‘The school chooses you’ - Kilkenny parent on finding the right school for her daughter

Like many of the families at Kilkenny Steiner School, ours travelled from another country (Scotland) and is an international family (South African mother, Belgian father).

We first visited the school during December 2021, during Covid restrictions. We had toured Ireland to visit most of the independent and community-national Steiner schools and had spent good time researching Waldorf-Steiner education.

On this tour, we were sure of two things: Ireland was the country, and Steiner was the education. But where and which one?
Before the tour, I had called Bláthú, the organisation in Ireland that promotes and develops Steiner Early Years Education (blathu.org). The person who listened to my conundrums quietened me by saying, ‘Y’know, Bee, the school will choose you’. Obviously, that didn’t help.

We arrived at Kilkenny Steiner School on a cold and wintry day and were met by Heike Stenzel, our senior kindergarten teacher, and Martin Henry, who now mentors at the school. My daughter Olivia entered the kindergarten classroom (it is known as ‘Féileacáin’ at our school) and I marveled at how quickly she became quietly busy.

The room instills calm with its pastel shades, natural toys and fabrics, and it is clearly a place for children, not grownups.
Olivia had spent some time, aged five, at a village school in Scotland where she had come home from school each day with homework, and the race to learn numbers and letters had left us both feeling uncomfortable. I saw her future and it looked a lot like my past.

We returned to Scotland torn between a community national Steiner school and Kilkenny. There are four independent Steiner schools in Ireland (five, if you count Holywood near Belfast as being on the island).

These schools are truly independent and parents' contributions are used primarily to pay teachers' salaries. They are in no way elite or for ‘rich folk’ but choose to remain independent of state funding in order to be true to Steiner curriculum and pedagogy.

It played on my mind that Kilkenny Steiner School was the only one, during a restrictive time, that had met us in person and made Olivia feel that she already belonged there. I realised that the school had chosen us.

My daughter started her first day at school on Valentine’s Day 2022. Although I had concerns that she might miss the numbers and letters race, she learned quite quickly to do something she hadn’t done for some time — she learned to play.

In a wonder world equipped to ignite young children’s imaginations through imitation and play, she was released from too-early pressures and found her little child self again.

Things I imagined she might struggle with, like routines, she thrived on — the daily rhythms of the class became the daily rhythms in our home, and hearing her singing ‘good morning to you’ in English and Spanish when she woke up was one of the many moments I was grateful that this small and courageous school had chosen us.

As the months passed, we also became a part of the school community. We enjoyed the celebration of Bealtaine, new to our culture and easy to embrace, and by the time St John’s came around, we were ‘old hat’ and so both Olivia and I had parts in the great St John’s play that is put on under the auspices of John Clarke.

Changes came to our family over the summer and, more than ever, the rhythm, calm, deep sense of self and of learning held Olivia through her first tender days in Class 1. When home life felt chaotic, I was relieved that she had this school to come to.

We weathered the worst, and where she is now is happy — happy to be here, happy to love her teacher, happy to learn how to be Olivia amongst her friends. She is no longer the new child — there have been since two new boys — and in remembrance of her experience of being the stranger from a strange land, she pays special attention to the new children. Like almost every other child at our school, Olivia dislikes Fridays and loves Mondays!

It is difficult to extract the children from the sandpit, the swings, the dens and the trees at the end of the day. I am still surprised that there is no bolting for the car.

For my part, I found a piece of myself here too and have been the school administrator since last summer.

I’ve had harder jobs, I’ve had high-flying jobs, but here I have meaningful work. All 51 children I know quite well and one of my favourite parts of the day is my 15-minute playground duty.

I circulate out the front door, past the basketball hoops, toward the sandpit, onward to the jungle swing, checking in the blue shed, past the various dens, on to the big swings, around the little gate back to the front of the school, down the side lane, taking a peek at the big field and behind the kindergarten, on-and-up to the small sandpit amongst the apple trees, round past Class 1, and round again.

I try to look stern, but it is too easy to smile at 51 children, ranging in ages 4 to 15, having fun, caring for each other and taking care of themselves.

These children have guardians in the form of our teachers who are some of the most incredible, giving people I have ever met.
A Steiner teacher has a busy week with weekend preparation, weekend training, holiday immersive training, and has to be a very grounded person.

Two of our teachers teach combined classes, which is a major balancing act. Our teachers believe in this form of education. It is not just a job to them, but rather an opportunity to reach a child, and offer the child a form of learning that is balanced, individualised, creative, and that leads to personal freedom.

One of the basic tenets of this pedagogy is educating through head, heart and hands. That is, aiming to nurture in each child their thinking, feeling and skills.

We have room to grow. We would love to welcome you to our Open Day on Saturday, May 6, between noon and 3pm.

You will have an opportunity to meet both parents and teachers, enjoy a cup of tea or coffee with a slice of cake, walk the grounds, ask questions, have a chat. There will be a little bit of music and crafting.

Kilkenny Steiner School,
Ballytobin, Callan
R95 F5D7.