Deep vs. Wide: A Waldorf Homeschooling Perspective

EP218: A question from the Art of Homeschooling community inspired this podcast episode covering the concept of deep vs. wide from a Waldorf homeschooling perspective.

In this episode, Jean describes how to build a main lesson block around a significant and pivotal event in the course of human development. This idea can be applied to teaching any topic from world or national history to geography and science. Jean illustrates the development of a main lesson topic through the "deep dive wave" and provides concrete examples and insightful reflections.

Why and how does diving deep create more memorable learning experiences for children than covering a topic in a broad and comprehensive approach? 

Tune in to gain clarity about the nuances of Waldorf-inspired homeschooling that are rarely addressed in curriculum guides and resources. 

You'll walk away with a new spark for homeschooling and renewed trust in yourself as a teacher and the process of going deep, not wide.

Find the Show Notes here  https://artofhomeschooling.com/episode218/

Join the Inspired at Home Community

Chapters

• 0:58 My Waldorf homeschooling mantra, "Go deep, not wide."
• 3:00 Deep vs. wide from a Waldorf homeschooling perspective
• 4:53 Planning your main lesson blocks to go deep, not wide.
• 5:34 Choosing one pivotal event or concept
• 6:52 Cultivating human connections and sparking the imagination make the learning more memorable
• 8:22 Creating threads of connection
• 10:55 A visual of the deep dive
• 12:45 Comparing unit studies to main lesson blocks
• 15:41 Trusting yourself and the process

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

You're listening to the Art of Homeschooling podcast, where we help parents cultivate creativity and connection at home. I'm your host, jean Miller, and here on this podcast you'll find stories and inspiration to bring you the confidence you need to make homeschooling work for your family. Let's begin Welcome, welcome, my friend, to a new episode here on the podcast. I'm excited to bring this topic today deep versus wide from a Waldorf homeschooling perspective. I have lots of thoughts to share on this, so let's dive in the seed, for this episode comes from two different things a mantra that I repeat often and a question from a homeschooling mom. The mantra is one that I have shared for years. In describing the Waldorf approach to homeschooling and education, I so often give the advice to go deep, not wide. That's the mantra. I'll talk a little bit more about it in just a moment, and the question comes from a member of the Inspired at Home community. Here's what she asked I've listened to your seventh grade basket podcast episode talking about going deep into a specific moment in history rather than taking a wide overview of the topic or era. Can you talk more about deep versus wide? As we get into this concept of deep versus wide, I want to emphasize that this idea can really help you grasp how to plan the scope of any main lesson block that you're thinking about, and I want to encourage you to consider how this could help you plan any main lesson block, because it gives you a more nuanced understanding of the Waldorf approach as well. I have a great visual also, a visual image to share with you that's going to bring a lot of clarity. So I can't wait to get there. But first, before I forget, I want to mention here that we've done a whole series on the podcast, one episode per grade. So be sure to check out the kindergarten basket all the way to the eighth grade basket. Each one is a separate episode and I'll link to those episodes in the show notes for this one, which you can find at artofhomeschoolingcom slash episode 218.

Speaker 1: 3:00

Okay, here's the full question that prompted this episode. I've just listened to your 7th Grade Basket podcast episode talking about going deep into a specific moment in history and not taking a wide overview of the topic or era. I have an 8th grader and a 4th grader and we're preparing for early American history, but I'm struggling with what to bring in the block. One curriculum I've looked at which is not a traditional Waldorf curriculum is so comprehensive and detailed one lesson per week that it says it would take two years total to go through the entire program. Waldorf doesn't feel like it offers the same depth as this other curriculum. So what is deep? Four to six weeks doesn't feel like enough. Especially as our children get older, I don't feel like I have enough time to go deep. I feel like there are cultural expectations for them to know certain things and I often come to the end of a block wondering if it was enough. Can you talk more about deep versus wide when you're planning a block? What a great question.

Speaker 1: 4:15

I'm going to answer this question using history as the example here, because that was what the question was specifically about, but I know that you can extrapolate this into any subject or topic that you're teaching. Okay, here we go. I know also I know that it can be really hard to trust that we can read a story or one book, perhaps a work of historical fiction, and that that can be enough for one block, because, as our homeschooling mom mentioned in her question, some history curricula could take two years to get through this topic. So here's how you might do this. I suggest you start by picking maybe six, maybe five, you know whatever number you want but a handful of events and people within your topic or historical time period that you want to be sure to cover in your lessons. Now that doesn't mean we're going deep on every one of these, okay, but we do want our kiddos to not only have that cultural background piece but also see, we want them to be able to see how different pieces are connected. So I'll get more into that in just a moment.

Speaker 1: 5:34

If you think of your teaching approach as being story-based right, that's what Waldorf sits on, this foundation of stories right Then your job is to provide a thread of memorable stories for how things develop over history during that time period. Whatever time period you're looking at, you can use biographies, autobiographies and engaging stories of events that happened during that time period. Here is a more specific example. Let's take early American history, as was part of this question. So first you might start by thinking of different key events like the Louisiana Purchase, the Stamp Act, events leading up to the Revolutionary War. So say you wanted to go deep on a story about the Boston Tea Party and how it escalated into the American Revolution. That could be a whole four-week main lesson block. You'd be going deep into a moment in time, a moment in history, but relating that moment to what happened before and after more generally, so you want to be able to see how that moment in time really changed the course of history.

Speaker 1: 6:52

Now, I know this can be hard to do, especially because it's not usually the way we were taught ourselves when we were in school, and also because curriculum that's available is so comprehensive that it can feel superficial, like that one that could take two years to complete, like it feels deep in the sense that not in a real sense, but in the sense that it covers a lot, but it feels superficial in that there's just so there are so many details in there, and that is exactly what we are trying to counteract. We're not teaching a string of detailed facts that don't have any seeming connection to each other, except that they happen during a similar time period. We want to actually build a block that embodies the significance of the time that you're studying and feels like it has human connection to us and to our children, and to do that we look for stories. We look for stories that will help us feel connected to those humans who lived during that time and the stories will help make the learning more memorable. The lively arts also do this as well. They help make the learning more memorable by engaging in artistic activity related to the stories that we're reading. So making paintings or drawings, learning some music, memorizing poetry of the time period, acting out the story in some way.

Speaker 1: 8:22

The idea is that we're helping our children create threads of connection in their minds and imaginations so that later on in their studies, when they come back to this topic, they have some foundational knowledge that has gone deep and isn't just a whole bunch of facts about something. Bringing this kind of learning to life is easier said than done, I know, because what ends up happening to many of us most of us, I would say is that we have such a long list of just the details of what we think we're supposed to cover, quote, unquote or explain, right before we can move on to the next thing, before we even get to the event that we're trying to focus on, and little details that we feel like we can't skip before we get to that big event or the story that we're looking at. But I will tell you. Here's what I've seen over and over again through many years, over 30 years of teaching and I've seen this in the way that we teach our children, in the way that children learn, that children really do need to connect somehow with the material to retain what they're learning. I've seen this in school settings. I've seen this in homeschooling. We really can go deep while still bringing in overarching details in a lighter way that are going to connect those deeper stories, and I'm going to give you this visual in just a moment.

Speaker 1: 9:55

So much of what we're exploring with our children in elementary years they're going to come back to later, right Later in the year, later next year, in high school and post-secondary studies. So it is not our job to quote, unquote, cover every detail. That's the part I think we need to let go of. So, instead of feeling stressed that you're not covering enough, I want to invite you to shift to this thought instead, just cover what you choose to cover and let go of the rest. I know it's a little scary, it's because the rest it may come back around and it may not come back around in future years. But just think about it. You know American history is a whole year in high school. We do not need to cover it all in a main lesson block in, you know, seventh or eighth grade. It's better for our children to make a connection to something than it is to go really, really broad.

Speaker 1: 10:54

All right, here's how you can think about a main lesson block, and here is my visual for you. I want you to picture a horizontal line that represents your main lesson block from beginning to end, for whatever time period you're choosing to cover or whatever topic, if it's not a history topic. Now, starting on the left-hand side, you begin by giving a small amount of background information, some context, before you introduce the event or the story or the person or people that you're going to tell a story about. So you give a little bit of context, a little bit of background information, and then, as you move along the line, at some point you're going to dip deep down into one person's story or one significant event through story, and when you're finished going deep, you come back up to the surface and you summarize a little bit more, connecting that story to the next one. And then you perhaps you go deep again on a second story in that main lesson block and come back up to the surface and then finish it out. So perhaps you've only covered one or two significant stories in a deeper way during this block, while providing some connecting context, and that's okay. This represents the stories and connection with like a timeline of sorts, right? So I want you to keep this image in your mind as you're planning your blocks, because in this way we can go deep rather than wide. We go wide some, but we aren't going wide for a huge extended periods of time. We're just going wide to connect those deeper stories.

Speaker 1: 12:45

Here are a few more thoughts about educational approaches generally. You might be familiar with this concept of a unit study or how a unit study works for homeschooling. A unit study is sometimes called a thematic unit or an integrated study, and unit studies tend to be hands-on and focused on one particular topic. So in that way they're similar to main lesson blocks. The child might learn by reading real books, often referred to as living books. That is something we like doing in main lesson blocks as well, and experiencing or discovering about a topic through activities rather than reading a chapter from a textbook. So think of a main lesson block as a specific type of unit study. Right, they have those similarities, and then to me, the biggest difference is that with a main lesson block you can go deeper than wide, because I would describe most unit studies as going wide, meaning the goal is to weave in as many different activities, subjects, resources, details, really, as possible. But, in contrast, a main lesson block incorporates the activities in a particular rhythm, as I've described, and it focuses on stories and we go deep into one story at a time. This helps students learn in a very economical way. Actually, that takes less time overall and makes the learning more memorable. Mean lesson block learning works because it allows for extended time on a given subject, it gives children an opportunity to use their thinking in a concentrated manner, it uses the concept of rhythm to carry the learning energy forward. It integrates many subjects into one topic that speak to the interest and developmental stage of a child in different ages and stages or grades, and it helps us connect human to human through stories. And that, my friend, is how we go deep, not wide, with Waldorf homeschooling. I hope you enjoyed this episode and it's helped to clarify some of the nuances of the Waldorf approach.

Speaker 1: 14:59

I really enjoyed taking a homeschooler's question and expanding it into a podcast episode. Recently in my Inspired at Home community, I offered a jumpstart coaching day on Voxer, which is a voice messaging app for all members of the community, and it was just so much fun. This was just one of the questions. We'll be doing this again soon, just as an added bonus for members who, of course, already have access to a full library of masterclasses, group coaching calls and a community of heart-centered homeschoolers from all over the world. Come join us if this is something you'd like to be a part of, and who knows, maybe one of your questions will spark an upcoming podcast episode in the future.

Speaker 1: 15:41

Here are just a few of my thoughts in closing. You do get better at trusting that you're doing enough and the self doubt diminishes, but the honest truth is it never really totally goes away. We need each other, we need reassurance. The window of how long we feel the doubt gets shorter and it gets less intense, for sure, but hearing from others who have walked the path before you is crucial, and that's what I'm here to offer you with this podcast. I encourage you to check out the show notes for this episode at artofhomeschoolingcom slash episode 218. Thanks so much for tuning in today. Have a great week and I'll see you in another episode of the Art of Homeschooling podcast. That's all for today, my friend, but here's what I want you to remember Rather than perfection, let's focus on connection. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you on the next episode of the Art of Homeschooling podcast.