Northern California Waldorf Teachers Conference 2026

Northern California Waldorf Teachers Conference 2026

Emergency Pedagogy for Everyday Trauma: How Emergency Pedagogy May Be Integrated into Our Teaching and Educational Structures to Support Today’s Children

With Keynote Speaker, Bernd Ruf

Sunday, February 15 - Tuesday, February 17, 2026 | 9am-3:30pm

Contemporary life in California and in the rest of the developed world has become increasingly engaged in nerve sense-based work and activities through digital technology. We have become more sedentary, using our bodies less and undermining the health that comes from the integration of body, heart, and mind. Through online platforms, we are exposed daily to apps and algorithms that manipulate us emotionally and physiologically, reducing our ability to focus and to have mastery over our own minds and feelings. In many ways, the amazing advances and discoveries of our time are having overwhelming and compromising effects on human well-being. These effects are being absorbed by children, accumulating into a kind of everyday trauma.

As Waldorf teachers, our work evolves and changes in relation to the environment around us. Children entering our classrooms are expressing the conditions of modern life, making it crucial to adjust our educational practices to meet them where they are and to find ways of guiding them in a more positive direction. Bernd will share his many years of experience in helping children traumatized by war and natural disasters, demonstrating how the principles and practices of emergency pedagogy may be useful in contemporary Waldorf teaching and school life.

Bernd Ruf is the cofounder of Emergency Pedagogy without Borders and the International Institute for Emergency and Trauma Pedagogy (IINTP). He is a lifelong teacher, innovator, and trauma expert as well as the author of Educating Traumatized Children and other books on emergency and trauma education (in German). He has worked extensively around the world, leading educational crisis interventions in war-torn and disaster areas to support the recovery of traumatized children.

He is the co-founder of the Free Waldorf School Karlsruhe and the Parzival Competence Center for Education, Support, and Counseling. Bernd is a renowned speaker and author. He lectures at home and abroad on a wide range of topics, including emergency education, psychotraumatology, intensive education, Kaspar Hauser, and Waldorf education.

Bernd will lecture in German and be translated into English by Ida Oberman.

Please note that this is an in-person event only. A discount is available for group signups.

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Sunday/Monday Conference Schedule
9:00am-9:30am: Singing with Christiaan Boele

9:30am-11am: Lecture with Bernd Ruf

11:00am-11:30am: Snack Break

11:30am-1:00pm: Workshops

1:00pm-2:00pm: Lunch Break

2:00pm-3:30pm: Lecture, Q&A with Bernd Ruf

3:30pm: Closing of the Day

Tuesday Conference Schedule
9:00am-2:00pm: Same as Above

2:00pm-2:30pm: Sharing from Workshops

2:30pm-3:30pm: Closing Lecture, Q&A with Bernd Ruf

3:30pm: Closing of the Conference

Monday, February 16, 2026

Emergency Pedagogy Without Borders in the USA will be holding an Open Board Meeting on Monday, February 16th from 4pm-5pm.

Important Information
Coffee, tea, and snacks will be served, but please provide your own lunches.

There are numerous cafes and restaurants nearby.

Information about parking, restaurant options, and accommodations will be available soon.

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Workshops

“Cultivating Inner Balance” with Catalina de Luna

“Stable and competent teachers are required to work with traumatized children.” -Bernd Ruf

Inner balance is the foundation for those in positions of service.  Let’s do some self-inventory and explore the different artistic modalities of emergency pedagogy including drawing, painting, and modeling as hygienic and nourishing practices to cultivate inner balance. 

 “Eurythmy ” with Karen Gallagher

“To will my thinking is freedom; to think into my will is love.” -Rudolf Steiner

Within the context of emergency pedagogy, Karen will offer ways for the individual to take up a daily eurythmy practice that can provide the means for that which our souls seek: calm inner space, willed thinking, thinking willing. Discovering how to tap into this conversation with one's Higher Self is what we will work with. The goal will be to establish an individualized daily eurythmy regimen that one can practice immediately and easily. 

“Emergency Pedagogy and the Healing Dynamics of Speech” with Christine Burke

Bringing artistry, breath, and rhythm in spoken word through a sacred tending to the qualities and mysteries of sounds, we can activate the natural healing forces in children who experience trauma. 

“Giving Voice to Ourselves - Singing Course (Also for Non-Singers!)” with Christiaan Boele

Teachers rely on their voice as their main tool. Just as staying in shape requires physical exercise, musicians must learn and practice their instrument. But how much time do you spend caring for and maintaining your voice so that it can express and carry your thoughts, feelings, and intentions? In our course, we will do simple exercises and explore how singing can support physical and mental well-being, as well as serve as a source of inspiration. Singing has been central to cultural life for thousands of years, yet today we increasingly lose our connection to our own voice. Let’s help change that by giving voice to ourselves!

“Outside In - Inside Out” with Maureen Curran Turtletaub

Learn how the natural world offers the opportunity to experience universal forces that begin before birth and shape and form us as sentient beings. The current times bring about an acceleration of time and space, leading to everyday trauma. Re-bonding with the natural world lends opportunities to re-step our pace, which has far reaching effects on our body, soul, and spirit.

“Helping Young Children Thrive in an Overwhelming World” with Kate Hammond

In this Spacial Dynamics® workshop, we will explore ways that we can support children under the age of 7 years through movement. We will consider archetypal movements including the primitive reflexes and how to help children through age-appropriate movement experiences. Wear clothing you can move freely in.

“Sphere, Solid, and Section: Geometry for Middle and High School” with Marisha Plotnik (CANCELLED)

Our lived experience of three-dimensional space is often simplified to two-dimensional objects for the classroom. But the geometry of solids offers a healing experience for our students, enabling them to ground their thinking in their own three dimensions of movement. This workshop will explore the geometry of spheres, solids, and sections.

“Rhythmic Sand Sculpture, Form Drawing, and Clay Sculpture” with Kenneth Smith

Explore the effects of these sculptural activities in relation to engaging the sense of touch. Through the “window” of the hands, we have an access point to the inner life that can calm the nervous system and stimulate the life forces. Ken will share activities he has developed over the past 4 years in the Healing Through Art and Healing Power of Art programs and how these can be used in the classroom.

“Clay Therapy, Introduction to Work at the Clay Field®” with Matthew Eveleigh, LCAT, LPC and Andrea Vander Pluym

Clay Field work is a touch-based therapy for addressing trauma and developmental setbacks in children and adults. It is entirely process-oriented, and uses a shallow box filled with clay that becomes a miniature world in which the hands are invited to explore, create safety, and find solutions. This workshop, while not a clay-field training, will serve as an introduction and include related exercises to illustrate the principles involved.

On the third day, workshop attendees will explore ways to bring the clay field into the school setting, practical considerations, and how the modality can be understood in the context of the fourfold human and child development and the lower senses.

“Emergency Pedagogy in the United States and the Founding of the Community School for Creative Education in Oakland” with Ida Oberman and Monique Brinson

Learn about how emergency pedagogy is at the heart of the founding impulses of the country’s first urban, intercultural public Waldorf school. We will examine the efforts to bring Waldorf education back to its social justice roots, mirroring its early history of serving the children of inner-city Stuttgart. We will also discuss the practical experiences of creating and running a public Waldorf school in one of the most diverse cities in the nation.

For more information, please contact:

tiffany@bacwtt.org | (415) 479-4400 | www.bacwtt.org