By Christine Burke –
It is 5 o’clock on a Saturday, but this is not ‘regular crowd’ that’s come in. About 5 movement specialists, a movement therapist, some medical professionals, many artists, a few MFAs, some art therapists and speech artist/communication studies prof. (that’s me) have gathered. What almost all of us have in common is that we are all – or have been –practicing teachers. The uncommon thing about us? We are Emergency Pedagogues. So why have we gathered? In January, the fires that raged through southern California displaced nearly 200,000 people – families, children, community members – and about 24 of us came from across the world to use our emergency skills as teachers to meet and help these brothers and sisters to process the traumas the fires and their aftermath have caused.
So, what is Emergency Pedagogy? Emergency Pedagogy is the inspiration of Bernd Ruf, founder and director of the international organization Emergency Pedagogy Without Borders (Notfallpedagogik Ohne Grensen nfp-og.org) and the Parzifal Center in Karlsruhe, Germany. Ruf, a long-time Waldorf teacher, founded the Parzifal Center in Karlsruhe in the 1990’s for what were then called ‘wayward’ children. He soon discovered that these children were almost entirely children who had been traumatized from a variety of events and that they had not been exposed to or able to process the trauma(s) they had experienced. The healing education offered to these children became the basis for EPWB when Ruf, after a meeting with the war in Lebanon in 2006, was able to first experience how the methods used on his long-time traumatized children could positively activate healing forces in people – especially children, but also adults – that could prevent the onset of post traumatic disorders and diseases. He has been training teams of Emergency teachers all over the world since 2006 and has activated teams in almost all major crises situations – both in natural disasters and man-made disasters -across the globe. Ruf joined us on this crisis intervention in Los Angeles and was able to continue training some of the team as well as speak to parents and teachers about how to work with exercises to further help the healing process where needed. Emergency Pedagogy Without Borders: USA is in the process of forming a non-profit with teams in California, Michigan and New Hampshire – and growing.
Dr. Ida Oberman, founder of the first trauma-informed, urban, community school in the USA (in Oakland, CA), brought and trained her whole staff in Emergency Pedagogy in 2012 – and co-led the first EPWB crisis intervention during the Camp Fires in Northern California. Here in Los Angeles, we began training teachers in December of last year (epwb.usa.calif@gmail.com).
Our Los Angeles Fires Intervention team split in two over the week of February 9, 2025 to brave the winding freeways each morning and meet the children, teachers, and parents from two schools that burned to the ground – Pasadena Waldorf School and Westside Waldorf School with the evidence-based Emergency Pedagogy sessions that include arts and movement, song and artistic speech. In the afternoons we met the public at large in both downtown Los Angeles at the Natural History Museum (nhm.org), and in Pasadena at the Rudolf Steiner Community Center (anthroposophyla.org). We partnered with World Central Kitchen (wck.org) to provide hot lunches and dinners for the children and families…what amazing partners they have with local restaurants: Bravo Toast (bravotoast.com), Little Fatty (littlefattyla.com) Xuntos (barxuntos.com) Lola’s Mexican (lolasmexicancuisine.com) Flaming Grain (instagram.com/flaming grain) Please frequent these incredibly generous restaurants and food trucks – and support World Central Kitchen and all that they do for people in disaster zones as well as both first and second responders!
For more information about or to support future crisis interventions by Emergency Pedagogy Without Borders: USA email Christine Burke at epwb.usa.calif@gmail.com.
SIDEBAR: Christine grew up in Ventura, went to school here and after extensive travels and schooling, came back to Ventura in 2005 after training in the Speech Arts of poetry, storytelling, and drama. In 2010 she attained her MA in Communication Studies and purchased a coffee shop, that she later turned into a Community Collective. Christine travels and teaches the Speech Arts globally, weaving this through her teaching Communication Studies locally at Ventura College. Christine met Emergency Pedagogy when she was asked to bring some Speech Arts to a group in Detroit, Michigan, saw the enormous benefits to children in her first intervention in Maui, Hawai’i, after the fires in Lahaina two years ago, and has now helped to form an Emergency Pedagogy training here in Southern California.
