Why OSS

Oakland Steiner School. Education can be a beautiful journey.

These are no ordinary classrooms. The Oakland Steiner School, located in Rochester Hills in a historic building at the corner of Livernois and South Boulevard, accommodates children from preschool through the eighth grade. (Parent-child classes are available for parents with infants and children up to three years old.) A glance into one classroom after the next reveals something here is very different. Absent are jarring bells, buzzing projector screens, cartoony laminated alphabet charts. In their place, elements of nature; music played on violins and recorders; and artwork created by the students reflecting the lessons of the day.

The Oakland Steiner School is one of three Waldorf schools in the metro Detroit area. Waldorf schools are an educational system developed by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner. This method, proven through use since 1919, utilizes Steiner’s profound understanding of human development and brings learning in line with the needs of children as they grow and develop mentally, physically and emotionally.

Imagine attending a school where on a typical Monday morning, the preschool children are returning from a walk around the school grounds, rain boots glistening with dew, hands filled with large oak leaves, chestnuts and other various treasures found among the school’s inviting garden pathways. First grade students are settling in to their math block, learning equations through physical movement, then through stories, and then play exercises. The second grade class is writing and illustrating a fable in their lesson books. Upward through the grades, these students, who each year become increasingly confident speaking before their classmates in English, French and German, are developing a deep and rich education fostered in true joy of learning. This results in Oakland Steiner School eighth grade students being equally comfortable discussing hydraulics and thermodynamics, Ghandi’s world view and performing Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto on the violin. In an age where standardized testing has supplanted much of education’s heart and soul, Oakland Steiner School exemplifies how education, in its purest form, was meant to be.