Emergency Pedagogy Team Provides Hurricane Relief in Asheville
In late October 2024, the newly formed Kairos Emergency Pedagogy Without Borders team conducted their first crisis intervention in Asheville, North Carolina, following the devastation of Hurricane Helene. Led by Emergency Pedagogy founder Bernd Ruf and Argentinian team leader Alicia D’urso, a 16-member team of trained specialists worked with children, parents, and educators across multiple sites in the Asheville area, including the Asheville Waldorf School, SOLA, and local Latino communities. The team provided trauma education and healing through Waldorf pedagogical methods, helping communities still reeling from widespread destruction and displacement. Through artistic activities, movement exercises, and specialized trauma support, they worked to strengthen the resilience of affected families while establishing their presence as part of the international Emergency Pedagogy without Borders network. Read the full report on Kairos Institute’s crisis intervention work in Asheville →
Help Fund Emergency Pedagogy Team USA
Help Fund Emergency Pedagogy Team USA—For Immediate Release Healing in a World of Need “Traumatized children and adolescents require stable and competent teachers schooled in diagnosing and averting disorders brought on by physical and emotional trauma. Emergency pedagogy is a field that provides immediate pedagogical support to children and youth in the acute phase after experiencing traumatic events.” Bernd Ruf In the summer of 2022, Kairos Institute opened its doors. It began offering training in Emergency and Trauma Pedagogy and in Art Therapy. Educators from across the country gathered for the inaugural opening of Kairos Institute at the Center for Anthroposophy in Wilton, New Hampshire, to learn from Bernd Ruf, author of “Educating Traumatized Children.” Ruf is a master Waldorf educator and traumatology expert who founded the Parzival Center and co-founded The Emergency Pedagogy Center in Karlsruhe, Germany. He has personally led over 130 crisis interventions since 2006 and trains groups such as ours worldwide. There are presently 23 trainings. Subsequent trainings in Certified Modules (we work with the Freunde of Waldorf Education and support their work) were held in the summers of 2023 and 2024. With three years of completed Modules, dozens of Waldorf educators are certified to participate in crisis interventions and want to help bring the tools of Emergency Pedagogy and artistic therapies to children, families, and communities, both domestically and internationally. In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, members of the Waldorf community in Asheville have asked Kairos to bring members of our newly formed Emergency Pedagogy Team USA to support their community through this intensely devastating and traumatic time. We quickly identified a team that feels prepared to go, and we are actively seeking funding. We will send our team at the end of October and will work with a professionally trained leader. Financial support is urgently needed to launch support for domestic crisis intervention in the USA. In addition to Asheville, we are witnessing the need for Emergency and Trauma Pedagogy in Waldorf communities nationwide that have experienced climate and human-made disasters. We are preparing to support our schools now and into the future. We need your help. Please help us bring Emergency Pedagogy to the communities that have experienced trauma so that these communities can be empowered to become increasingly trauma-resilient. Emergency and Trauma Pedagogy is Education as Preventative Medicine. It is intended to prevent the onset of PTSD and help restore health and well-being to students, teachers, and their families. Children, adolescents, families, and school communities are counting on all of us to support their need for a healthy and trauma-prepared childhood. Please consider donating on behalf of these communities in need NOW. Thank you so much for your support! To donate: In gratitude and community of hearts… with Emergency Pedagogy Team USA Karine Munk Finser Founder & Director of Kairos Institute
Discover the Heart of Waldorf Education with “Listening to Our Teachers” by Torin Finser
We are thrilled to announce the release of Listening to Our Teachers, a profound exploration of the Waldorf educational experience by esteemed author and educator Torin Finser. Now available through SteinerBooks, this book offers a unique and intimate look at the thoughts, philosophies, and experiences of Waldorf educators, providing readers with invaluable insights into the essence of this transformative approach to education. Pick up your copy today and embark on a journey of discovery, reflection, and inspiration, guided by the expertise and passion of Torin Finser.
Training Waldorf High School Science and Math Teachers through the Arts
High school teachers specializing in science and math are especially helped by a training saturated in the arts––especially the performing arts––as this new video of CfA’s Waldorf High School Teacher Education Program (WHiSTEP) so aptly illustrates. Watch the video below.
The Future of the Teaching Profession with Torin M Finser and colleagues.
The Future of the Teaching Profession with Torin M Finser and colleagues. Information sessions on CfA sponsored Building Bridges Program to start in Baltimore/DC area January 2024! Sunday, April 30 at The Waldorf School of Baltimore from 2:00- 3:30 pm Monday, May 1 at Washington Waldorf School from 3:30- 5:00 pm Open to those who are interested in a Waldorf teacher education program, past Explorations and Foundations Studies participants and friends. For more info on the program go to https://centerforanthroposophy.org/programs/building-bridges-to-waldorf-teacher-training-2/
Pencils, Paints, and “Emergency Pedagogy” for Ukrainian Refugees
Supplied with pencils, paper, paints, and brushes, Karine Munk Finser, Director of CfA’s newly founded Kairos Institute, flew to Scandinavia in mid-March to welcome Ukrainian refugees into her parents’ empty cottage on the Danish island of Bornholm and to begin administering a program of acute healing therapy to mothers and their young children. A licensed art therapist in the U.S., Karine was following up on her mother’s initiative to open her summer home to Ukrainian families seeking refuge on this Baltic island. Beyond housing and basic needs, Karine is offering them a therapeutic program based on “Emergency Pedagogy” pioneered by Bernd Ruf from the Parzival Zentrum in Germany. This program is designed to bring healing artistic elements of Waldorf education to traumatized children and their parents whose lives have been upended by war or natural catastrophes. A seven-year-old girl captured her feeling of release after fleeing her native Ukraine in a drawing she called, “Girl Crossing the Border”. Karine writes, “Notice the darkened sun, the dying flowers on the left, the empty darkness, the deep sorrowful world where everything weeps. The transition is beautifully marked with the dark clouds changing to white clouds and the sun’s return. The rainbow, eternal expression of hope and belonging. The greens, life returning. Most importantly, notice how the girl in the drawing stands and sadly watches the darkness but then, as she crosses the border, she begins to lighten.” Karine, who is also Director of Transdisciplinary Studies in Healing Education at Antioch University New England, will spend the rest of this month with Ukrainian mothers and their children on Bornholm, a remote island located east of Denmark in the Baltic Sea between Poland and the southern coast of Sweden. Bernd Ruf is scheduled to bring his multi-year training in “Emergency Pedagogy” for teachers and art therapists to CfA’s Kairos Institute in Wilton, New Hampshire, starting this summer as part of the Institute’s new program of Waldorf pedagogy through the healing arts. Details of this program can be found here. Those wishing to help Waldorf schools and their families in Ukraine can make donations directly to the Friends of Waldorf Education (Freunde der Erziehungskunst), which has already mobilized a worldwide network of financial and logistic support via its secure website here.
CfA Statement about Crisis in the Ukraine
In these trying days, the faculty and staff of CfA send their good thoughts and prayers to the Waldorf schools, parents, teachers, and especially the children of Ukraine. Here is one report on how they are faring.
Newsletter Spring 2021
Dear Friends: Over the years, CfA has pioneered a growing number of different programs related to Waldorf education, from introductory courses and teacher preparation to administrative training and ongoing rejuvenation – seven programs in all. In this issue of our online newsletter, we briefly showcase their latest offerings and most recent innovations. And we examine a basic right of all students. — Douglas Gerwin Executive Director Center for Anthroposophy Dateline Amherst, MA: The Right to Write In barely a generation, students have reversed the order in which they learn to write and to type. Douglas Gerwin, Executive Director of the Center for Anthroposophy (CfA), explores what happens when keyboard replaces cursive. The last time I wrote out a major-length paper by hand was during the early 1980s, when I was working on my graduate dissertation. Under pressure of time, I disciplined myself to compose some ten pages per day––or 50 pages a week––so that in eight weeks I had completed a first draft of the manuscript. To speed the process, I placed a typewriter at my elbow in order, with minimum distraction, to keep a running tab of footnote references and supplementary remarks. However, notwithstanding impending deadlines, I opted to write––at times to scribble––the body of the dissertation itself in long-hand. At the time, it was quite evident to me that the tone and style arising from long-hand cursive (or sometimes my short-handed approximation of cursive) were quite different from the more clipped tone and style of the typed footnotes. At some level I was aware that linking one letter to another by hand was helping me construct an argument in which one thought was linked (“seamlessly”, I hoped my dissertation advisor would say) to the next. Footnoting, by contrast, did not require that kind of textual weaving. Only after a final edit did I undertake the weary task of converting the written manuscript into a 391-page typed document. Were I to engage in such a project today, I would doubtless opt for the convenience of a computer –– not least because of that convenient button labeled “delete”, to say nothing of the time-savers “cut” and “paste”. In retrospect, however, I am grateful that I chose to compose that thesis on a notepad, rather than an electronic Notebook. Nowadays, in light of government-mandated Common Core standards, I read with alarm how cursive has been dropped as a curricular requirement in many schools (to be precise, Common Core remains silent on this issue), though several states––among them California, Idaho, Kansas, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee––have opted to give cursive another look. One reason to be alarmed is that, according to William Klemm, a neuro-scientist at Texas A&M University, writing in cursive makes kids smarter. below“Cursive writing, compared to printing,” he concludes, is more beneficial “because the movement tasks are more demanding, the letters are less stereotypical, and the visual-recognition requirements create a broader repertoire of letter representation.” His is not the only voice to speak up for the merits of cursive writing, though there are others who challenge his conclusions. But the National Association of State Boards of Education, for one, stands with Professor Klemm: it has issued a report saying that cursive helps develop memory, fine motor skills, and better expression. belowKlemm’s conclusions are further supported by a study in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, which reports that children who practice cursive writing show improved symbol recognition, leading to a heightened ability to read fluently. The study’s published fMRI scans show that physically writing the letters by hand links visual processing and motor experience, thereby strengthening students’ ability to recognize––and later to write––words and sentences. Writing by hand also improves memory and comprehension among adults. According to a study published in the journal Psychological Science, college students who take notes longhand write less but remember more than those who type their notes on a laptop. However, even those elementary schools that retain cursive in their curriculum are giving their students less time to practice it. Catholic schools, famous for emphasizing penmanship, are devoting considerably less class time these days to this skill. Instead of getting it for a half hour or so a day––or roughly 7 1/2 hours per week––students may get 15 minutes’ practice three times a week. That comes to less than an hour a week, or a tenth of the time once allotted to this exercise. Meg Kursonis, principal at St. Peter Central Catholic Elementary School in Worcester, nevertheless points to research that comprehension and retention improves among students who write in cursive. “Students who print or type on a keyboard see individual letters when writing,” she says, “whereas cursive writers see the word as a whole, using the bridges and circular movements to join letters for connectivity. Seeing the whole word also helps them to be better spellers.” Meanwhile, an online poll by Harris Interactive reports that 79 percent of adult respondents––and even 68 percent of kids, ages 8-18––feel cursive should still be taught in school. Nearly half the adults polled (49%) and more than a third of the kids (35%) said that practicing reading and writing in cursive improved literacy. Regardless of what schools decide about their curricula, most children these days begin to peck their way around the keyboard of a computer or smartphone long before they enter school and years before they are handed their first pen (if indeed they are handed a pen in school at all). And even when––in some cases we may need to say if––they pick up a pen, a growing number of children don’t even attempt to learn cursive, since they are allowed to remain with printing as they exercise their writing skills. Some teachers worry that students may leave school unable to sign their name in cursive. What does this developmental switch––from writing or printing to typing or keyboarding––imply for future generations of writers –– and of thinkers? At a superficial level, one could say that they will not be able to decipher great historical documents such
Torin Finser’s upcoming lecture in Atlantic Beach, FL
You are cordially invited to attend this free info session with Dr. Finser on “Building Bridges to Waldorf Teacher Education”.
Antioch University Waldorf Program graduate publishes a gem of a book!
And here it is reviewed by her Antioch professor and mentor Torin M. Finser: It has been my pleasure to read an exciting new book from Waldorf Publications: Bare Hand Knitting by Aleshanee Akin and illustrated by Elizabeth Auer. It is an incredible gem, an inspired guide to creativity and practical activities for young and old using our most precious tools: our hands! Aleshanee introduces the book with her personal story of healing with her daughter, and sets a context that goes far beyond schools and curriculum as it is usually taught. Through a sequence of chapters that include braiding and knotting, finger knitting, whip-stitching, wet-felting and more, the author communicates step by step instructions that all can understand and use. Enhancing the book immeasurably are the numerous illustrations done by Elizabeth with grace and accuracy. Just looking at the drawings is a feast for the eyes!I highly recommend this book for all who care about humanity and reclaiming our social mandate through our hands. I can see it used in homes, schools, prisons (where needles and other devices are usually banned), clinics, hospitals and community centers. It is a festival of the spirit and gives us hope for the future. Torin M Finser
