Save the Date! We hope you will join us on February 15-17, 2026 for the Northern CA Waldorf Teachers Conference with keynote speaker, Bernd Ruf.
Northern California Waldorf Teachers Conference
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
Save the Date
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 Bernd Ruf completed his training as a secondary school teacher in German and History at the University of Mannheim and as a special needs school teacher at the PH, as well as further training as a Waldorf teacher at the Free University of Stuttgart. He is a co-founder of the Free Waldorf School Karlsruhe, where he also taught for 20 years. He subsequently co-founded the independent pedagogical Parzival Competence Center for Education, Support, and Counseling, and has been its principal since 2003. From 1993 to 2007, he was a member of the Federal Executive Board of the Association of Free Waldorf Schools in Germany. From 1993 to the present, he has been a member of the International Conference of Waldorf Schools. From 1987 to 2021, he was the executive director of the aid organization, Friends of Rudolf Steiner’s Educational Art, with a focus on volunteer services. Since then he has been CEO of Emergency Pedagogy Without Borders – Germany and Emergency Pedagogy Without Borders – International. (Emergency Pedagogy Without Borders – International is the umbrella organization for emergency pedagogy in 35 countries.) As part of this work, he founded and led emergency educational crisis interventions in war and disaster regions in 2006. He subsequently led missions in Lebanon, China, and Haiti, among others. He is head of the emergency education clinic at the Parzival Competence Center in Karlsruhe. From 2007 to 2012, he was a member of the advisory board of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. Bernd is a renowned speaker activity at home and abroad on a wide range of topics, including emergency education, psychotraumatology, intensive education, Kaspar Hauser, and Waldorf education.
Conference Fee: $275
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.
A Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training conference held at:
San Francisco Waldorf High School
470 West Portal Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127
Sunday/Monday Conference Schedule
9:00am-9:30am
9:30am-11am
11:00am-11:30am
11:30am-1:00pm
1:00pm-2:00pm
2:00pm-3:30pm
3:30pm
Singing with Christiaan Boele
Lecture with Bernd Ruf
Snack Break
Workshops
Lunch Break
Lecture, Q&A with Bernd Ruf
Closing of the Day
Tuesday Conference Schedule
9:00am-2:00pm
2:00pm-2:30pm
2:30pm-3:30pm
3:30pm
Same as Above
Workshop/Discussion Group Sharing
Closing Lecture, Q&A with Bernd Ruf
Closing of the Conference
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.
