When All Has Gone to Ash: Kindergarten Puppetry&Storytelling after LA Fires: Emergency-Pedagogy-Without-Borders, Team USA

• In Event: Harnessing Waldorf for Arts-based Trauma Pedagogy Across Borders: Opportunities & Challenges

Abstract

1.Purpose
This study builds on the work of Eisner (2002) on centrality of the arts and on Tyack and Cuban (1995). Labaree (2020), Mehta et al (2020) and Scott (1995) on the “grammar of schooling” and “pillars” of school. Further, it employs Coburn et al (2023)’s lens of scale as “adaptation” versus “fidelity of implementation.” Study focus is on the work of one private Waldorf school in Pasadena CA in the wake of the devastation of the January 2025 Los Angeles fires. These fires, among the largest in the city’s history, destroyed 9,400 homes, among them the fifty-year-old Pasadena Waldorf school. The school team invited Emergency Pedagogy Without Borders [EPWB] [nfp-og.org] and its Team USA to help.

Emergency Pedagogy Without Borders [EPWB], launched under the aegis of Friends of Waldorf Education [https://www.freunde-waldorf.de/#] in 2006 and in 2020 established as an independent organization under the leadership of veteran Waldorf teacher, school founder and former Friends of Waldorf Education CEO, Bernd Ruf, is an international network of teams organized to work in areas of man-made and natural disaster. As Essence of Learning and stART, EPWB stakes its course according to the guidelines of Rudolf Steiner. To become certified one needs to engage in 12 multi-day training modules. Annual conferences bring teams from across the globe together at its international headquarters in Karlsruhe, Germany. 2025, 140 participants from 24 countries came together to learn and work. 120 interventions have been conducted since 2006 across the globe. 2012 Emergency Pedagogy first came to the US 2013. Since 2019 a formal Team USA is in place.

This study presents the action research of the school’s veteran kindergarten teacher, already a fully trained emergency pedagogy, who herself lost her home in the fires. Study goal is to reflect on which traditional Waldorf strategies are maintained, expanded, adjusted and /or dropped in this high-trauma setting, to lift up lessons learned for research and practice.

2.Theoretical Framework
The analysis draws from the educational framework for participatory action learning and action research (Zuber-Skerrit, 2018) , the Tyack & Cuban (1995), Labaree (2020), Scott (1995), Coburn et al (2023) and Eisner (2002).

3. Methods
The study employs an organizational case study (see Yin, 2003) and participatory action research ( Zuber-Skerritt, 2018).

4. Data Sources
Data sources include classroom and student observation, parent, caregiver and teacher interview and analysis of student work.

5. Results
While data collection is still under way, early results signal enhanced stability, extension of time to concentrate, and increased report of well being over time once adaptations under study were introduced.

6. Scholarly significance of the study
The study advances the interrogation of culturally and developmentally appropriate artistic activity as gateway to academic learning in times of crisis and trauma; it further advances questions of change in structure of the ‘grammar of school’ forged by the impact of crisis. Further it contributes to the research literature on scale.

Authors

• Rosa Balderrama, Pasadena Waldorf School

• Ida Oberman, Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences