Maine Coast Waldorf School

We could not have made it through distance learning without Maine Coast Waldorf School. Connection in community is now more important than ever, and our choice several years ago to enroll at MCWS was validated again and again this spring. The teachers and staff went above and beyond during this first foray into distance learning, quickly and nimbly providing engaging and meaningful curriculum. When my son nor I thought we could get through another day of quarantine, we felt connected. Who knows what this Fall will actually bring, but we know the school experience will continue to learning in relationship. Grateful!

This school does a fantastic job with so many aspects of education. We have been at the school for many years and have been delighted with the education. I want to also suggest that having the same teacher for all 8 years of grade school is a great opportunity to develop a long term relationship with a teacher and peers, which is far more useful in life than simply relating to someone for 9 months, as happens in a traditional school. Some might argue that teachers are not able to be experts at all 8 grade levels. But if it were true that adults couldn’t develop along with the students, then parents could not be effective parents over the course of many decades of parenting. But of course, parents are able to learn and can effectively provide different things to children of different ages. No one educational strategy can do everything. That said, I strongly prefer the in-depth experience of having my children learn to relate to teachers and other students over many years. This is an unusual and incredible strength of MCWS, in addition to providing excellent academics from pre-K to grade 12.

My family had many of the same types of negative experiences described in other reviews. Waldorf is appealing in many ways, but after several years at MCWS we realized it has a major drawback that outweighs and actually undermines the potential benefits. In Waldorf schools, when the students move from one grade to the next, the teacher moves with them all the way from 1st to 8th grade. This supposedly has pedagogical benefits because it means the teacher gets to know the students well. Over several years, we realized there are important reasons why other schools have teachers who specialize in teaching particular grade levels. Teaching successfully at 1st grade vs. 4th grade vs. 8th grade requires different skills, knowledge, and temperament–and years of experience. It is unrealistic to think that one person will be good at teaching every grade level. A Waldorf teacher is not able to learn from experience because every year for 8 years they teach a different grade (and then many stop teaching and never cycle back again). At non-Waldorf schools, you have teachers with decades of experience teaching each grade level; that expertise does not exist at MCWS, and it shows. This approach also fails to recognize that children actually change tremendously from year to year. The 8th-grade version of a child is quite different from the 1st-grade version (think of yourself at those ages). Every year the Waldorf teacher essentially has to get to know the “new version” of the student again, meaning there is not a great benefit to having taught them before. Having the same teacher also stifles a child’s development because it fails to offer the benefits that come with having a different teacher each year: Every teacher brings something different. No single teacher can provide everything or is a good match for every student. New teachers help children to learn and evolve in different ways. I have come to believe that if having the same teacher for grades 1-8 were truly beneficial to learning outcomes, then at least some other schools would have adopted the practice; I am not aware of any that have. We urge parents looking into MCWS to fully consider this and other aspects of the school before their children spend years there like ours did.

Maine Coast has an extraordinary community of supportive, creative, and enthusiastic families. My kids are so excited to go to school each day and come home full of stories of the day and excited about what they have learned. I feel like they are connecting deeply with what they are learning, and it leads them to ask more questions, to be more engaged with the world around them. I feel confident that they are building a foundation that will help them to be the kind of people we need in the world right now, and that the extraordinary experience they are getting at MCWS will be one of the most meaningful of their lives.

Our family has thoroughly enjoyed our 7 years at MCWS. Our son has had some learning issues to work through, but everyone at the school has been open and helpful. Our son loves going to school every day!