News
The San Francisco Waldorf School Community extends their congratulations to the class of 2009
The legacy of your fine accomplishments will remain with us and we extend our warmest best wishes to your future journey.
Summer Reading for All
In addition to this book, students will be responsible for reading one assigned book per grade. Click here for more details.
Parents are encouraged to join in on the summer reading. Malcolm Gladwell’s book is both a great read and a fascinating study in the power and process of thinking. In addition, San Francisco Waldorf School as a whole will join together for "One School, One Book" this summer in reading A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule The Future by Daniel H. Pink. This book will be the focus of the "Learning in the 21st Century" study group led by Joan Caldarera in the Fall of 2009.
Book Inc. (Laurel Village) is offering SFWS parents a 20% discount on the Daniel Pink book.
New Issue of HS Literary Magazine - Leaves of Summer - Now On Sale!
Leaves of Summer: A Literary and Artistic Magazine, the SFWHS' final issue for the school year, is now on sale for $5.00 at the Grade School and the High School offices! The magazine, dedicated to local poets Kathy Evans and Brandon Bishop, features more than 70 pages of poetry, short stories, an excerpt from a play, drawings, paintings and photographs by 31 HS students. A warm and heartfelt thanks to the magazine's community supporters: Bookshop West Portal, The Greenhouse Coffee Lounge, The Music Store, and the SFWHS Parent Council.
Winter 2009 Issue of HS Literary Magazine is now online
Leaves of Winter: A Literary and Artistic Magazine, published in March 2009
by the HS Literary Magazine Club, is now
available online here.
The entire magazine is ready for viewing and/or
downloading; each page is stored as a PDF.
Sophomore Charlotte Markle is State Finalist in Doodle4Google Competition
Congratulations to sophomore Charlotte Markle for being one of two state finalists in her age category (grades 10-12) in the Doodle4Google Contest 2009. Contestants submitted a “doodle” using the Google logo and a written statement around the theme “What I Wish for the World.” Each school is limited to 6 entries. This year 400 state finalist were chosen from 28,000 entries nationwide. The final winner will receive a college scholarship of $15,000 and the winner's school will receive a technology grant of $25,000. Click here to view all the SFWHS entries.
Visit Doodle4Google State Finalist pages (this takes a while to load)
“If Everyone Lends a Hand…”
My wish for the world is that we can all work together to help this
planet heal and grow. Regardless of age, ethnic or cultural differences,
our planet is something that we all have in common, and it is essential
for all of us that it remains healthy. - Charlotte Markle, Grade 10
New Discussion Group on
Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind:
Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future
-Joan Caldarera, HS Humanitites Teacher-Joan Caldarera, HS Humanitites Teacher
Read Joan Caldarera's series of articles reflecting
on 21st Century Learning
Article 1 - April 2
Article 2 - April 29
Article 3 - May 14
Girls Soccer Team gets Dramatic Semi-Final Win Over 1st Place International - BCL Championship is next
SF Waldorf High School Girls Soccer had a dramatic win over the undefeated International High School team on Tuesday night. A rainy morning meant that the game was moved at the last minute from Kezar stadium's turf field at 6pm to the artificial turf at Crocker-Amazon at 4pm.
The game remained tied at 0-0 at the final whistle leading to first one then a second over-time. The 0-0 tie held and the game moved to penalty kicks. The first round of 5 penalty kicks found the teams tied again at 3-3 after beautifully placed goals by Alex Hart (Gr.10), Tabeetha Sun (G.10) and Angela Hernandez (Gr.12) and two breathtaking saves by goalie Karina Berry (Gr.9). This forced the game into the next round of penalty kicks where after equal chances whoever was ahead would win. Senior Ilianah Pemberton placed a beautiful shot in the lower left corner of the goal and Karina Berry sealed the win with one more spectacular save.
Congratulations to all the girls, coach Nasser Abdulkariem and assistant coach Hana Rosen
HS Literary & Artistic Magazine
Leaves of Winter: A Literary and Artistic Magazine, a SFWHS student publication, is now on sale at Bookshop West Portal, The Greenhouse Coffee Lounge as well as the GS & HS offices for $5. The magazine, dedicated to poet Walt Whitman, includes poetry, short stories, personal, essays, drawings, paintings and photography from 33 SFWHS students. Designed and edited by the HS Literary & Artistic Magazine club the publication shows student work and contains notes on the contributors. A special thanks to our community supporters: Little Fish Boutique, Viz Media LLC, Bookshop West Portal, West Portal Bakery, The Greenhouse Coffee Lounge, and the SFWHS Parent Council.
HS Literary Readings in SF
April 24 & April
30
On Friday, April 24, HS students will read their poetry and prose at The Greenhouse Coffee Lounge located at 329 West Portal Ave. The 6:00 PM event will feature students who have contributed to the HS literary and artistic magazine as well as local poet Brandon Bishop who has taught poetry workshops at the HS. Student artwork will also be on display.
On Thursday, April 30, HS students will also read their poetry at City Light Books located at 261 Columbus Ave. The 4:15 PM event will also feature poet Kathy Evans who taught creative writing workshops at the high school this past spring
- Mary Anne McGill, Literary & Artistic Magazine Advisor
Students' Weaving Work Honored in International Publication
TWIST, an international textile magazine has once again honored our students' tablet weaving work on the gallery page (page 2) of their most recent edition. View the current edition here.
Eurythmy in the Land of Sacred Dance:
The San Francisco Waldorf Youth Eurythmy Troupe in India
On a globe of the Earth, start with your finger on San Francisco. Now spin it one hundred eighty degrees, and you land in—India! (nearly). How is Waldorf education faring halfway around the world? How would eurythmy be received there? In February of 2009 the Youth Eurythmy Troupe from the San Francisco Waldorf High School took their show on the road to find out.
Astrid Thiersch, the Artistic Director, had sent an inquiry the previous summer to Aban Bana, eurythmist, teacher, and doyenne of the Waldorf movement in India. Her response was enthusiastic and emphatic, saying that she knew Astrid’s work and that the group must come. At the same time she set a host of helpers in motion, chief among them Jayesh Pillarisetty of Hyderabad, imperturbable organizer and problem-solver extraordinaire.
As emails and Skypes flew around the world, Astrid crafted a program and rehearsed a group of twenty-five dedicated students from the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades. The program, Endless Time, was created with the tour in mind, with poetry by Rabindranath Tagore and selections from Mahatma Gandhi and The Bhagavad Gita, as well as music by Beethoven, Satie and Schubert, poems, humoresques and fairy tales, including The White Snake. On Valentine’s weekend, the Troupe presented the fourteenth annual gala performances at the Cowell Theater at Fort Mason in San Francisco. The maturity of soul and intensity of these young people were remarkable. With vibrant expressiveness, they wove a breathtaking blend of movement, sound, light, and color – truly poetry in motion! And two days later we were in motion again, on a twenty-four hour journey to Mumbai.
Read the rest of the story and see more pictures...
Reilly Hogan, SFWHS Alumnus, wins prestigious international architecture award
Reilly Hogan (Class of 2003) was awarded First Prize at The International VELUX Award 2008 ceremony in Venice, Italy. Every two years, undergraduate and graduate students in architecture programs around the world compete for this prize, and this year 686 students from 46 countries entered the competition. The International VELUX Award 2008 event took place during the 11th International Architecture Exhibition and the Venice Biennale, which has as its theme “Architecture Beyond Building.” Reilly’s project will be featured in the VELUX Award Yearbook.
Reilly submitted his Cornell 5th year thesis project Embodied Ephemerality: Light-Form Architecture to the VELUX competition. Directly adjacent to the former site of the World Trade Center and the future site of the World Trade Center Memorial, the PATH station in New York City will become a place that over 35,000 commuters will pass through each day. In an interview with VELUX, Reilly explained, “Although not the 9-11 Memorial, the design for the station presents an opportunity to honor the memory of those lost that day by elevating the everyday experience of the place. I saw the station as an opportunity to use the ephemeral power of light to bring moments of joy to people’s daily lives. Whereas the memorial is a destination, a place to visit, the train station is the opposite: it is a transitional space honoring the hallowed nature of the site by heightening the experience of the commuter who lives or works in Lower Manhattan. Currently there is a temporary station, and a new transit hub designed by Santiago Calatrava will replace the existing temporary station.”
“The goal of the project was to suggest an architecture that continues to engage the audience, i.e. the commuter, time and time again as the place becomes more and more familiar. Through a heightened sensitivity to moments of light, shadow, and the changes of the seasons, could one design an interior place that represents itself through time?” In the design of this project Reilly says, “Light is shaped and redirected via a reflector and projected onto a translucent surface, wrapping the interior with embodied light. A potentially monotonous daily experience of the subway where the commuter is disengaged with no relationship to the station now becomes a highly aesthetic experience, which changes with the weather, the daily path of the sun, and with the seasons.”
While at Cornell, Reilly designed a number of projects that had light as their focus. “I feel that light and space have a profound effect on people’s everyday experience. It has a universal appeal through time, place and belief, which gives light an incredible power as a material to enliven architecture with something greater than ourselves.”
Hani Rashid, principal of Asymptote (New York) and head of the Velux jury said of his project: “The project’s conceptual idea of discussing underground spaces with daylight is very articulated, and the project is accomplished and very efficient in scale. The author demonstrates the talent to understand and work with light in big spaces. The project covers all aspects of great imagination and a serious and professional presentation.”
Reilly Hogan graduated from Cornell University’s College of Architecture this past May (2008), where he received the Charles Goodwin Sands Memorial Medal 2008 at his graduation ceremony for his thesis project. Then in October, his thesis was selected to be part of the ARCH SCHOOLS 2008 exhibition of Tri-State architecture programs sponsored by the American Institute of Architects’ New York Chapter. His thesis was on display at the Center for Architecture in New York City from October through mid-December, 2008.
Fair Trade is back!
Download an order form here and submit it with payment to the school office. For questions or to place orders directly contact Sharry Wright 415-673-0777 or email swrite@sbcglobal.net.
Boys Varsity Soccer Celebrates Championship Season
The Boys Varsity Soccer Team celebrated their BCL
The 2-1 victory gave the High School Boys Soccer program its first trophy. It also gave us an automatic place in the North Coast Section (NCS) alongside 15 of the other top high school teams in the region. It was an incredible season and the team finished with a league record of 5 wins, 2 losses, and 3 ties. We had great student and family support wherever we played, be it at the Polo Fields, Crocker Amazon, or Kezar Stadium where the semis, the final, and the NCS matches were played.
The squad were: Alex Zatopa, Arran Caddy (capt), Peter Siegenthaler (capt), Jonas Harris (capt.), Joe Kuhel, Kyle Walenga, Tao Kawase, Ryan Haas, Dario Lehmhus, Arsen Mezheritsky, Brett Harding, Evan Schwarzenbach, Peter Schwarzenbach, Pietro Carini, Alexander Mol, Oscar Bonilla, Yorke Li, Dylan Sjostrum, Dashiell MacNamara, Andrew Thain, Austin Fusco, Bryan Jensen.
Our special congratulations go to the following players:
Oscar Bonilla, Joe Kuhel, and Kyle Walenga on winning All-League Second Team Awards.
Jonas Harris, Arran Caddy, Peter Siegenthaler, and Alex Zatopa on winning All-League First Team Awards.
Arran Caddy was also named Most Valuable Player by the coaches of the BCL Central League.
Our gratitude goes out to the parents (especially Andy Harris, Heidi Siegen-thaler, Mark MacNamara,
and David Caddy), the faculty and staff (especially Barbara Allen), the fans, and our Athletic Director,
Zeke Lopez.
Congrats on a great season!
Video slideshow tribute to the SFWHS Boys' Soccer team 2008-2009.
*Photos and video slideshow by Amelia Hebeler
San Francisco Waldorf High School is still accepting applications for the freshman class of 2009.
Please fill out our online form, or call (415) 213-6139 for further information.
2008-2009 High school Speaker series
National Geographic Photojournalist Ed Kashi
On Thursday, Nov. 13th, award-winning photojournalist Ed Kashi presented a retrospective of his work documenting the social and political issues that define our times. His work has taken him from India, where a superhighway connecting the country's largest cities symbolizes its economic growth, to Africa's Niger Delta, where large oil reserves have proved to be more of a curse than a blessing to the local inhabitants.
Author Rick Wartzman on the Banning of The Grapes of Wrath
Stones and Flowers
The San Francisco Youth Eurythmy Troupe in Egypt,
February 2008
Click here for article and photos (pdf).
San Francisco Waldorf High School Recognized for "Green" Achievements
In the February 2008 issue of School Construction News, a feature article focuses on our school's pending Gold LEED Certification and highlights the ways in which the school has achieved this certification. The common ground between environmental consciousness and the underlying philosophy of Waldorf education is discussed.
Click here to read the entire article.
Varsity Volleyballers Clinch Third League Title in a Row
SFWHS at 470 West Portal makes News!!
Monday, September 17 at 8:00 AM, our new high school campus held a ribbon cutting ceremony to officially welcome everyone. Our impending Gold LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Certification is generating quite a bit of buzz and we are proud to be able to share it with the community at large. We were delighted to have extensive news media coverage and invite you to explore the links below for audio and video footage as well as other web postings.
united nations Program continues to gain steam
San Francisco Waldorf High juniors and seniors may be interns with a San Francisco-based United Nations non-governmental organization (NGO) specializing in human rights and humanitarian law. Interns generally assist in research on key issues before the United Nations Human Rights Council, and have the opportunity to draft written statements submitted to the Council for publication as official documents. At least one student is invited to attend the Council's Spring three-week session in Geneva, Switzerland as part of a senior internship. The students who attend receive full credentials and have opportunities to meet UN staff, Ambassadors and other country representatives, other NGO representatives, and people working to solve the world's most serious problems. Now in its sixth year, our UN program is unique in California.
Dr. Burket Receives Herbst Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence
Waldorf biology, geology, and math teacher John Burket has received the 2007 Herbst Award for Teaching Excellence from the Herbst Foundation. The award recognizes high school teachers in San Francisco who have demonstrated a commitment to excellence in the classroom. Recipients of this award are exceptional teachers who have brought dedication, commitment, creativity, and innovation to the profession of teaching, and who have inspired the joy of learning in their students.
Prior to teaching at Waldorf, Mr. Burket received his Ph.D. in soil science from Oregon State University, his MS in biology from the University of Oregon and his BA in geology from the University of Vermont. After graduating from college, Mr. Burket took over the ownership of his family’s farm in Pennsylvania, converting it to an organic grain and livestock operation. During this time he also earned his teaching certificate in biology and general science and taught science for two years in a public high school. He completed his Foundation Year at the Eugene Waldorf Teacher Training Program and taught math and science blocks in the eighth grade at the Eugene Waldorf School. Mr. Burket completed the High School Teaching Program through Rudolf Steiner College in 2000.
Walkathon Supports The Inkanyezi Project
Every May the high school students participate in our annual Walkathon, the proceeds of which support The Inkanyezi Waldorf School near Johannesburg, South Africa. Students ask donors to support them by pledging a dollar amount per mile on this 5-mile walk through Golden Gate Park.
For the past 10 years, students have also been offering their own contributions of extra change at their class meetings each week, which the Student Council collects and deposits into the Inkanyezi Fund. The following is an article that talks about our history of involvement with this school and how we are now sponsoring students who have graduated from the Inkanyezi Waldorf School to attend SF Waldorf High School.
The Inkanyezi Waldorf School in South Africa
The San Francisco Waldorf School has been supporting the Inkanyezi Waldorf School in South Africa for a decade. We have fundraised money, donated art supplies, and personally sponsored high school students to come and study at our school and experience teenage life in urban America. There are many ways that we have fundraised including the Penny Wars and our annual Walkathon.
Truus Geraets
When Truus Geraets, a Dutch eurythmist, came to our school, we were still on the piers at Fort Mason. She brought a slide show presentation of the Inkanyezi Waldorf School project and told us how it had started in a garage in the middle of a very difficult area in the poorest part of South Africa, near Johannesburg.
The pioneer students at SF Waldorf wanted to help, and so we began to find ways to send a substantial amount of money to the school each year. Together with the money, we now send them art supplies that all Waldorf students grow up using, such as beeswax, crayons, colored pencils, watercolor paint, play cloths, and more
Everything we send to the African school helps and we are making a big difference in their lives, but there are many children who are still on the wrong side of the fence. It is our thoughts and help that allow them to learn at the Waldorf School that has been created in the midst of such poor living conditions.
Inkanyezi Children's Garden and Waldorf School
When Truus and others began the Inkanyezi Waldorf School, the children came from different tribes, around the area, that did not always get a long. The parents would stay and hang their heads into the classroom through the windows as the children learned their letters because the parents could not read and write either.
Many of the children lived in tiny metal houses, or buildings made from whatever scraps could be found. The families are very poor, so the school had to build a big fence to prevent it from being robbed. Now the school has real buildings and full eight grades. Together with our help they have created a haven of peace and creative learning for many children. However, the people around the school are still very poor and need help to cross the fence where they can be safe and become the educated individuals that they can be.
Petros and Phillemon
Although the Inkanyezi Waldorf School is getting help from other schools and organizations, the SF Waldorf School has been personally sponsoring certain students through their education, and finally last year we were able to host 19-year-old Petros for three months. When Petros visited us last year, he talked about how much the Inkanyezi School meant to him and how he loved his community, even with its poverty and violence. He appreciated the experience we had given him in the U.S., and told us that he wished his friend, Phillemon, could also come experience our life.
We have taken on Petros’s wish and have raised enough money to pay for Phillemon’s air fair and stay in San Francisco with the family of a student at our school. Every dollar we send over helps people like Petros become influential individuals.
Please support
The Inkanyezi Project
with your donation to our Walkathon!
If you have any questions or wish to help us support the Inkanyezi Waldorf School in South Africa please call the high school office: 415.431.2736.
San Francisco Youth Eurythmy Group Tours Italy
“Remember the three ‘Ls’ of Renaissance Italy”, our tour guide crowed, “Lorenzo, Ludovico, and Leonardo!” We were in the falconry, high up in the Castello Sforzesco, where Leonardo da Vinci came often to muse over art, machinery, and entertainments for the ruling family of Milan. This moment occurred between a performance at the Escuola Rudolf Steiner in Milan, and a train ride to the fabled city of Florence. On our eight-day tour of these two cities, art, culture and eurythmy were mingled in a magical way.
The tour was the highlight of the year for the twenty-one students in the eurythmy performing group— tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade students who rehearse five hours a week with Astrid Thiersch, high school eurythmy teacher and the group’s director. She had crafted a performance with Italy in mind: the program included a selection from Dante’s “Inferno”, an Italian poem, and a thought from Michaelangelo, in addition to the fairy tale “Snow White”, a piano trio by Mendelssohn, modern music, humor and solos. After well-received performances at the Cowell Theater, San Francisco (twelfth annual!) and the Western Waldorf Teachers’ Conference in Fair Oaks in February, we were breathlessly ready for our Italian adventure.
We were met at Milan’s central station by a school parent, Augusto Calderoni, who was soon revealed to be a Milanese guardian angel. Hands full of maps and tram tickets, he radiated goodwill as he headed up a posse of welcoming parents, who had all traveled to meet us by public transportation, as it was a ‘spare the air’ day. The students were whisked off to their homes for grand Italian Sunday lunches and naps. We met later in a drizzle for a tour of the famous Duomo, a wander through the Galleria, and a peek inside La Scala, with its beautiful museum. Many students viewed their time with Italian host families as a great highlight of the trip.
Monday morning we gathered at the Escuola Rudolf Steiner, the oldest of the three Waldorf schools in Milan, and watched a grand parade of Italian students, kindergarten through high school, enter the building. It wasn’t immediately clear that we were expected, but the office staff showed us to the hall where we settled into the familiar round of lighting cues, ironing, and rehearsal. School was resuming after a vacation, and we heard various rumors about the audience for our performances— the high school was coming, the high school wasn’t coming, some classes were coming, no one seemed to know. We performed for an enthusiastic group of adults including our host families that night; it seemed the buzz was good, as the next day we were told the whole school was coming to our second performance. They did, in Italian fashion, with about 450 students and teachers packed into a space designed for many fewer, sitting, standing, sprawling anywhere and everywhere, with everyone talking and enjoying themselves immensely. Their response to the program was prolonged and generous!
That evening, the students met with peers from the high school, exchanging thoughts about school, life, and perceptions of Europe, Italy, and America. This is a crucial aspect of our tours abroad: we are always regarded, at first, as “the Americans”, and must work to dispel preconceptions of brashness, arrogance, and support for our country’s aggressive foreign policy. Finding common ground in the realm of the universal human is one of the most important and lasting aspects of the work. The next morning brought a visit to Michelangelo’s last “Pietà”, the massive Castello, and a view of the Alps from the top of the Duomo before our wonderful hosts packed us onto the train with bags of panini— arrividerci, Milano!
Arriving in Florence, we negotiated our way with maps and city buses to our quaint and lovely hotel, where we were welcomed in inimitable Italian style by a second immaculate host, Roberto Calosi, of the Scuola Waldorf Firenze. The beautiful city of Florence can be explored by foot, and the students set off eagerly to find pizza, gelato and other delights while we teachers welcomed relatives and friends from Rome, Stuttgart and England who had come to share the experience of Florence and our performance with us. A chamber concert in a local church rounded out the evening.
A visit to the school the next day involved a breathtakingly beautiful excursion by bus into the Tuscan countryside south of Florence— who would not want to live here? The kindergarten is perched on top of a hill near the little town of Romola in an ancient stone farmhouse. We tiptoed into the lovely classroom as the children were singing a grace, and we responded with a quiet round. The atmosphere was truly magical. A short bus ride into town brought us to the building housing grades one through five. The children were at recess, with the usual sounds and activities, and we had a chance to see familiar classrooms festooned with paintings and drawings. The students sang beautifully for us as we said our goodbyes.
Back in Florence, a walk up the Via Roma helped orient us, and we dispersed to explore before meeting at the Academmia to see Michelangelo’s splendid “David” and other works. Lalla Carini, teacher, chaperone, and art historian, helped us learn what to look for. Later, she guided us through the Duomo and the Uffizi Gallery, where we were stunned by the originals of many paintings by the great masters that we had only seen in books. Many students found the art of Florence another highlight of the tour.
The school had rented a theater for our performance, and we saw posters around the city with our picture! After a full day of rehearsal and preparation, the curtain finally went up on our last performance—to a full house! The performance was full of energy and excitement, and the audience most enthusiastic. As we left for a reception at the second small kindergarten in Florence, we discovered that friends, relatives, and teachers had traveled from Rome, Bologna, and Milan to see the show!
A grand Tuscan feast concluded our stay, and each participant expressed thanks and memories of highlights from the tour. We are most grateful to the parents of the students, our school, our many sponsors far and near, and the students themselves, for helping make this possible— and, of course, to Ms. Thiersch, for her vision and artistry. Our outlook has certainly broadened as we were able to exchange rare and lasting gifts of art, culture and friendship in this most beautiful country.
2007-2008 High School Speaker series
Robert Pinsky, Poet Laureate, speaks about Dante’s Inferno
Robert Pinsky makes poetry come alive through his dynamic readings and the Favorite Poem Project.
On February 13th, our high school students, faculty, and parents were not disappointed when Mr. Pinsky spoke about his best-selling translation of The Inferno of Dante. Mr. Pinsky immediately developed a warm rapport with the students and spoke about his own high school experiences, the process of translation of The Inferno, and warned teachers to “do no harm” as they guided their students through the high school experience. He spoke one of his poems and left everyone feeling inspired and exhilarated about experiencing the spoken words of poetry.
Mr. Pinsky’s translation received the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Howard Morton Landon Prize for translation.
Stolen Voices editors talk with SFWHS Students
On January 23, 2007, San Francisco Waldorf High School had the honor of hosting Zlata Filipovic and Melanie Challenger, editors of Stolen Voices, an anthology of diaries written by young people during wars and violent conflicts of the past century.
The compilation includes firsthand accounts of fourteen adolescents coping with war from the first and second world wars, the Vietnam War, the Balkan War, the Second Intifada, and the current war in Iraq.
Their collection, the first of its kind to expose the shared experience of conflict by young people, includes published, unpublished, forgotten, and archived diaries of noncombatants as well as the journals of young soldiers. The diaries record the gritty realities of life during wartime and provide an historical record of war that is powerful, personal, and human. Journal entries contain the words of the time and convey the nature of war with an unforgettable immediacy.
The voices of these young diarists give a profound insight into the ways in which the horrors of war destroy the innocence of youth.
Zlata Filipovic whose own diary of wartime Bosnia stunned the world when it a appeared in 1993, has become a globally recognized spokesperson for children affected by conflict.
Melanie Challenger is an award-winning writer of poetry and prose.
Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz Speaks at SFWHS
On October 12, 2006, Joseph Stiglitz spoke at San Francisco Waldorf High School on Making Globalization Work, the subject of his most recent book.
We invite you to listen to his presentation. Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics and University Professor at Columbia University, was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1993-95, during the Clinton administration, and served as CEA chairman from 1995-97. He then became Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank from 1997-2000. His book, Globalization and Its Discontents, was translated into 35 languages and has sold more than one million copies worldwide.
Audio recordings of Stiglitz's talk:
| 1. Introduction | 5. Questions part 3 |
| 2. Lecture | 6. Questions part 4 |
| 3. Questions part 1 | 7. Questions part 5 |
| 4. Questions part 2 | 8. Conclusion |
2007 HOBY Leadership Seminar Student Selected
SFWHS sophomore Ilianah Pemberton has been selected to attend the Northern California HOBY (Hugh O’Brian Youth) Leadership Seminar to be held this June in Nevada City.
Each year SFWHS identifies a Tenth Grader with outstanding leadership qualities to attend the HOBY conferences. We recognize the worthy goals of the HOBY organization that states: “…we bring together the A-list of entrepreneurs, educators, civic leaders, innovators and government representatives to work one-on-one with the ambassadors – answering tough questions and helping to shape the future of these young leaders of tomorrow. HOBY has been a prime influential force for hundreds of thousands of students who have experienced it around the United States and world since its inception in 1958.” Our HOBY alumni are unanimous that their participation in these seminars was an outstanding opportunity and experience for them at the end of their sophomore year.
The Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership Organization has as its vision: “To motivate and empower individuals to make a positive difference within our global society through understanding and action based on effective and compassionate leadership.” The HOBY mission is to provide “…lifelong leadership development opportunities that empower individuals to achieve their highest potential.” Learn more about HOBY at www.hoby.org.
New High School Campus Opens September 2007: LEED Certification in Progress
San Francisco Waldorf High School will move into its new, permanent home at 470 West Portal Avenue in summer 2007.
The new site at 470 West Portal Avenue is located in a vibrant natural setting and provides ample space for the various educational activities that take place during the school day. In addition to nine classrooms, the high school has three state-of-the-art science labs, two dedicated art studios, and a media center with computers for student use.
The school is applying for a Gold LEED Certification, which is the second highest LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certificate offered through the Green Building Rating System™. Because environmental awareness and concern about sustainability live strongly in the high school community, it was a natural and well-supported decision to build the new campus with this whole-building approach. It is our hope that the campus will become a dynamic teaching tool for environmental studies for both our students and the community. SFWHS will be the first LEED certified high school in San Francisco.
The new campus is within easy walking distance of local West Portal businesses and is easily accessible by car or public transportation. San Francisco Waldorf High School’s new location gives us a permanent home and enhanced facility to continue to guide intelligent, imaginative and inquisitive students toward lives of conscience, creativity and consequence.