21 years together

The initiative to create a Waldorf school in Medellin came from a creative woman with a fighting spirit, Benedicta Zur Nieden de Echavarria. When she came to Columbia she devoted herself to many plans, one of which was to found the school that today bears the name of her only daughter.

In a magic place of La Estrella municipality, bordering Medellín City, it is located the Isolda Echavarria School. The mountains and the green of the area give the school a touch of happiness in summer and a color-ing of joy during the rainy season. The relaxed enviroment  that the place offers, makes students and people who work there  get the sobriety and puissance from its inhabitants.

Although it is a private school and it doesn’t receive any economic support from the government, it is supervised by it on the pedagogic aspect. The teachers are ruled by the register from the National Education Ministry. The qualification on the pedagogy is done at the school and in some cases at the Humanistic Center Micael, center for training teachers on the Waldorf pedadogy; teachers also attend congresses in other Latin American countries.

Year by year goals have been planned and reached, the school has grown and nowadays it is a big family: In connection with 430 students (from nursery to eleventh grade, complete cycle of basic and middle school re-quired by the Colombian government) 33 teachers devote themselves to the work, taking the essence  of the pedagogy statement  imparted  by Rudolf Steiner and giving it life in the classrooms.

The din don in nursery rings, the flutes and rhythmns resound in primary, scientific and philosophic reports testify the youth’s work, and everybody  in unison, intones scores of artistic life to carve in souls poems, to spin the personal experi-ences, to mould the dreams, to paint the hope of cosmos , to fly with wings of freedom.

A sigh arise from the Isoldianos’ heart remembering the 21 birthday, the coming of age, last 18th of August. Now the challenge is to continue the way, to coherently dispose the good, the beautiful and the true to bring up  free beings.

So among a luxuriant forest, under a blue and beaming sky, with the lullaby of a stream and the incessant singing of birds, it  forges stories of life, the same to students and teachers and parents, a 21 years testimony of way; this is the image of our school, the Isolda Echavarría School.

Ana Cecilia Restrepo

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