Anne Carignan, M.S. DTM Phone: (781) 275-7113 Email: info@extralesson.us Lesson Locations: Bedford, MA
Excerpt from LILIPOH Magazine by Anne Clare DiGiovanni Carignan
FONMUNA (The Federation of Natural Medicine Users in North America) played a significant part in my biography. It was through participation in its founding meetings and workshops in the Boston area that my vista opened to the expansiveness of the work of Rudolf Steiner. I now see that all that we do with conscious devotion is natural medicine. I was a public and private school teacher in the late 70's and 80's before I had a family and I had always tried to enliven my class work. We would recreate medieval times with costumes; we wrote, read, played music and lived our way through what we were learning. What joy the children experienced when we transformed the classroom into a print shop. The children did the type set, made block prints and sewed their own books. But something was missing. I didn't know what until years later, when my youngest child began to approach school age, I learned about Waldorf education. Its methods and ideas on education inspired my thinking and brought fresh ideas to understanding the educational task. I discovered Rudolf Steiner's insights into the stages children go through and how curriculum can be developed in a way that speaks to this development. And so I felt compelled to pursue Waldorf Teacher Training in spite of being an experienced Massachusetts Certified K-8 Teacher with a Master's Degree in counseling. During my internship in Waldorf School I saw that, since my teaching days, childhood had changed as a result of the accelerated pace of life and the demands on family life. The wonderful curriculum was challenging for more than one third of the class. Behavior problems and "learning difficulties" appeared the norm. Then I met a retired Waldorf teacher who introduced me to the Extra Lesson. The Extra Lesson is based on an understanding of the first seven years of life and how the development of the physical body becomes the foundation for the faculty to learn. It involves movement, drawing and painting exercises. The children were saying, "I am trying to get into my body. Give me heart-felt work to do that will meet my body, soul and spirit—I am here. I am strong. I am waiting as patiently as I can. Why can't you see me?" Audrey McAllen developed the Extra Lesson out of her experience as a Waldorf Teacher. Her penetration of Rudolf Steiner's educational insights and her meditatively acquired knowledge are fundamental to her work. It is now recognized, through the findings of neuroscientists and occupational and physical therapists that the physical body, with its well-balanced sense of movement, equilibrium and sense of life (well being), is the foundation on which the faculty to learn is based. In the first three years of life standing, walking and speaking are accomplished and out of this the child is able to say ‘I.’ In the next four years the life forces of the child focus on developing this foundation. Out of imitative actions the child develops skillfulness that goes right into the innermost parts of the physical body. This time in the child's life needs to be protected. It is the solid ground on which further development is placed. Learning possibilities are hampered when higher levels of the brain are used to maintain movement and balance that has not been well integrated into the body. Energies, used "intellectually" before the body is ready, draw on life forces. This misplaced use of forces has far reaching effects for the future of an individual. Many mid-life crises are the result of early childhood stress. The situation has become so accelerated that today the effects are reaching into the middle school and teenage years when our children ought to be full of energy and enthusiasm for life and learning. Unfinished stages of development from the first seven years of life do not naturally correct themselves. Thus the Extra Lesson activities benefit anyone willing to practice them.
Related reading: McAllen, Audrey. The Extra Lesson. Fair Oaks, CA: Rudolf Steiner College Press, 2004. Wilson, Frank. The Hand (How its use shapes the brain, language, and human culture). NY: Pantheon Books, 1998.
Anne Carignan currently specializes in working with teachers and parents. She teaches the foundations of The Extra Lesson and how to use the exercises in the classroom and at home.
Carrying the Banner and Passing the Torch Jean MacKay, the teacher who introduced me to The Extra Lesson, crossed the threshold on 11/24/11. An excerpt from her autobiography: Gleanings an Autobiography of a Waldorf Teacher and Poet "I carry an image__a fantasy__which sees me running around the globe carrying a long, long banner that says the words of Rudolf Steiner, " All progress depends upon bringing originality into humanity."
