Learning Support Services - San Francisco Waldorf School

Learning Support Services - San Francisco Waldorf School
Learning Support Services
Aligned with our school’s holistic approach to education, our faculty and staff are committed to encouraging each student’s healthy social, emotional, cognitive, physical, cultural, and spiritual development.
We believe that challenges are an opportunity for growth. We honor and teach a wide diversity of learning profiles, and work diligently to ensure that students and their families have the support they need to succeed.
High School Learning Support
High School Guidance and Health Education
K - 8 Learning Support
San Francisco Waldorf School’s rigorous college-prep curriculum demands strong academic and executive function skills.
Our faculty and Learning Support team are committed to giving students the tools they need to tackle complex assignments and manage diverse commitments and responsibilities, laying the groundwork for long-term academic and personal growth.
As high school students become increasingly independent in their identity and thinking, we support them in building practical skills, resilience, inner will, and the ability to work through challenges.
Our approach to Learning Support is both holistic and practical, based on the following principles:
Strengths-based
Teaching students to identify their strengths and challenges is a primary goal of our Learning Support program. All high school students participate in an academic and executive function skills class, which begins with a guided self-assessment, helping students learn to leverage their strengths and envision a path to lessen or overcome their challenges.
Growth Mindset
Growth mindset—the belief that your abilities can improve through hard work, education, and dedication—underlies our Learning Support program. Our goal is to help our students approach the future with confidence and optimism, knowing that they are capable of putting in the hard work to achieve their goals.
Curricular Support
All Ninth and Tenth Grade students receive direct learning support through the Study Skills Class, taught by the Learning Support Coordinator, which guides students in developing the academic and executive function skills, tools, and attitudes necessary to be successful in high school and beyond. Students work as a collaborative community, sharing their experiences, challenges, and solutions as they grow stronger together. High-level executive functioning and skills support includes the following.
Test preparation techniques
Managing assignments: tracking, planning, initiating, and completing work on time
Using a planner and other tools to successfully manage homework
Scaffolding of major and minor assignments, e.g. scaffolding an essay by creating an outline, using the outline to create a rough draft, revising and incorporating teacher feedback, citing and formatting, and conducting research with the librarian
Accountability feedback: lunch study hall to complete late assignments
Recognizing when there is a situation that requires action (you’ve been absent, you have a question about an assignment, etc.)
Initiating conversations with teachers, support educators, and parents/guardians
Working to achieve goals by reflecting on the past, assessing the present, and planning for the future
Extra Support
In addition to our skills classes, the Educational Support Coordinator is available for occasional individualized academic support sessions during lunch and after school. Our Educational Therapist offers short weekly lunch meetings to help students fill in a planner, work on an assignment, or learn a new study strategy. Our Counselor is available to process an experience, implement a self-regulation skill, or simply reset for a few minutes with a cup of tea. Teachers offer lunch hours and after-school hours for consultations. If regular support is needed in any subject, we strongly recommend working with an outside tutor.
Tier 1 (Universal support):
All students actively participate in our Learning Support program, which includes a trimester of biweekly study skills classes in Ninth and Tenth Grades, proctored after-school study hall, lunch study hall, teacher check-ins, School Counselor check-ins, peer tutoring, and occasional individual support from the Educational Support Coordinator.
Tier 2 (Targeted support):
In addition to all Tier 1 support, students with current accommodation or learning plans are offered weekly individual executive function coaching with our Educational Therapist and social-emotional check-ins as needed. We request the incorporation of content tutoring outside of school.
Tier 3 (Individual support):
This level of support compliments Tiers 1 and 2 with individualized temporary accommodation or support plans based on appropriate documentation, social/emotional check-ins with our School Counselor, increased parent/guardian communication, and collaborative problem-solving between the academic support team, the faculty, and the family.
Accommodation Plans
For students with documented learning and mental health diagnoses, the Educational Support Coordinator meets individually with the student and their family before the school year begins, learning more about the student’s educational background and learning experiences. If the documentation provided supports accommodations, the support team will provide an Accommodation Plan for the faculty, outlining the specific challenges and diagnoses, and the reasonable accommodations we will provide.
Accommodations may include preferential seating, use of computer for in-class writing/note-taking, use of class notes, additional breaks, use of audiobooks or Learning Ally, extended time on quizzes and tests (50%-100%), and use of a calculator, depending on recommendations following a neuropsychological or psychoeducational evaluation.
Please see the graphic above for a full explanation of our tiered approach to support.
San Francisco Waldorf School teaches students to thrive: body, mind, and spirit. We provide an ethical education that recognizes the complex world today’s teens inhabit, emerging from our core understanding of the developmental tasks of adolescence and healthy human development. Rooted in a holistic and practical orientation to our students’ needs and challenges, our faculty collaborates across departments, disciplines, and stakeholders, building a culture of trust, connection, and communication at school. Our program is attuned to, and responsive to, who our students are and who they are becoming.
Health and Wellness Curriculum
Ninth and Tenth Grade Health Classes are a comprehensive introduction to current topics, including mental health, nutrition and food access, physical activity, substance abuse, sexual and reproductive health, personal hygiene, consent and interpersonal communication, identity, stress management, mindfulness, sleep, online safety, among other topics.
Mental Health Support
Our health and counseling team seeks to nurture the potential in every student through a relationship-based counseling program that utilizes evidence-based frameworks and techniques, integrated with trauma-informed and resilience-promoting approaches. This is coupled with a developmentally sensitive understanding of adolescence.
The counseling team is committed to working collaboratively with students, families, teachers, and outside therapists to provide wrap-around support, focusing on individual needs, skill- and capacity-building, and self-empowerment.
Mental Health Support at San Francisco Waldorf School includes:
One-on-one check-ins: Individualized counseling on research-based strategies to help foster resilience, open communication, overall well-being and self-care in students.
Group check-ins: Facilitation of dialogue and effective communication techniques, goal setting, and conflict resolution with a small group of students.
Referrals/collaboration with outside resources: Working collaboratively with students, families, and outside services/resources to achieve therapeutic goals.
Parent and Guardian Education: An annual program to provide resources, build connection and community, and support families of high school students.
Open Door, Open Heart: Based on the concept of sacred hospitality, all students are welcome in the counseling office to reset in a quiet space, to engage in generative dialogue, or to enjoy a cup of tea and a quick healthy snack.
In this age of uncertainty and anxiety, Waldorf education is especially relevant as it centers around nurturing the whole human being through the distinct phases of development. The breadth and depth of the curriculum is inherently salutogenic.
Kristine Wolcott, High School Guidance Counselor and Health Teacher
Every child learns differently. At San Francisco Waldorf School, we support and nurture different learning styles through a multisensory and varied approach to teaching. Trained in child development, our faculty engage students across disciplines through hands-on projects, group work, drama, movement, music, and much more.
Extra lesson support, skills classes, and therapeutic movement are offered to all students at different points in the curriculum. For students with identified learning differences, our Learning Support team ensures that they receive age-appropriate services and accommodations as needed.
Assessments and Screenings
Our Student Support Specialist oversees periodic skills assessments to ensure that students are meeting milestones in reading, oral comprehension, numeracy, and motor development. All students are formally assessed by our support team before beginning First Grade, in Second Grade, and in Fifth Grade, and they may be assessed separately, at any point, at a teacher’s request. In addition, students receive annual literacy screenings from Second Grade to Fifth Grade. In Seventh Grade, students complete standardized assessments in reading, language, math, science, and social studies through Terra Nova testing.
In-School Support Programs
Learning support begins in the classroom. Close teacher-student relationships and small class sizes ensure that every child is seen, understood, and supported by our faculty. Working closely with our learning support team, teachers are careful to note learning differences and refer children for additional support as needed. In addition, we offer the following learning support programs to all San Francisco Waldorf School students.
Skills Classes
In addition to comprehensive work in reading, writing, and math taught in the core Waldorf curriculum, all Grade School students participate in extra reading skills classes in Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Grades. Middle school students take writing skills and mathematics skills classes in addition to the core Waldorf curriculum.
Extra Lesson Support
Incorporating movement, games, and skill-building activities, the Student Support team offers extra lesson support several times a week, throughout the various grades, as requested by class teachers (September through March).
Therapeutic Eurythmy
Kindergarten students participate in developmental movement sessions twice weekly from September to March. From First Grade to Third Grade, developmental movement sessions are taught four times a week in rotating four-week blocks, from September to March. Small group therapeutic eurythmy is also offered to students in Grades 1-8 in seven-week blocks throughout the school year.
Accommodations and Intervention
When a student is experiencing persistent challenges, teachers, parents/guardians, and learning support specialists work together to address the child’s learning, behavioral, and/or social needs. The process begins with a meeting between parents/guardians, teachers, and support staff to assess a student’s challenges and to establish SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant , time-bound) for support. Our support team is qualified to assist class teachers in developing an individualized accommodation plan for students with learning differences, as needed.
Please note that while San Francisco Waldorf School welcomes diverse learning styles, our school does not specialize in serving students with significant learning differences or social-emotional challenges. For new applicants, our Student Support Specialist will review any existing accommodation plans and work closely with our Admission Team in making recommendations.
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Meet Our Team
All students at San Francisco Waldorf High School work with our caring and highly qualified Learning Support and Wellness team.
Lesley Fisher, Educational Support Coordinator
Lesley Fisher received a California teaching credential in 1990 and completed the Waldorf teacher training in 2010. She has been working with children and teens for 30+ years, in the classroom teaching English Language Arts and, since 2015, working individually with neurodiverse teens as a writing and executive function coach. Multiple training and courses in teaching neurodiverse teens have further informed Lesley’s approach to teaching executive function skills and strategies to strengthen students’ ability to independently manage their homework load, plan and finish essays and projects, and study for tests.
Kristine Wolcott, High School Counselor & Wellness Teacher
Kristine Wolcott is a longtime Bay Area educator and SFWS community member with over 30 years of experience serving diverse youth in public and independent schools, as well as specialized therapeutic educational, clinical, and carceral settings. She has developed trauma and resilience-informed health, wellness, and movement curricula for schools, non-profit organizations, and governmental agencies. Her advanced degrees and certifications are in education, learning support, integrative nutrition, Waldorf pedagogy, neurobiology, sensory integration, environmental education, herbal studies, yoga, and martial arts. Over decades of teaching and parenting, she has observed a significant change in the nature and complexity of childhood illness and an alarming decline in youth mental health. Kris has a deep understanding of the issues and challenges facing students, families, teachers, and communities and it has become a personal, professional, and scholarly imperative for her to identify the key protective factors and principles of best practice that promote healthy child development. Her current doctoral research is a synthesis of theory and praxis as a first response and starting point on the continuum of care options to address the youth mental health crisis.
Meet Our Director of Learning Support Services (Grades 1-8)
Jo-Ann Climenhage, PhD, oversees student assessment, support plans, and program implementation for the Grade School. Dr. Climenhage holds a BA and an MA in Sociology from McMaster University, a PhD in Sociology from the University of Toronto, and earned her Waldorf teaching diploma and remedial educational certification at Rudolf Steiner College. She was a class teacher at Bright Water Waldorf School, taking a class from Grades 1-8, and has been an educational support consultant with schools in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Dr. Climenhage has also served as a faculty member in the Remedial Education Program, the Summer Art of Teaching sessions, the Public School Institute, and in the Teacher Training Program at Rudolf Steiner College, as well as at an Educational Support Program in the Philippines.