In April, the 11th meeting of teachers and educators worldwide will take place at the Goetheanum. The theme of the conference is: "Affirming – Nurturing – Trusting, an Education for Today and Tomorrow".

Children, young people and adults need inner strength, health and resilience. They need intellectual, emotional and social skills to understand and accept the earth, themselves and their fellow human beings.

What can we renew in our educational practice to develop what is needed to live together? For over a hundred years, educators have been calling for educational practice to be shaped from the recognition of the child. Intellectual learning and standardised methods continue to unilaterally determine everyday teaching.

The physical and emotional development becomes unbalanced, the own body becomes a foreign body. The unreflective use of digital media and the increasing lack of movement and contact reinforce these phenomena. Thus, the present calls for affirming life, nurturing it and having trust.

We want to help children and young people experience: 'We want you to be. We have not yet planned the future. We want to help make the future possible by seeing and nurturing the never-before in you'. For more detailed information about the conference.

"Thus the joy of the child in and with his environment must be reckoned among the forces that build and mould the physical organs. Teachers he needs with happy look and manner, and above all, with an honest unaffected love. A love which, as it were, streams through the physical environment of the child with warmth may literally be said to ‘hatch out’ the forms of the physical organs.

The child who lives in such an atmosphere of love and warmth, and who has around him really good examples for his imitation, is living in his right element. One should therefore strictly guard against anything being done in the child’s presence that he must not imitate".  - Rudolf Steiner

Anthroposophy (which can be translated as ‘the consciousness of our humanity’) offers a pathway of understanding for those who are interested in developing an appreciation of humanity, life and the world from the perspective of spiritual science. The work of Rudolf Steiner informs and guides those who strive to apply their understanding of the anthroposophical approach to the growth and development of the incarnating child: body, soul and spirit. His work, including many thousands of lectures, his books and his teachings, offered insights into ways to bring spiritual understanding into our daily experience. Many individuals around the world have incorporated his wisdom into their approach to life and to their work in education, as well as in medicine and health related disciplines, agriculture, architecture, to name a few.

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