3 Things You Can Start Doing Now to Keep Your Kids Safe Online
There’s no arguing that modern technology poses a range of dangers to your children’s development and to the value of their relationships. You know your child needs your guidance to develop a healthy relationship with technology, and to learn to regulate their own use in a healthy manner in the long term.
You also know that you must protect your child, especially from more acute threats, until they learn the foundations of self-regulation.
Ideally, your child’s school would partner with you to help you manage technology use and nurture the development of your child’s inner life. But the reality is that screen time and internet exposure is becoming increasingly pervasive in most schools.
The world is becoming increasingly digital. Whether you keep your children on a strict screen-time schedule or allow them to regulate their own time, these tools will help you keep your children safe as they explore the digital world.
Password Manager
Password managers can keep your children from accessing sensitive account information while using your devices, while keeping those accounts accessible to you.
A password manager is digital organizer for all of your online passwords that is stored online and accessed with, well, a password.
The benefit of a password manager is freedom of security. With a password manager you can protect all of your online accounts with strong passwords with the reassurance that you will be able to access your accounts even if you can’t remember each individual password. And that’s great, because the number of password protected accounts we need just to get from one place to another is only increasing.
When deciding on a password manager, you’ll have to determine whether you prefer cloud storage or local storage, which will depend on two things: how much functionality you desire and how paranoid you are. Local storage is a good idea if you’re very worried about a data breach or if you work in a highly sensitive field.
Parental Controls
Nearly every digital device is equipped with parental controls designed to help parents set and enforce limits on screen time, content, and more.
Sometimes, a device’s onboard parental controls simply aren’t enough. In those cases, there is a wide range of third-party controls, which give parents more options and provide greater functionality. Most parental control apps require a yearly paid subscription, so be sure the app you choose is right for your family’s needs.
Parental controls are important on your child’s personal devices, as well as family devices.
Click here for a detailed list of parental control options.
Communicate
Any time you consider restriction, you must also consider how such measures will affect trust between you and your child. Your child needs your trust to transition through to adulthood in a whole, healthy manner. However, this trust must be mutual. Your child must also trust you.
Thus the importance of communication. As a parent, you can’t demand trust. It’s a gradual process that requires mutual commitment and constant communication over time.
“Our highest endeavor must be to develop free human beings who are able of themselves to impart purpose and direction to their lives. The need for imagination, a sense of truth, and a feeling of responsibility—these three forces are the very nerve of education.”
― Rudolf Steiner
We minimize screen time and maximize our students' experience.
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3 Defining Attributes of a Waldorf High School Student College Recruiters Can’t Resist
College recruiters are actively seeking Waldorf educated youth for their programs in record numbers. Since the release of this 2015 study published by Stanford University, primary and secondary educators have become increasingly aware of the exceptional quality and deeper learning opportunities of Waldorf education, and increasingly enthusiastic.
This year alone, 94% of graduating seniors at the Denver Waldorf High School have been accepted to high quality postsecondary institutions, earning $4.4M in scholarships.
Waldorf students leave high school with three traits the best colleges and universities are particularly excited about.
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Self-direction. In a world where change is the only thing we can count on, it’s not enough to wait for instructions. To be successful, one must be able to assess circumstances and direct their own actions. This is so not only for employment, but for life.
A self-directed individual can look beyond the norm to piece together a fulfilling life for themselves based on their own needs and joys. These are the individuals who are least susceptible to mental illness and spiritual fatigue.
Personal Development. Before adulthood, personal development is a physiological function of growth. Later, however, we must actively and consciously endeavor to continue growing toward our best selves.
Waldorf education prepares graduates to strive continuously toward personal growth and development. They’re challenged not only to examine the world around them, but the world within them. And they career this ability into the rest of their life.
Academic Confidence. It’s long been understood that confidence, one’s belief in themselves, is the spice of success. However, overreaching confidence can become detrimental when not focused. Academic confidence is specific. Waldorf high school students are challenged to learn that they can learn. They leave high school confident in their ability to identify problems and investigate solutions.
We know from experience why Waldorf students are in such high demand at the world’s best colleges and universities. But what does the research say?
“One overriding result is that Waldorf students seem more interested to learn and more socially engaged than mainstream students,” according to Bob Dahlin, international academic and author of Rudolf Steiner: The Relevance of Waldorf Education.
Read "How to Choose the Right High School"
But this study isn’t all roses. In his conclusion, Dahlin suggests that while Waldorf students leave high school with a greater likelihood of being driven to continue their education not only immediately in college or university, but throughout their life, they may be behind their peers in fact recitation. He notes in his examination that we may have to choose between fostering wrote memorization of a greater pool of facts, or fewer recitable facts and a greater passion for inquiry.
Higher education administrators appear to have made their choice.
In a world wherein all factual knowledge is accessible instantaneously, fostering the intrinsic drive to discover is the most important trait we can foster in our youth to ensure lifelong success.
Come see how we do it. Schedule a tour of our high school!
Don’t Quiet Your Mind. Quiet Your Thoughts So You Can Hear Your Mind.
From meditation to dreams, the vital health benefits of quieting our thoughts and exploring our mind have been well documented. Research supports the growing trend of including meditation in education. Schools worldwide have even gone as far as replacing detention and other traditionally punitive measures with breathing and meditation.
Though the conversation about how these practices are beneficial, there is little discussion around why these practices are so beneficial. And really, though the prompt is common, there’s very little discussion about what actually happens when we “turn off the mind.”Read more
If We Want Our Children to be More Innovative, Courageous, and Resilient, We Must Encourage Them to be More Vulnerable
What does it mean to be vulnerable?
In a world where it’s become popular to deride anyone who doesn’t have “thick skin”, anyone who believes in standing up for something – including themselves – it may be difficult as a parent to embrace teaching your child to be vulnerable. We want them to be safe, after all. We want them to be protected.
But what is lost in the space between our hearts, and our armor? And what happens when that armor comes off?Read more
The Life-long Success Equation for High School Students
Innovations in technology means changes in the paths our children may take in the world. Work requiring a human touch is becoming more select. Yesterday’s jobs – and the security that came with them – are rapidly being replaced by either algorithms or creative thinkers who cannot only predict innovation, but drive it.
Innovation is the currency of modern success, and innovation is driven from within.Read more
Intrinsic Motivation Drives Lifelong Learning
We’ve developed a culture motivated by external rewards, unrelated compensation for work done. On a basic level, this drive is a natural extension of the give-take relationship between working members of a community. In a functioning society, all members participate in bringing goods to bear for trade, so that the entire community may live a more fruitful life.
But education is personal. Inquiry is the mechanism by which we each advance our own understanding of the observable world and our place within it.
Waldorf Education Prepares Teens for Fulfilling Lives. Here's How.
Being a teenager is challenging.
On one hand they’re expected to be adults, to discover who they are in the myriad possibilities and support themselves physically and emotionally. Far too many teens are challenged to practically pick out a personality from a two-dimensional storefront of limited acceptance, and then cash that in for a place in the workforce.Read more
Problem Solving or Problem Finding? How To Prepare Teens For The Future
Problem solving gets a lot of attention, and for good reason. As an employee, those who can identify a problem and quickly find a solution can spare their team a lot of stress. And in today’s relatively egalitarian workspace, everyone is responsible for contributing ideas and solutions. It’s no wonder, therefore, that the best universities and employers keep problem solving high on the list of admirable attributes.
Less discussed is problem-solving’s more creative cousin, problem finding.
What do I mean by more creative? Recent research into creativity shows that problem finding - the ability to discover, create, or preempt problems in order to better understand a mechanism – serves a prime role in “intrinsically motivated creative performance.” Of course that’s great if your child plans to enter a creative career.
It’s also important in nearly any career.
The days of getting good at your job and staying there for thirty years are long gone. Your child is entering a world that changes at the speed of ideas. It will always be important to be able to solve problems. However, in this new, fluid economy, problem solving is just too slow.
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What is problem solving? In ages past, when change took decades or even lifetimes, problem solving was one of the most valuable skills an individual could carry with them into a career. Reserved primarily for leaders, problem solving skills were an elite quality generally only acknowledged in upper management even in more creative organizations.
Over time, however, the hierarchical model of paid ideation disintegrated beneath the weight of consumer demand. It became everyone’s job to drop a comment in the box, if you will, though the cultural shift toward breaking down that hierarchy didn’t take so easily. Many of those comments were ignored.
Up to that point, problem solvers were those who could take the numbers weeks, months, even years after the problem began, and quickly piece together a “solution.” With a band-aid on the issue, it would be weeks, months, even years before anyone discovered that the solution didn’t work or worse, it caused a new problem.
It turns out, problem solving doesn’t affect long-term success. Problem solving cuts the discovery process short, focuses on the symptom, and most inefficient, is reactionary.
What is problem finding? Today, change happens rapidly. The modern world – employment economy included – can comfortably be described as fluid. By the time a solution rolls out in a large organization, a new problem has arisen. The time an organization spends trying to stop leaks is time a competing organization spends attracting the first company’s business.
Individuals working under this type of stress cannot thrive. They get swept up in the current and moved along too fast until everything falls to pieces – at work and at home.
A defining attribute of problem finders is their ability to be comfortable with discomfort in order to take the time they need to examine and identify the root of a problem.
Problem finding, then, allows individuals to delve more deeply into issues affecting their work, and that’s great. What makes problem finders more successful, however, is their ability to dig deeply and find the cause of problems affecting their life, feelings, and relationships.
Because the eagerness of problem solving tempts solvers to accept the easiest answer, they tend to attribute difficult interpersonal situations to the ill will of others. Conversely, problem finders are more willing to spend time in their discomfort to discover the true reason behind their negative interactions, even if it implicates themselves.
So, which is it?
Helping youth develop their problem finding skills certainly prepares them for success in their future career, relationships, and personal wellness. Promoting problem solving skills prepares youth to think on their feet, overcome problems quickly, and lead effectively from anywhere in an organization.
Which is it, then? Well, both.
Ideally, as parents and educators we teach our children how to find problems, how to solve problems, and when to do each. Better yet, we prepare youth for independence by teaching them how to discover the answers for themselves.
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What Makes Some People Innovative?
And How to Make Sure Your Child Is One of Them.
Innovation.
Have you heard that word lately? Unless you’ve been away from the world for a while, chances are you hear it every day. You don’t just hear it, you live it. And your children live it too.Read more
5 Biggest Reasons Waldorf High School Students Excel at Top Universities
The Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education recently conducted research to better understand the benefits of Waldorf Education with the purpose of examining how the unique, child-led education model prepares young people for the future.
The results were staggering— read them here.
The study takes a systematic approach to labeling why Waldorf high school students do so well in intense university programs and carry that success on to meaningful careers.
It’s important to gather empirical evidence to support why we believe in Waldorf Education. Now, we’d like to share what our experience and observations have uncovered about the attributes of Waldorf high school students and why our students are so successful in college and beyond.
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Intrinsic Motivation. How do we determine which actions have value and which do not? How do we prepare our children to do the right thing, to follow the difficult path even when there is no measurable reward on the other end?
We empower them to motivate themselves.
Where behaviors motivated extrinsically depend on a clear and measurable reward, intrinsic motivation comes from within. Those who are intrinsically motivated, who develop the ability to motivate their own behavior, are more consistent in their pursuits, and therefore more successful long term.
Academic Confidence. It’s long been understood that confidence, one’s belief in themselves, is the spice of success. However, overreaching confidence can become detrimental when not focused. Academic confidence is specific. Waldorf high school students are challenged to learn that they can learn. They leave high school confident in their ability to identify problems and investigate solutions.
Experience. What is experience, and how can teenagers get it? Experience is failure. For many parents, it’s difficult to let our children fail. We want to spare them the pain. We fear failure will hurt their confidence. We believe the road to success is paved with achievement. It’s not until college, or even later, when our children fail for the first time in their lives, that we discover we failed to prepare them to recover and learn from their mistakes.
During high school, youth are driven to make sense of the world. They build assumptions and beliefs they’ll take with them into the rest of their lives. Experience, particularly the experience of overcoming failure, helps young people develop into resilient adults.
Self-direction. In a world where change is the only thing we can count on, it’s not enough to wait for instructions. To be successful, one must be able to assess circumstances and direct their own actions. This is so not only for employment, but for life.
A self-directed individual can look beyond the norm to piece together a fulfilling life for themselves based on their own needs and joys. These are the individuals who are least susceptible to mental illness and spiritual fatigue.
Courage. Talk about character is constant, but breaking it down and naming the components is rare. Problems manifest from this oversight in the form of focus on developing confidence, when what our children really need is courage.
Confidence is important, of course. Confidence in one’s belief in themselves or their ability. We’re particularly partial to academic confidence. It’s internal, and reflects the self.
Courage is a little different. It refers to one’s ability to overcome doubt derived from the perception of danger from outside one’s self. That danger can be physical, but is typically social.
Waldorf students are nurtured to test and grow their courage as a matter of course. We know that without courage, thoughts and ideas are kept inside, never getting a chance to change the world.
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Schedule a tour.