by Elizabeth VanDeventer, mother of Ali
Ali was a 2020 graduate of the Charlottesville Waldorf school. He went on to Nelson High School and graduated as valedictorian of his class. He’s now a sophomore at the University of Virginia, majoring in global environmental studies and Russian. This year, he’s living in Shea House — a foreign language immersion dorm.
Ali dreams of traveling to the steppes of Kazakhstan, where the common language is Russian. He is drawn by the romance of the Silk Road, the famous horseback riders, and a bit of adventure. He plans to study abroad next year in that part of the world, hoping his Russian immersion will pay off.
Ali is still the laid back, smiling kid he was at Waldorf. The boy who also used to raise hairs on his teachers’ backs by climbing very tall trees with ease. All that tree climbing paid off, though, because now he’s a member of the UVA climbing club and goes out on the weekend to climb very high cliffs . . . raising hairs at home.
Ali’s academic success, curiosity, and drive to learn are all rooted in his Waldorf education and its deeper understanding of the whole child. If you know someone who questions the value of letting children develop slowly, including not pushing reading and academics until they are developmentally ready, someone who thinks that because children aren’t graded in school, they won’t be able to succeed in high school, then please tell them about Ali. He is pretty good proof that they’ve got it backwards.
Our endless thanks to his teachers including Sharifa Oppenheimer, Rebecca Garson (from the Rose Garden), Mrs. Ryan, Mrs. Drumeller, Mr. Wright, and all the other wonderful teachers and staff at the Charlottesville Waldorf School that helped him along his way. We will always be in gratitude.
