By Erin Wiltgen
chh@heraldsun.com; 419-6654
CHAPEL HILL -- In a year of recession when other things have declined, Emerson Waldorf School is setting time aside to celebrate its growth.
Students, teachers and parents gathered in September to kick off the 25th anniversary year picnic-style -- complete with birthday cake -- commemorating the long transition from a 28-student, two-teacher endeavor to a 250-student, kindergarten through grade 12 school.
"As a school, our roots are now very, very deep, and we're strong," said Alice Armstrong, outreach director and parent of Emerson students. "It's a little bit like a coming of age type of thing."
Aside from the picnic in September, Emerson Waldorf has a host of other anniversary activities planned, including a lecture series, puppet shows and an alumni bash in June.
Since the anniversary theme is giving thanks, the school also planted a flag each day for the first 25 days of November leading up to Thanksgiving. The flags listed reasons to be thankful for the school, such as teachers, sports programs, field trips and performing arts.
And the Emerson Waldorf community has much to be thankful for. Now a 54-acre campus on New Jericho Road complete with a high school and nursery program, the school sits a far cry from its humble origins -- combined classes conducted in two rented rooms in a church.
"We started out as really an adventure to see if this kind of education was going to be able to take root," Armstrong said.
Though the first official school day of Emerson Waldorf was Sept. 10, 1984, in St. Benedict's Anglican Catholic Church on Weaver Dairy Road, the seed lay in the idea carried by Eve Olive, who was born in Tennessee, raised in South Africa and discovered Waldorf education in London as a student of architecture.
When Olive moved to North Carolina, she spread the word about Waldorf education, but no one in the area had heard of it.
"There's all this creative education at a higher level," Olive said. "But what about when you start a child off? I thought it would be wonderful if it would be a Waldorf school." Eventually she met two families who had not only heard of the concept but had children they wanted to enroll. The first year, the school comprised a kindergarten class and a combined class of grades 1-3.
As the years passed, the student body grew, as did the need for land, Olive said. By the third year Emerson Waldorf consisted of 110 students. One parent offered to build a school if land could be found, and after piecemeal purchases of various farmlands over time, the school acquired its current size.
"It's been a stretch to acquire land and create the buildings," Olive said. "We've had to be creative in how we finance. It's something that's important."
But not just anything could motivate Olive to carry such an idea for so long before its fruition. She said the revolutionary aspect of Waldorf education motivated her persistence.
"It is such a creative approach to education," she said. "It really recognizes how a child learns at a particular age. A little child learns by doing. "
From a parent perspective, the focus was the quality of education provided by Waldorf schools.
"The push from parents comes from the desire of seeing their child being surrounded by beauty and learning in a way that awakens their senses and surrounds them with the arts," Armstrong said.
Whatever the reason, students seem to really take to Waldorf education. Armstrong said that many students stay from kindergarten to graduation.
"Every year so far that we've had a high school we've had children who have been at our school since they were 4 years old," she said. "It means it's a very close-knit community and really feels like a family."
