In the early 1990s, fresh out of Rudolf Steiner College’s teacher training program, Patti Connolly and I embarked upon what would become a life-long career in Waldorf education. Even though it was a challenge at times, we had so much fun creating a curriculum that both nourished and educated our students from 1st through 8th grade.
When it came to our teacher training, the only area that was lacking in concrete guidance was that of how to teach early literacy. Fortunately, Patti and I had strong backgrounds in this area and over the years were able to cobble together an adequate curriculum for our students. It was, however, extremely time-consuming - there were so many concepts to cover!
Fast forward to 2014… By this time, Patti and I had been mentoring and training teachers for over a decade. When we got together to share ideas, we frequently lamented that Waldorf classrooms were still filled with a hodgepodge of approaches to teaching early literacy- some fairly effective, some abysmal.
At this time, I had the opportunity to bring this ‘how to teach English’ dilemma to Christof Wiechert, past Director of the Pedagogical Section. The conclusion of this conversation, which also included reading specialist, Jennifer Militzer-Kopper, was Christof’s charge to research and write a resource book for Waldorf teachers on how to teach English in our schools.
I immediately called Patti and invited her to join us in taking on Christof’s charge, which she did. Over the next two years Patti, Jennifer, and I researched Steiner’s indications, as well as mainstream methods for teaching literacy. In a way, it was an ideal balance of talents and knowledge: I had years of Waldorf teaching experience, Jennifer worked as a Lindamood-Bell reading specialist and was also Waldorf trained (though she has not taught in the classroom), and Patti had both, years of Waldorf class teaching experience and had trained and worked as a reading specialist. After working on numerous drafts of the initial chapters of Roadmap, Patti moved to Southern California to begin a new faculty-chair position and was understandably unable to continue on our Roadmap project. As Jennifer and I continued to write and re-write Roadmap over the next three years, a very effective, comprehensive, and creative early literacy curriculum took shape. In January of 2018, after Patti graciously concluded its final Beta reading, we sent Roadmap off to the publishers and it was first released in April of 2018, with the cover authorship acknowledging Patti as a contributor.
Disclaimer:
It has come to my attention that my co-author, Jennifer Militzer-Kopperl, has been promoting the teaching of the alphabet to Waldorf kindergarten students. Since “Roadmap” was first published in 2018, we have gone our separate ways. Her statement in a recently published article in Waldorf Today that Roadmap “is designed so it could be used off-grade in kindergarten,” is not at all factual. In the five years that Jennifer and I worked on creating Roadmap, not once did we discuss its use in the kindergarten and I would not have supported it.
As a Waldorf teacher and educator of over 30 years, I encourage teachers to follow the advice found in Waldorf Inspiration’s recent issuance of the original 2018 edition. The curriculum inside is written to support the book’s subtitle: A Guide to Teaching Language Arts in Waldorf Grades 1 through 3. This includes the introduction of the alphabet and its sound/symbol relationships beginning in 1st grade. For more details on the developmental appropriateness of this approach, I refer you to the 4/8/2025 “Waldorf Today” article: Literacy in the Waldorf Early Childhood Classroom – It’s All about the Timing, by Cristina Drews.”
