Michael Hall Parent Portal

Friday Flyer - 28th November 2025

Dear Michael Hall Community,

I would like to start this week’s Friday Flyer with a warm and heartfelt thank you to all of those who were involved in making this years Advent Fair a wonderful day. As I have said in email communication to our parents, I invited my family to join me in marking my First Advent fair and they had a lovely afternoon eating, drinking spiced apple and shopping for crafty trinkets and ornaments. They were in awe at the beauty of our school, with my niece (29 years old) and sister (older than me and she would not thank me if I shared her age!) asking not for any job vacancies, but how they can become pupils!

As I toured the school site with my family, I spoke with them about how my understanding of Waldorf education is developing and how the themes that I am seeing, hearing and reading about are related to how I have been all my teaching career, but have never expressed or considered as a deep philosophy. Advent and the build up to Christmas is a light and beautiful way to look at the theme of unveiling and gradual discovery as a strong theme in our teaching philosophy.

The process of unveiling is very deliberate and mindful in our approach to education as we reveal the world step by step, lesson by lesson, moment by moment. This not only creates many moments of awe, wonder and inspiration, but also creates quite deliberate delays in gratification; something missing in many aspects of today’s world of instantaneous expectation. Our deliberate gradual reveal is a gesture of reverence for childhood itself, a cornerstone of our school.

As our pupils grow, they meet the world differently as do the processes and strategies which we use to meet them on their journey. Our younger pupils unveiling happens through sensory experiences, play, imitation and rhythm. Our pupils in the lower and middle school will be gaining knowledge through the unveiling of engaging narratives and rich imagery as parts of the world and the world histories are unveiled and unpicked. In the upper years our pupils will conduct some unveiling of their own as they explore through inquiry, curriculum guided observation and analytic writing. These child development-based approaches meet the child in the right way, at the right time and supports their holistic development and wellbeing.

Another key aspect of unveiling in the Waldorf curriculum is teaching and showing our pupils how nature conceals and reveals through the seasons and shifts of the annual cycle. At the moment it is our Advent period with our fair, the Advent Spiral soon to come, and previously we marked Michaelmas as a point of seasonal transformation.

I came across a beautiful phrase whilst reading around this week’s Friday Flyer theme. It was written primarily with small children at its heart, but the intent within the phrase can be universally applied to the value of meeting children where they are “When we meet children at their level, we show them that their world is worth kneeling down for”. Whether we are at play, storytelling, preparing for GCSE or A Level meeting the children and students where they are and letting them know that we see them is essential in building the relationship which will fuel the learning and development growth – I see my colleagues do this on a daily basis and I am moved to see these connections formed.

For those who are marking Thanksgiving, I hope that Thursday was a lovely day and that the Thanksgiving weekend is full of fun and frivolity.

To all those who are marking the Advent period and lead up to Christmas I wish you a blessed time with your loved ones.

Warm wishes,

Stuart

Stuart McWilliams
Principal