Since 2006, international relief organisation Friends of Waldorf Education (FWE) has partnered with Steiner-Waldorf doctors, psychologists and therapists to carry out emergency education crisis interventions around the world. They've worked with traumatised children and young people in war zones and disaster areas in many countries, including Lebanon, China, the Gaza Strip, Indonesia, Haiti, Kyrgyzstan and most recently Japan, following the tsunami and nuclear disaster there.
In this important book, FWE head Bernd Ruf explains what the organisation does, and how the principles of Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy are put into practice in such challenging situations. He focuses especially on their work in Japan, exploring processes and experiences, including the anthroposophical understanding of trauma itself.
Educating Traumatized Children offers much-needed insight into their little-known area of education and healing for traumatised children. This book will be valuable not only for those working in disaster and conflict areas, but for any teacher or parent who is caring for a traumatised child.
Since 2006, international relief organisation Friends of Waldorf Education (FWE) has partnered with Steiner-Waldorf doctors, psychologists and therapists to carry out emergency education crisis interventions around the world. They've worked with traumatised children and young people in war zones and disaster areas in many countries, including Lebanon, China, the Gaza Strip, Indonesia, Haiti, Kyrgyzstan and most recently Japan, following the tsunami and nuclear disaster there.
In this important book, FWE head Bernd Ruf explains what the organisation does, and how the principles of Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy are put into practice in such challenging situations. He focuses especially on their work in Japan, exploring processes and experiences, including the anthroposophical understanding of trauma itself.
Educating Traumatized Children offers much-needed insight into their little-known area of education and healing for traumatised children. This book will be valuable not only for those working in disaster and conflict areas, but for any teacher or parent who is caring for a traumatised child.
Bernd Ruf co-founded the Waldorf School in Karlsruhe, where he also taught for 20 years. He is Director of the Parzifal Centre, a special needs education centre, and Managing Director of aid organisation Friends of Waldorf Education, where he heads emergency education crisis interventions in war and disaster zones. He lectures around the world.
Waldorf Today, March 14, 2022Our book reviews are arranged many
weeks in advance. I had no way of knowing that current events in
Europe would make the review of Educating Traumatized Children all
the more relevant.
Teachers and parents will both sense the relevance of this book in
the modern educational landscape. Trauma, much as we might hope to
relegate it to the purview of special educators and therapists, has
become a daily facet of life.
Gone are the days when only one or two children in a class were in
need of "special help."
Bernd Ruf found his calling at the time of the 2006 Lebanon War.
Since then he has facilitated the development of "Emergency
Education." He and teams of teachers, doctors, psychologists, and
therapists have taken part in crisis interventions around the
world. They work with psychologically traumatized children and
young people in war zones and disaster areas.
Bernd Ruf presents an anthroposophical understanding of trauma
itself. There is a an extensive examination of psychological trauma
and healing the frozenness of trauma. The book contains many
vignettes of their trauma work and concludes with emergency
education as threshold education.
Although the book is written primarily out of the experience of
emergency educators in trauma situations, I would imagine that many
classroom teachers and parents would find much they recognize in
their "normal" world.
Five stars. Great book.--David Kennedy, Waldorf Today
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