What is Inner Work?

Inner Work and the California Standards for the Teaching Profession

 Katherine Gaffey Lehman MA   2024

The 2009 review of the California Standards for the Teaching Profession highlights six areas for the development of excellence in teaching. The program INNER WORK: Deepening Waldorf Practice is also focused on the goal of developing capacities within teachers to enable them to find their inner compass to meet the rigors of the classroom and of the many gifts and challenges students are bringing with them.

Standard 1. Engaging and Supporting All Students in Learning

One of the most effective ways to engage teachers in meeting the needs of all students is to provide a setting in which their own needs and individuality is recognized. We do this through a deep study of education philosophy. In this work personal responses and existential questions about the meaning of our work emerge. These coupled with in depth study of child development allows new perspectives to grow that ignites genuine interest in and compassion for their students.

Standard 2. Creating and Maintaining Effective Environments for Student Learning

We are particularly focused on creating a collegial and effective learning environment for teachers themselves to experience so that they can bring this reality to their classroom work.  We have seen over and over how the caring learning community fosters the growth of the individual. Teachers must experience this to be able to foster such communities intheir own classrooms. 

Standards 4 Planning Instruction and Designing Learning Experiences for all Students

  & 5  Assessing Students for Learning  

Underlying both of these standards is the capacity to see and evaluate what you see. Teachers need to be able to really see their students. This includes the students strengths in a multitude of areas both academic, perceptual, social and so on. Teachers must also attempt to discern where students are struggling and what interventions could be tried to support each student in need. Teachers must  further observe whether interventions are or are not working. 

To expand the capacity of observation, students in the INNER WORK program engage in a one hour nature study daily. They report many experiences of a growing power of observation. That which they saw on day one has grown in complexity by day five. In addition, the observers find a growing interest in the subject they are observing. This growth in the capacity to see bodes well for developing compassionate and astute teacher-observers.