Waldorf curriculum is not a static canon—rather, it is a framework of suggested themes, mapped on the natural stages of child development.

Teachers are free and encouraged to fill the framework with material that provides both “mirrors” and “windows” for students (reflections of their own culture and identity, as well as views into others’).

Although Waldorf education originated in Germany, and many Waldorf traditions have Euro-centric roots, 100+ years of teaching and research by an international college of teachers has vastly broadened (and continues to broaden) the scope of our literature, history, and geography curricula, the festival life of our schools, and the social-emotional work with do with students on community building and identity formation.

In our Early Childhood program for 3-6-year-olds, teachers take care to bring fairy and folk tales from all over the globe. Teacher add new stories from diverse cultures to their repertoire each year. Many of the older stories have characters whose family structure and gender can be changed to represent the diversity seen in the classroom and in our larger world.

Puppets and dolls in the classroom have both diverse and neutral features: the diversity reflects the plurality of our world; the neutrality allows any child to imagine any character, any emotion, any story.

In our elementary grades, teachers bring stories from around the world to match each year’s curriculum theme: for example, part of the second grade literature curriculum includes trickster tales, and these may come from stories of Anansi (West African and Caribbean), Coyote (Aztec and Native American), Loki (Norse) or others.

Since the teachers move with their students from 1st to 5th grade, the curriculum can spiral, and topics first touched in 2nd or 3rd grade can reappear with more depth and maturity in grades 5-8. With this spiraling in mind, teachers emphasize the beauty and richness of the cultures of the world in the lower grades, to lay a deeply compassionate foundation for diversity before teaching more difficult topics in history and current events in the older grades.

Because of this spiral, upper elementary and middle school students do not learn about marginalized cultures only through their trauma, but first through their joy. For example, 3rd graders study native Haudenosaunee stories and the architecture of longhouses—5th and 6th graders learn about the Trail of Tears during their US history block, and 8th graders dig deeper into colonization, empires, and revolutions all over the globe in their social studies curriculum.

The Association of Waldorf Schools of North America (AWSNA), which oversees Waldorf Schools and Waldorf Teacher Training, outlines the principles that all Waldorf Schools must follow. “These principles articulate the most important values that inform the policies and practices of Waldorf schools in North America and are held as a central tenet of our schools’ accreditation process.”

AWSNA added an 8th principle in June 2024:

8. WALDORF SCHOOLS HONOR AND EMBRACE HUMAN DIVERSITY AND DIGNITY.
Waldorf schools celebrate the diversity of humankind. Faculty, staff, and board pursue a path of human dignity and equity in organizational, leadership, and pedagogical realms. Schools are engaged in understanding and addressing the current and historical roots of inequity. These endeavors are of spiritual, moral, and educational importance and are rooted in Waldorf education’s founding vision, which included addressing contemporary social struggles within the context of the life of the school.

Our faculty is deeply committed to on-going anti-racism work, gender identity affirmation work, and restorative justice practices for community building, problem-solving, and conflict resolution. Each teacher is tasked with bringing what is needed for the students in front of them each year, so as identities arrive and transform in their classrooms, they bring the topics, biographies, and geographies that will support all of their students’ growth.