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Funding for Youth to go to FINLAND

Sunday 17^th November @ Anthroposophical Centre

10am-3pm

(opposite Taikura Rudolf Steiner School on Nelson street)

There will be selling of Art pieces donated by Artists and up and coming Artists work available, Raffles and Hangi Tickets (no eftpos)

Donations welcome

He Rangatahi Pounamu

Westpac Trust

03-0698-0198353-000

Kia Ora whanau,

 We are raising funds for He Rangatahi Pounamu,  our youth Ambassador Program to Finland, 2025 - we are having an art fundraising exhibition sale... 

 Kia ora whanau we are having an art sale featuring up and comings and established artists. 

 ALL proceeds are going to He Rangatahi Pounamu to help youth from Aotearoa being Ambassadors in Suomi, Finland. 

Date: Nov 17th 10am - 3pm

Where: Anthroposophical Centre [over the road from the Taikura School Fair]  

Payment in cash or bank transfer ( sorry no eftpos)  

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Background to the Youth Ambassador Project

In December 2023, whilst teaching, I was inspired by class 7 at Taikura Rudolf Steiner by the light that shone in the students. I was drawn to this light and it reminded me of the love and light that I had experienced in Finland in 2000, as a teenager. A light that helped me circumnavigate trials, tribulations, relationships, languages, culture and my own personal ‘Turangawaewae’, standing place or identity. The seed was born and my passion to help youth share their light to the world, as I once did, was germinated.  The power that I have experienced through Finland: Finnish Family, friends from all over the world, travel, sharing culture, sharing self, embracing differences and volleyball,  

I travelled to Finland in January 2024, 24 years since I had been back to Finland. Everyone had grown up and I realized that I have been 24 years Finn-Maori, or is it a Maori-Finn?

I have been in contact with friends and family since landing in Helsinki in 2000 right up until this present day. There have been hundred and probably, humbly thousands of people in my life who have received the gifts that Finland has given me as a Warrior of the Light.  This is through being an Educator (locally in Aotearoa, NZ and overseas) Athlete (Iron Maori whanau member), Artistic Therapist (worked at Poraiti) and studying to be a Maori Artist.

The Board did not support the Class 7 excursion to Finland. It dawned on me, that there was a need for the older youth, 15-17, who needed guidance, inspiration, self belief, identity, adventure in the battle to keep their light; passion, purpose and  pleasure in their lives.

This has seen the birth of He Rangatahi Pounamu, ‘Treasured youth’  a non-profit organisation for youth in Aotearoa to be Ambassadors in Suomi. 

Thank you kindly

 Te Whiti Seeds

Who am I ? 

He mokopuna ahau o te maunga Ruapehu, i tipu ake au ki Kahuranaki.
I am a descendant of the Mountain Ruapehu and grew up here under the guidance of Kahuranaki.

My connection to the anthroposophical world began with Hugh Seeds, my grandfather, the father of my Mother.   James Burns was the first kindergarten teacher for my brother Nalin and his whanau have ever since been connected with ours.  I am a graduate of Massey University with a BA in Linguistics and a post-grad in Education, and ECE.  I have attended the Kairos Artistic Therapy Course, and am currently with Te Wananga o Aotearoa studying in a programme that was spear-headed by Sandy Adsett for Maori Artists. 

I have been an educator for approximately 20 years, here and overseas, and working with young people has always been a passion of mine.  I enjoy physical challenges and have an open heart. 

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New_Ground_Poster.png

Subject: New Ground, Anthroposophical Youth Festival

Kia Ora,

I hope this message finds you well. I'm reaching out in hopes of connecting with the right people and to get some help in promoting a festival that we are organising. Some of you might have access to a database of emails that would be relevant for this event, so please share it with as many people as you can :)

From March 7th to 9th next year, we will be hosting New Ground, an anthroposophical youth festival in Tauranga. This event aims to introduce young people to anthroposophy and to begin exploring some of life's big questions together. Many who attended Waldorf schools may wonder, "What was that education all about?" While Rudolf Steiner advised against directly teaching anthroposophy to school students, there's often a curiosity to explore the essence of their education after graduation. This festival creates a space to explore those questions, offering a taste of what anthroposophy is and how it can help us develop a deeper sense of self. 

The festival is open to everyone—whether or not you attended a Waldorf school, are familiar with anthroposophy, or are simply curious to learn more.

We’d love for this message to reach people between the ages of 16 and 35, as that’s the usual age range for the Youth Section. If you could share our website and booking page with others, or even post our flyer on your notice boards, it would be greatly appreciated.

NZ Youth Section Website 

New Ground Festival Tickets 

Many thanks for your support,

David Seidel and Monique Macfarlane.

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Room Hire

From 1 January 2025 Room Hire rates will be:

• Main Room [About 100m2, with 50+ upholstered, stackable chairs] $30 per hour.
• Art Room [3 work tables 2400x800, 30 stackable chairs, wall blackboard, sink] $20 per hour.
• Consulting Room [Furnished; Small groups up to 5 persons] $15 per hour.

The rooms are not hired  for anthropoposophical meetings (but must be booked via the website or the Treasurer). Those attending such events are expected to make KOHA contributions in the foyer box.

Robin Bacchus, Treasurer.  treas@anthrohb.nz 

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11.  Self-Education of the Teacher

by Erich Gabert

In the first part of this booklet we were able to refer to the wonder­ful fact that in these days man is no longer dependent for his further development solely on the awakening, purifying "punishing" influence that comes to him from the spiritual powers that guide his destiny, but that he can also take a hand in these processes himself out of the power of his own understanding and will; that he can help to work at his own "education".   We had to add, however, that the part that he is actually capable of achieving here is still in the form of very small and modest beginnings, and that the bulk of the work still has to be left, as before, to the powers above man.  In the practice of self-education it is good to review this fact from time to time.

Such thoughts as these are no less useful and important in educational work with children.  The wonderful fact certainly exists here, too, that the human being is graciously permitted to take part with his help and his service in the educational work that divine powers are carrying out in the child.  But here too, he is only capable at first of very, very little.  He must be happy and content if he can occasionally understand to a small degree what those powers are doing towards the awakening of the child's being, so that he can become the instrument of their service, and if — to keep to our theme — he can, by setting a punishment, come to the aid of the consciousness of the child when it has gone astray.

However, all that the teacher would like to attempt to do in order to spare the child the pain of punishment through the use of preventive measures is even more humble and elementary.  In this sphere it is truly very little that we can achieve as yet.  And yet it is just from these weak beginnings that our educational enthusiasm draws its strength.  They lend fire to our powers of understanding and thereby enable us to find the way better and better to the deeper more hidden characteristics and forces of the child.

The decision to teach in this way obviously makes great demands on the grownup; or rather it induces him to make great demands on himself.  He has to discover how he can, in actual fact, achieve a sufficiently close inner connection with the being and individuality of the child.  What is so decisively new in the pedagogy of Rudolf Steiner is just this, that he has pointed out ways of doing this that are really possible for everybody.  He has shown how one can arrive at a valid knowledge of the human being and the child and how such knowledge, because it also includes the spiritual in man, does not get stuck in the intellect, but grasps the whole of man right down to the will.  Human understanding supported by will, however, creates a bond from one person to another.  It is the path to true and genuine human love.

The first thing, then, that the educator must demand of himself is an unremitting struggle for human understanding.  "Study of Man" (now “The Foundations of Human Experience”)is the title of lectures that Rudolf Steiner gave to the prospective teachers shortly before the founding of the first Waldorf School.  They constitute today and for a long time to come the basis of the entire teacher's training for Steiner teachers and the object of repeated and absorbing study.

Over and above such knowledge of child nature that is of a more general kind however, an unstinting effort is imperative, to enter more and more comprehensively, thoroughly and surely into the individual character­istics of every single chid.  Make a living picture of each child!   That is the great goal which is never quite attained and which demands continual observation and daily retrospection on the part of every teacher.  At Steiner Schools, the additional to innumerable single conversations, the greater part of the weekly teachers’ meetings is devoted to this task, above all, where, in the exchange of their experiences the teachers follow the course of develop­ment of the children in the school and constantly supplement and deepen their picture of them.  And the result of such an effort, whether done quietly by the individual or communally by all the teachers is this — and it is a common and well-proved experience — that the child, without knowing how it happened, feels affected by it, feels understood and loved.

And why should it not also awaken reciprocal love on the part of the child!   Particularly in the case of difficult children this can often be seen to a surprising extent.  They feel that the teacher is taking an interest in them instead of only scolding and threatening.  They feel that they are being taken seriously just as they are, with all their imperfections, that there is sympathy for the struggle they have with their difficulties, that they are not being condemned but recognised, despite everything, and respected in their human­ity; but above all, that one wants to assist and support them; that counts on the good in them and has trust in them.  They are grateful for this, even if they cannot express it as yet and even if at first, perhaps, it does not appear to be so at all from the way they behave.

To confront the children really in the way described in certainly difficult, extremely difficult for the teacher.  To be sure he demands it of himself and tries to do it with all his strength, but he can by no means achieve it every time.  What helps the most of thinking again and again about the child as a human being?  For example the thought that the body and soul form in which the child appears before him is not at all the child's true higher being, that higher being which, coming from spiritual worlds, has come into a bodily nature, into earth incarnation, so that he can strive and work his way through endless struggles and efforts along the path to his further development and perfection. – Such thoughts as these, if they can come properly alive .in him, can be the greatest help to the teacher to enable him to establish the necessary connection, unspoken but powerful, with the individuality of the child.

In occupying himself with this search for understanding of the being of the child it also works back strongly upon the grown-up himself.  He is not spared the shaming experience - and the longer he does it the worse it is — that between the deep reverence that he feels rising up within him at the thought of the eternal individuality of the child, on the one hand, and his actual daily every-day treatment of the child, on the other hand, there yawns a sharp contradiction.  All his pedagogical complacency is, as it were, swept away.

But the pain of this experience is also an every recurring spur in the inner struggle for self-discipline, wakefulness, presence of mind and human kindness.  The occasions when he has lacked these and when anger and obstinacy, faintheartedness and narrowness have overwhelmed him will torment and sting him more and more strongly.  They will do this all the more so, the more serious he is in facing in the Rüchschau the harm and the constraints that were the result of his shortcomings.  He will have to accept the pains that arise from this as the "punishments of destiny" that are his due.

But he will also experience something else in the Rückschau.  He will be permitted to see that forces have been active in his educational work that have not arisen out of his miserable little everyday personality but that have been given him through Grace.  He sees how he has been helped.  And when he regards this with humility and gratitude, he feels that despite all his short­comings, mistakes and failures it gives him the strength and courage to go bravely on with the work.

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