month, year to year, a true knowledge of the human being will help us read the developing being like a book that tells us what needs to be done in the teaching. The curriculum must reproduce what we read in the evolutionary process of the human being.” We don’t always get it right, but each day we return to the task with open hearts, ready to try again. 

As educators, we understand our task is not just for today and that our best efforts may not be seen for years to come. But if we have learned anything over the past six months it is that the world can change very quickly, and sometimes in unexpected ways. We cannot respond to global crises with information alone. Waldorf Education must have the courage to keep course, guided by these essential principles - first, that education must come from a true understanding of the whole human being and the arc of human development, and second, that education must be brought through the relationship between the student and teacher as a truly social endeavor. This will allow us to answer some of the more complex questions about the successes and failures of Waldorf Education thus far, how it will stand the test of time, and how it must move forward to reach across social and cultural divides and meet the needs of the future.

The Immune Sequence

I began working with the Immune Sequence in October 2019 when I offered a course through Eurythmy Spring Valley to the public to prepare for the cold and flu season. I worked with the exercises every day through June 2020. After eight weeks of daily work I noticed a marked difference in my breathing, which tends to be shallow, but deepened considerably. In addition, I experienced the first winter where I did not get sick once –– not even a sniffle (a miracle when passing copper balls back and forth to children with colds and flus who don’t cover their mouths when they sneeze!). When I would begin to feel under the weather, I would do the sequence an extra time and the next day felt well. As of September 2020, I still have not been sick. 

When I began working with the sequence in October 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic was not yet a reality for the United States. The exercises were originally given as a sequence during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, when Rudolf Steiner (the man behind Anthroposophy, Waldorf Education and Eurythmy) made the sequence widely known to all members of the Anthroposophical Society and the Anthroposophical Hospital. 

The immune sequence exercises engage self-movement and meet the human being on a conscious level, working with imaginations that relate to our experience of the world and impact the physiological workings of our rhythmic system. The movements involve both the feet and the arms, while the imaginations deepen and warm our breathing, warm our digestion, warm our circulation, and build resilience. A balanced rhythmic system supports the health of the nerve-sense system and the metabolic system helps our bodies to be a comfortable home in which to live on the earth. Warming through the circulatory system and respiratory system helps our Ego (highest self) to stay connected, grounded, and in control, and helps us to regulate the emotions of anxiety and fear which are rampant during a pandemic. 

Overall, the sequence helps strengthen our immune system through gestures and imaginations that embody strength, love, hope, and letting go. It takes about 10 minutes to do and is always followed by a rest to allow the healing influences to work deeply. 

Sickness is sometimes unavoidable and sometimes unnecessary to prevent, but when faced with a pandemic we can choose to be our healthiest self, building our resistance and resilience to illness with both inner and outer care. Inwardly we can build a supportive environment with health-giving content that can lift people’s spirits. This cultivates inner strength and clarity and combats stress, which can present itself on a physical and emotional level, making us more vulnerable to illness and affecting our decisions and our ability to get things done. Outwardly, we can spend more time outdoors, enjoy connecting with the earth and each other and engage in conscious warmth- giving movement activity. This can help us to feel well situated within our body. 

In the midst of the fear and turmoil surrounding the pandemic, people who worked with the sequence daily found that they were empowered through the ability to take their health into their own hands by doing something self-directed and proactive. They found that the sequence offered them a deep sense of wellness and calm that lasted throughout their day. Several experienced a difference in their breathing and circulation, and most people who did the sequence every day did not get sick or found that if they did it was much less severe than normal. 

At Otto Specht School, the Middle School Group has been working with the immune sequence twice a week and the High School Group does this together every day before going home. If you are interested in learning this sequence, please let us know. I would love to offer a course to teach it to you! 

The Making of Mr. Leopold's Neighborhood

The idea popped up in a staff meeting one Tuesday afternoon while we sat, looking at each other with blank faces and wondering how we were going to go on as a school in the time of Covid 19. We’d just gotten word that schools were definitely closing. How could we, as a relationship-based institution, manage to keep our connections with students under this circumstance? 

Mr Leopold joked, “I could do Mr. Leopold’s neighborhood!” he said, and sang “it’s a quarantine day in the neighborhood, a quarantine day from a neighbor, don’t you be mine…”  Everyone laughed and Jeanette said, “I love it! We’ll do it.” 

Chela picked up the ball and ran with it. She got a camera and a recorder and began booking the teachers into socially distanced segments to feature each of their courses with segues between features provided by Mr. Leopold’s songs and comments.  Who knew the weeks of “sheltering at home” would drag on. Episode went to episode and what began as a modest no-budget stop gap fluff piece with slapdash editing would turn into a multi-million dollar Hollywood production…well…

Nine episodes did get made and Chela’s editing did improve modestly along the way. Particular episodes that come to mind are “Earth Day” and “Spring Break”. We spent the Earth Day week picking up trash all around the neighborhood. Spring break turned into an imaginary vacation by the Stern family to Maine for a canoe trip; a journey to the Blue Ridge Mountains with the Damiao’s, Mrs. Irimina in Hawaii, Kinchasa at the beach, and so forth. Mr Leopold added the bookends from his hobo camp where he sang us the tales from the hardknock days “riding the rails” by poor transient laborers.   Other episodes included a voyage into the mysteries of Spring flowers with Ms Patricia, Tai Chi with Mrs Chin, Farm lessons from Mr. Bosch, and of course a chance meet up with Frau Haupt and her new puppy - who obeys German commands about as well as those in english.

As the landscape changed from late Winter snows through Spring rains and the greening and flowering of the fields and forests, we waited while the social landscape changed. We learned to distance ourselves physically while holding each other firmly in heart and mind. We zoomed and zoomed here and there, over the Threefold campus, and over the ethers of internet. As of this writing we’re hovering somewhere between knowing and not knowing what to expect in the future. The theme of Mr Leopold’s neighborhood, “it’s all a big mystery to me” still stands, and perhaps he’ll be back for more episodes if circumstances (and audience) demand.  

Watch ALL Episodes here!

Reconnecting in the Time of COVID

To what do we feel connected?  Of all the specifics that make up our daily rhythms and life realities, which do we connect to in a direct way.  So much of the world that directly impacts us, is distant to us; the clothes made in a country we've never visited, purchased with a click and shipped to our doors, the out of season produce on our local grocery store shelves, grown in far off places by people we do not know.  The heat, water, and electricity we so often take for granted, but notice acutely when the switch does not deliver as it should. The technological component of our current "normal" is so distant it is virtual.  Currency exchanges with virtual money, relationships via media outlets with friends we scarcely really know. Of the truly necessary elements for day to day survival, which are we directly connected to providing for ourselves and our loved ones? 

Modernity has not changed the necessities of life, just how they are acquired.  For most, gone are the days of sewing clothes, growing food staples, chopping firewood for heating homes and cooking meals, gathering water from the well, and felling trees to build a home.  This life was hard.  Work days were not bound by a clock on the wall but by the seasons and the natural light of both the sun and the moon.  Our forebears did not take vacations, go to the gym or binge their favorite sitcom. Life had a simplicity to it one might say, yet it was filled with purpose and meaning, and because of it, I can not help but think that people were grateful, appreciative, and happy.  

Amazing things have come in modernity, but not without a cost. What we have gained in luxuries, comforts, and relative ease provided to us by our modern world we have lost in our connectedness to the Earth, Nature, and its seasons. We have lost any direct line between our work and expenditure of energy and our essential necessities for life- water, shelter, warmth, and food.  We have surrendered a bit of our life's sovereignty and placed hope and faith in a system we have no direct connection to, a system that is bound to break down. A paradigm shift is needed, a realization many were shocked into by the insecurity felt as the supply chain of vital needs was shaken and disrupted during this pandemic and world wide shut down.  Food, medicine, culture, education, and even social connection have been and continue to be halted, slowed, and altered. 

Since long before this stunned awakening, Otto Specht School has provided a curriculum that reconnects. Our school has been promoting outdoor experiences, nature based education and intergenerational community exposure since its inception. As the cornerstones of the school's mission, OSS has been cultivating the awareness, capacities and knowledge base needed today to answer the questions of tomorrow. Our students have the horticultural and animal husbandry skills the populace is now rushing to gain. The student body has the empathy and experience to work together with all the varied individuals in the world.  In a time of separation, fear, and anger, there is a great bright and beautiful light of hope- our students.

Remote Possibilities

At the beginning of our mandated sheltering-in-place as COVID19 spread through New York, I was stumped at how I could continue to bring the content of eurythmy to my students through an online platform. So much of what I do in group classes of eurythmy as well as individual eurythmy therapy sessions has to do with creating a space where with great presence we can enter into the archetypal movements of the human being through art and developmentally appropriate exercises. The results of this work: decreased anxiety, deep breathing, and a general balancing of energetic, emotional, and physical parts of the human being. These activities can’t be simulated through a screen. 

It was clear that I would need to find alternative ways to work with students and their families on the Zoom platform which would meet the students and also use the best online tools to create varied experiences. While recognizing that many families struggled with their new rhythms helping their children along with maintaining their own jobs, I found that this time on Zoom offered me several gifts. 

The first gift was learning how to work with the computer and the internet in ways that empowered learning. I worked with creating lesson plans that included visual images, music, poetry, stories, and videos. I found ways to teach subjects related to eurythmy that could enhance understanding and experience of geometry (often moved in eurythmy) and imagination (also an important element in imbuing gesture with meaning). I tried to find the best of what online could offer and attempt to master it, rather than be mastered by the medium.

The second gift that I was given through this experience was the chance to teach a subject outside of eurythmy. Long ago I trained to be a Waldorf teacher. After a year of teaching, I studied eurythmy. I never imagined that I would teach another subject! When faced with the need for more online classes I was inspired to work with astronomy, a subject that would allow the students and their families to connect with the natural world and look up and be inspired by the heavens during this stressful time. I didn’ realize how much I would enjoy diving into another topic and teaching something new!

Image from Astronomy Class

The third and most important gift was getting to know the parents of some of the students that I was working with. Several parents were able to learn how to do some eurythmy therapy with their child at home. Other parents attended astronomy with their child. I was able to learn from them as well as share beautiful messages, thoughts, and images with them. This element of the time online with parents has been irreplaceable, and one that I am deeply grateful for. I also was able to see parents interact with their children –– a rare opportunity to experience these beautiful relationships.

While I am still joyfully teaching classes online this summer, nothing can replace meeting face to face! I am looking forward to meeting everyone again in person in the fall.

Images from 5th grade remote eurythmy: consonant riddles

Educating Through and Beyond the COVID-19 Crisis

We look around our campus and see beauty everywhere, our gardens bursting with life and color, with lessons our students left behind as seeds and soil months ago. We take it in with tired eyes knowing too well the struggles and heartaches that have grown up alongside the flowers this spring. In our time apart, we have seen the wounds of society laid open, reminding us they’ve never really had a chance to heal, pushing us to ask ourselves, maybe finally with honesty, who we are as individuals, who we are as a nation, and who we want to be. 

We know that the effects of COVID-19, in health outcomes, economic impact, and access to education, have not been shared equally across society. Overwhelmingly, those whose health or economic standing were already vulnerable have borne the brunt of the devastation, specifically the elderly, communities of color, and families living paycheck to paycheck. We also saw quite quickly that, rippling across every demographic, the impacts were multiplied for families of children with special needs with school districts across the nation reporting regression amongst their special needs students. Our families experienced this struggle as well.

When it first became clear that schools would be closed, we knew the challenge would be enormous. As Waldorf Educators and educators of students with learning differences, we are not an information delivery system. We bring context and experience, with teaching strategies built upon a strong foundation of personal relationships and trust. We questioned how we could reach across the distance to bring this to our students with nothing but a screen to connect us. Nevertheless, we jumped in. On March 16th the State ordered all schools in New York to close. On March 17th, our first online classes began as did planning for a series of videos and weekly communications to keep our students connected.

We took immediate action as well to mitigate the economic impact we knew would come. We applied for the Payroll Protection Program on day one, hoping to maintain employment. We also had to make difficult decisions to let staff members go with the sincere hope to bring them back as soon as possible and understanding the grave risk of losing some incredible individuals. 

The time apart has been a struggle for our students, our families, and our teachers that weave our community together and keep us strong in soul and spirit; but we have persevered together and are continuing to navigate towards the future. Our integration and interdependence with the elderly at the Fellowship Community is vital to our programming and remains strong as ever. Due to COVID, however, our students will need to maintain physical distance from the elderly. Six classrooms we have used at the Fellowship in the past are no longer available, placing a dire and immediate need for us to create new classroom spaces before the fall semester.

Otto Specht School has been directly impacted in the following ways due to the COVID-19 crisis:

• Reduction in tuition receivables

• Delay and reduction in district funded tuitions

• Cost of constructing temporary spaces 

• Need for increased scholarships for families impacted by COVID-19

Our call to you is to give as freely and generously as possible at this time, to help us reach our immediate need of $100,000 by August 1st.

We have launched a peer-to-peer fundraiser to broaden our reach, knowing that while each of us can only do so much, together we can ensure that this extraordinary education continues through and beyond the COVID-19 Crisis.

The Graduates

Just months ago, we were preparing our young people for a world we thought we recognized. Since then, the global pandemic brought pieces of society as we knew it to a screeching halt, interrupting social and economic activity, and turning education remote. The health impacts and economic devastation of the pandemic, and the gap in educational opportunities, meanwhile, magnified our nation’s inequities, laying bare pieces of our society that were there all along, often, to many, out of sight. Finally, the violence that accompanies our well trod racial divides, erupted a nation of voices, united in demanding justice and declaring, louder than ever, “enough is enough.” This is the world our seniors are walking into, the world they will help to shape. Never again will graduates inherit this particular dynamic moment in human history. 

John Pennington

Kesshem Williams

Kaito Maekawa

Giancarlo Young

As we celebrate our seniors and reflect upon their time with us, we also look to them as a barometer by which we can measure our own small school’s contribution to the more just, compassionate, and resilient society we work towards. We know these students well. We have seen barriers criss-crossed by them, the fabric of our community stitched together as they have united worlds separated by differences in communication, learning, ability, upbringing, and race. They have learned with their hands the importance of healthy soil as a foundation and they have created it, the importance of diversity as a key component of sustainability, and they have grown it. They have reaped the fruits of these labors and so have we. As a school, we could not be more proud of who they are as they enter this world on the brink of change; and we know, without a doubt, that their presence in the world is a contribution to the higher good of all.

Congratulations to Our Graduates!