Waldorf seniors blend art, academics
Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs seniors give annual presentations
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. » Keeping up with tradition, seniors at the Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs presented a final capstone project recently that contained both an academic and an artistic component.
This year’s presentations ranged from rehabbing a former school bus into a mobile home to producing a documentary film on freestyle skiing.
Gina Karp, who has taught at the school for 14 years, said each year students bring a variety of projects.
“If we have seven kids, there are seven incredibly distinct projects,” Karp said. “Last year we had 18 kids with 18 incredibly distinct projects. It never fails.”
Students at Waldorf schools across the country must complete a capstone project in order to graduate. In the spring of their junior year, students submit a proposal to the faculty. If the proposal is accepted, students can work through the summer. Students have until Oct. 15 of their senior year before officially committing to a project.
Besides including an artistic and an academic component to the project, students are asked to find an out of school mentor.
“Somebody that can be an expert in their field, so that we know that they have the right kind of supervision to renovate a bus or learn ASL,” Karp said “We don’t have that expertise, so we ask them to do that.”
The seven students and projects presented to faculty, family, friends, classmates and community members were: Reforming Fashion: The Art of Re-Purposed Clothing by Joonhee Seo; The Outer Layer: Designing and Manufacturing an All-Natural, Vegan Skin Care Line for Young Adults by Flavie Doyon; Listening with Your Eyes: An Exploration of American Sign Language and the Cochlear Implant by Leora Cohen-Tigör; The Magic School Bus: Converting a School Bus into a Mobile Home by Isabella Guarnieri; Illustrating Italian: Immersion in Italian Language, Culture and the Arts by Dani Armstrong; From Design to Creation: Building and Branding a Longboard by Nicholai Witt and The Secret Life of Freestyle Skiing A Short Film About the Development of “Free Ski” and Its Athletes by Evan Sabatella.
“It is amazing to watch a senior, an 18-year-old step into their individuality and really express who they are right as they finish off their high school career,” Karp said. “Every year that’s the process for the faculty and the community to see who that student really is, what they care about.”