Please help us provide our students with the continuity and community they need. These are vital elements to building interpersonal relationships. This week our district informed our principal that our beloved Special Day Class (Special Education grades 1-3) teacher and the four students in the "Aloe" class will be "allocated" to new programs across the district. This decision unjustly sends a message of exclusion of special education students. It disrupts a seasoned and successful program and undermines a message of inclusion that our school community holds dear. 

The staff and families at A.M. Winn have taken up a journey, under the support and inspiration of Waldorf pedagogy and curriculum, to bring community, gardens, the arts and education to the children and families of Rancho Cordova and the Greater Sacramento Area. Our unique offering of a Waldorf SDC 1st-6th grade education has blossomed and grown into something truly remarkable.  This last year was a setback, and enrollment is low due to delayed testing and qualification of new SPED students,  but our program deserves a chance! 

This year I started my 4th year at Winn, and I love it here, now more that ever before. The teachers,  staff and students that spend their days at this beautiful school, have had the pleasure of growing here together for the past 5+years, some even more still.  This last year I have seen a community build back better from being broken in, repeatedly, as they have faced setback after setback, threat after threat.

This past month has steeped the last bits of energy from my bones, bits I didn't even think I  had. It has torn my heart out to see the way this event has shaken us all to the core. This whole time I've told myself, "We just need to get back on track. Once rhythm replaces strength, we can move forward."

So, we are about to start our second block next week.  I am going to teach Geography. In Waldorf we teach subject blocks which speak to the human soul at each developmental stage. Our content and lessons are aimed at awakening and enlivening in our students' their will,  nurturing perseverance and curiosity.  My fellow SDC teacher was going to be starting a new block, too. He has certainly been thinking about his lessons for the last month, at least.  He's great at honing and tweaking his students learning effortlessly.  It's a gift which he shares with more than just his own class. Last week his 2nd and their graders performed in a play alongside their general education peers. He has shown his students, as well as the general education teachers and students that he collaborated with, that learning can be joyful and inspired.

He's set to be surplused. That means "sent wherever." Nevermind that he trained for 2 years in Waldorf curriculum and theory to work effectively in this particular school setting.  Nevermind that he and his students are just finally settling back into the safety and security of daily routines,  after a year and a half of constant upheaval and dislocation. This is not the time to be making these changes.   Taylor and his students, just like all of us, were violently ripped from our routines in March of 2020 by a global pandemic. Taylor has additionally been subjected to the back and forth about distance learning,  controversial teacher trainings and constant negotiation drama between our union and district, and now only just trudged through this first brutal month as we daringly returned to in-person learning and all the emotional, environmental, and social stressors that this situation has incurred. Now, on top of everything,  he is being asked to "pick up and move along." Essentially.  Nevermind that he just transferred his own children to attend the school where he works.  Nevermind that we, as a staff, depend on our educator connections, our social collaborators. Nevermind that our school community is build like spider's web, or that we learn from eachother, or that we heal and grow together.  Never mind that this last year and a half has already left our webs in tatters.  

And who is this good for?!

It is not good for the students, for their parents or their families. It is not good for the teachers, or their children or their families. It is not good for our communities. It is not even good for the district, but somehow they don't know that.  It is driven by profit margins, and that CANNOT be the plan.  I'm sorry,  but it just cannot be the plan for our childrens' and our futures to be determined by the bottom line. 

Please help protect community, our students' education,  our teachers and students at A.M. Winn, inclusion,  justice,  balance and more.  Help us build back better than ever before by standing up for what works, in whatever ways you can. 

Thank you for your support,

Bethany Cox

SDC Intermediate Teacher- A.M. Winn Public Waldorf School