Why Am I Putting on These Pink Slippers? “Eurythmy” in Milwaukee’s Inner City Waldorf School

• In Event: Harnessing Waldorf for Arts-based Trauma Pedagogy Across Borders: Opportunities & Challenges

Abstract

1.Purpose
Focus of this study is a eurythmy classroom over time in the first urban public Waldorf school in the US, Urban Waldorf School (UWS) in Milwaukee from its founding 1991 to its shuttering 2024. Eurythmy is an art form unique to Waldorf schools and communities inspired by the work of Rudolf Steiner. Its focus is on harmonizing. Engaging the research of Eisner (2002), Germano (2021) Oberman (2013; 2008;1997), McDermott et al (1996), Lawrence-Lightfoot et al (1997), Lightfoot (1983) and DiPiero & Mueller (2015), this study analyzes a sample set of black male students’ report as graduates from UWS as well as their former teachers’ and school mates’ to examine how this eurythmy class is a showcase of what the arts can teach following Einser’s (2002, 75-83) framework.


The study interrogates the perceived counternormative aesthetic expectations of all students - also the black boys - in the context of Milwaukee’s largely African American Core when kinder and elementary and middle school students are asked to don the pink eurythmy slippers, advised for use by Rudolf Steiner and his wife Marie Steiner, originator of the form of movement called eurythmy.

The study probes the participant observation of shift “from perceived questionable oppression to fun playful engagement for everyone as well as the anticipated drop off in participation and in reported enthusiasm in higher grades versus the sustained enthusiasm , carried forward to current day interviews with UWS graduates. The question of what the art of eurythmy could teach and how is raised by interrogating a rich set of interview data to better understand the power of play, the counternormative as liberating and the ability to project or establish safe spaces to be children.

2.Theoretical Framework
The study draws from the frameworks of Lawrence-Lightfoot & Hoffman-Davis (1997), Tyack & Cuban (1995), Labaree (2020), Eisner (2002) and Muñoz (2023; 2018; 2016). Special focus is given to Eisner’s guidance on what the arts teach and how it shows as detailed in Eisner’s The Arts and the Creation of Mind discussion under the same title.

3. Methods
The approach is a historical organizational case study frame ( Petrina, 2020) and portraiture method (Lawrence-Lighfoot&Hoffmann Davis, 1997) .

4. Data Sources
Data include graduate student interview, former teacher interview, student achievement data and demographic data reports.

5. Results
The findings confirm and invite further study of the power of play “in pink slippers” i.e. bucking normed expectations of how children and youth, with focus on black male students, needed to act, look and behave, opening up creative joyful participation.

6. Scholarly significance of the study
The study advances the interrogation of culturally and developmentally appropriate artistic activity as self- and group-healing and as gateway to academic learning in times of crisis and trauma; it further advances questions of change in structure of the ‘grammar of school’ forged by the impact of crisis. Further it contributes to the research literature on scale.

Author

• Andre Spencer Anderson-Thompson, University of California - Davis