NEWPORT BEACH : School Has a No-Stress Approach

Imagine a school with no principal, no printed textbooks, no letter grades and no computers, a school where art is a keystone and students don’t change teachers each year.

Such an institution is Waldorf School of Orange County--a private, nonprofit nursery, kindergarten and elementary school that last month moved from Fountain Valley to the former Eastbluff Elementary School.

There on a nine-acre site, about 120 children from all over the county and Long Beach are writing and illustrating their own textbooks, knitting, learning foreign languages, playing flutes, planting gardens, building a playhouse and dancing.

But this is not an approach at the expense of basic academics, Waldorf parents say. They claim this is an environment which fosters the best possible intellectual and social growth for their children.

“The strength is both the curriculum and the approach,” said Costa Mesa resident Diane Kastner, whose son is in first grade at Waldorf. “It’s education for the heart, mind and body so that the entire child is involved in every aspect of learning.”

Kastner, 35, who as a parent volunteer acts as spokesperson for the school, said she often speaks to other parents whose children have reached the “point of despair and often burnout.”

“They’re looking for a refreshing alternative” to public school, she said. “In this technological culture, which stresses speed, even childhood is often viewed as a period to be hurried through as fast as possible. We honor childhood as a valuable time . . . and by the time our children reach high school, they excel beyond traditional standards.”

Waldorf Schools were started in 1919 in Stuttgart, Germany by a wealthy industrialist who wanted high-caliber yet practical education for the children of his Waldorf-Astoria Cigarette Factory workers.

Today, there are some 500 Waldorf schools on five different continents in 35 countries. About 120 are in the United States, with the largest number--20--in California.

Only three of the California schools--in Santa Rosa, Sacramento and Northridge--offer grades kindergarten through 12. Others are kindergarten through eight. Still others, depending on how long they’ve been open, offer only a few elementary grades.

Waldorf School of Orange County, founded five years ago by a group of 20 parents familiar with its principles, is one of the newest. It costs about $4,600 a year tuition per pupil.

Because teachers whenever possible stay with children as they move up in grade levels, the school began with just a small kindergarten and now goes through fifth grade. Eventually, it will go up to eighth grade.

Instead of the traditional hierarchy and letter-grade system, teachers--who receive two years of special training--administer the school and chart students’ progress through detailed written evaluations. A board of trustees handles financial and legal matters, and most of the daily running of the school is conducted by more than 160 parent volunteers.

One of those is Nina Leiferman of Huntington Beach, who has a daughter, 7, and a son, 4, in the school.

Leiferman said she chose Waldorf for her children after her daughter finished a public kindergarten program.

“She had gone to a private preschool where she had a lot of freedom to be expressive and go at her own pace,” Leiferman said. “But in kindergarten, she was being pushed into areas she wasn’t ready for. The pressure in her was building.

“This is much more appropriately geared to the stage of the child.”