Vancouver Waldorf School
Vancouver Waldorf School
Vancouver Waldorf School is a private school in the city of North Vancouver in British Columbia with its main focus on experiential learning, as the school administration believes that the best way to learn is through one’s experience. North Vancouver is a small and peaceful city, a suburb to Vancouver, this is what makes it a nice place to study during the school years, without being disturbed by the bustle of a big metropolitan city.
Programs
Waldorf School offers education for young children, on the elementary school, middle and high school levels. As for the early education programs, only the best pedagogy professionals work in Vancouver Waldorf School, educating children through art and play how to express themselves, develop their cognitive and emotional skills. Young children absorb all the information and exactly at this pre-school age the foundation for their future character, academic and social abilities is laid, knowing that Vancouver Waldorf School helps parents to build this foundation as strong as possible. Children do beeswax modeling, finger knitting, puppetry, bake bread, and make soups and explore all the verges of their personality. By doing gardening, cleaning and cooking in Vancouver Waldorf School, they develop their skills for a more adult life and learn how to care about themselves and the environment. Children from eighteen months to six years can participate in the program, while their parents will also be provided with psychological support and advice from Vancouver Waldorf School staff. There is also a special program for children from eighteen months to three years and their parents so that the families can share with each other their stories about nurturing a child, share their feelings and learn about different parenting techniques from each other. This program is held once a week.
Vancouver Waldorf School pays attention to the different sides of students’ lives and definite aspects of it, according to their age group. That’s why educators of Vancouver Waldorf School pay special attention to developing the creative side of students, their imagination, during the first five grades in school. They know that this is the period when creative power and curiosity of students is getting up steam and an inadvertent prevention of it can have an adverse effect on their development. That’s why studies of the first five grades are very comprehensive and combine creative disciplines together with the academic ones. Students often go on class trips, which can be overnight for the third graders. Students explore local forests, farms, fields and ocean understanding the beauty and fragility of nature.
During the Middle School period, Vancouver School emphasizes the importance of emotional and physical well being of students, as it’s a period of big emotional turbulence for many teenagers. Middle school students of Vancouver Waldorf School also go the trips every year to the ocean, forests or farms, and also to the excursions or canoeing and caving trips. Middle School in Vancouver Waldorf School is also the time, when students start to looking for what they would like to study deeper and what their vocation might be. So Vancouver Waldorf School offers Cyber Civics school where students learn media and information literacy as online safe and about deep fakes and click bates and also the notion of digital citizenship, which includes social media norm, hate speech and online privacy. The program is available not only for the students who attend offline classes in Vancouver Waldorf School, but also for the homeschool students and distant learners. There is also a so-called social action committee, which helps to gather volunteers, who want to become mentors and helpers, learn how to peacefully resolve conflicts and support younger students.
Vancouver Waldorf School also has a special summer camp for different age groups: preschool, junior and senior. During the summer camp students are engaged in various activities such as crafts, picnics, music, gardening and many more, which are much more beneficial for their development compared to the idleness and procrastination of doing nothing during the summer months.
High Vancouver Waldorf School claims to be a perfect balance between academic, experiential learning and arts disciplines, with the aim to educate highly confident in their skills and knowledge students. For example, students of High Vancouver Waldorf School can participate in Visual and practical Arts, Ensemble, Technology and Drama clubs. At the grade nine of Vancouver Waldorf School, students study black and white drawing and woodworking during arts and crafts classes and eurythmy or sports teams in the classes of movement. In grade ten, students learn how to do pottery, block printing and weaving on the classes of arts, bookbinding and woodcarving at the grade eleven and self-portraiture and carpentry during the last grade. During the high school years, students are provided with outdoor education, which means that they do hiking, cycling, go to the wilderness, field and zoology trips.
Students of Vancouver Waldorf School who study at ten and eleven grades have an opportunity to participate in the exchange programs to visit such countries as Japan, France, Brazil and Germany to see life from a new perspective. In the same way, international students are welcome to study in Vancouver Waldorf School and spend time with their Canadian peers, exploring the city of Vancouver. It’s important for an international student to have a certain level of the English language before starting their studies in Vancouver Waldorf School, for example it’s a minimum of 5.5 in IELTS for the grade nine and 6.5 for the grades eleven and twelve. Interview with an international applicant is one of the parts of enrollment to the Vancouver Waldorf School. Tuition fee in Vancouver Waldorf School is around $19050 CAD for international students for a year. Five days with five afternoons kindergarten will cost international citizens $20000 CAD and the kindergarten with no afternoons, from eight to twelve p.m. will cost around five thousand dollars less.
Accommodation
International students of Waldorf School are offered to live with a Canadian family as a part of a Canadian homestay program for several months or for a whole academic year. Living with a Canadian family helps international students to gain knowledge of the English language and have a cultural exchange, telling Canadian family members about their culture, language and country. Homestay program costs $1500 CAD for a month.
Future Prospects
After graduation from Waldorf School students tend to go the universities and colleges. According to the survey of Vancouver Waldorf School about 94% of students decide to go for higher education. International students also can decide to go further after obtaining a high school diploma from Vancouver Waldorf School and apply for Vancouver Community College, which offers international students to participate in Bachelor's degree, certificate, diploma and post-degree programs. If a student wishes to obtain a work permit upon graduation from a college, so they need to study on a full-time program and achieve a diploma or a certificate. That’s why, if a student wants to build their career in Music, for example, one of the possible options can be studying Music and Dance in Vancouver Community College after which a student can become a Bachelor of Applied Music or achieve a diploma in Dance or Music. The programs last for two years and cost from $28000 CAD to $33000 CAD, so it’s for a student to decide what field they are most interested in.
There is another program at the Vancouver Community College of Cosmetology. It’s a diploma program, which lasts for two years and costs around $36000. During the program, students learn how to work as a hairstylist, the safety, hygiene and sanitation standards and practices, learn about esthetics, human anatomy, especially about skin, nail and hair and how to perform various esthetics procedures on clients.
Another post-secondary institution is Langara College, where international students can also obtain higher education. Langara College offers international students to study Creative Writing, Journalism, Professional Photography, Ecology, Physics, General Education, Early Childhood Education, Recreation Management, Environmental Studies, Psychology and a number of other programs. The program of Environmental Studies, for example, is offered on various levels, so you may choose to study the program to achieve a diploma, an Associate of Science Degree or an Associate of Arts Degree. Upon finishing the program in Langara College, an international student may work in government related to environment or in any other companies that deal with the problems of environment or try to minimize their effect on it. One of the most popular programs nowadays in Langara College is Full Stack Web Development which teaches students both front- and back - end web development and information security, software development and a number of soft skills, which are also important, working as a web developer. It is a citation program, which will certainly boost your skills in web development and will become a useful complement to your degree in Computer Science as to apply for a post graduation work-permit obtaining a citation is not enough. This program is based solely on practicing and actually doing programming, rather than reading and learning theoretical information.
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