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[Dave Jacke <davej AT edibleforestgardens.com>]

Designing Educational Ecosystems:

A Whole Systems Permaculture Teacher Training

March 21-30, 2014, Camp Y.I., La Vergne, TN

 

Humans and nature intertwine irrevocably: we are nature, and nature has become us.  This means that every classroom is an ecosystem—even a windowless, concrete block room with fluorescent lights.  If that is true, then ecological principles operate in every classroom, and ecological design pertains, too. 

Permaculture applies ecological principles to the design of human cultures in all their aspects.  How then can we apply permaculture to the design of learning environments, especially for teaching permaculture?  What are the implications of this approach?  What does this orientation require of educators—what is our ecological role in the classroom environment?

Designing Educational Ecosystems is a nine-day intensive Permaculture Teacher Training during which we’ll explore and embody these questions while training you how to design and run permaculture workshops, courses, and other educational experiences.  Learn to: quickly assess students’ niche characteristics; create effective learning environments; and design multifunctional, functionally interconnected courses where the whole experience is greater than the sum of the sessions!  We’ll also touch on organizing, the business of teaching, and other practical aspects.

Each participant in this course will design and run short lectures, classes and exercises; speak in public; plan and budget an event; and coteach a public one-day permaculture workshop at course end.  What do whole learning systems look, feel and sound like?  Come find out!  The best way to learn is to do, and to have fun doing it!  Join us!

Limited to certified permaculture design course graduates who also have significant on-the-ground experience.  Significant pre-course preparation required!  

Course Objectives:

• Participants experience and develop the complete suite of skills needed to begin successfully leading short permaculture workshops and other events on their own.

• Participants leave able to contribute significantly to certified permaculture courses under the mentorship of an experienced permaculture educator.

• Participants experience taking the seat of the teacher multiple times during the course in a variety of settings, both within the course and in a public venue.  We all grasp the essence and significant details of what it means to create effective learning environments and effective learning events. 

• Participants come prepared to give a very short lecture on a permaculture topic of your choice, and to collaboratively co-create the teacher-training course and co-lead a one-day public permaculture workshop (specific requests for how to prepare will be laid out after acceptance into the program). 

• Participants experience a community of learning teachers and teaching learners:

- we cocreate a safe, supportive, fun, healthy, and whole learning environment;

- we support each other to take risks, share ourselves, grow deeply, move through edges and perceived restrictions, explore new ideas, and try new teaching styles and approaches;

- we share and constructively evaluate each others’ work;

- we cooperatively develop shared resources for the larger permaculture teaching community.  

• Participants clarify, articulate, and evolve their beliefs about what a teacher is and what is their teaching philosophy.  We all experience putting that philosophy into practice consciously.  We all have the opportunity to deprogram beliefs that inhibit our effectiveness as teachers and learners.

• We experience all of the above through learning events and experiences that express, embody, and demonstrate the principles of permaculture design in action.

• We have a total blast doing all of the above.

 

Course Staff:

Dave Jacke, primary author of Edible Forest Gardens, has taught innumerable workshops and courses across the country using the principles you will learn in this training.  This is the sixth teacher training he will lead, and represents an attempt to take his educational philosophy to a new level of embodied depth and clarity.

Farmer, educator, and designer Chris Jackson homesteads in Plainfield, VT and works with at-risk youth and livestock at a school there.  He took this training with Dave and Jono Neiger in 2007, and has taught four trainings with Dave since.

Kim Almeida homesteads on the South Shore of Massachusetts.  She practices permaculture design and education, tends annual and perennial market gardens and an organic CSA, and teaches yoga and vegan/locavore cooking.  This will be Kim’s third time assisting with this training, which she took in 2009.

 

Costs:

• A $50 nonrefundable application fee applies to course cost if accepted. 

• An additional nonrefundable deposit of $250 is required within three weeks of acceptance into the program to hold your place.  Full payment is required by March 7, 2014.

• Cost for tuition, meals, lodging: $1,450-$1,950 sliding scale.  Early application discount: $1,400 if completed applications are received before January 15!  

• Partial scholarships will be available—and your completed scholarship application will help us raise funds!  The sooner you apply for a scholarship, the more likely you will get one.  Scholarship applicants who cannot get sufficient financial support to take the course will get their $50 application fee refunded.

 

For more information,visit www.edibleforestgardens.com/events or request the Application Info from davej AT edibleforestgardens.com.

CONTACT:

The Nectary Project, c/o Jessie Smith

thenectaryproject AT gmail.com

 
(206) 854-7271

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Dave Jacke
Dynamics Ecological Design
33 E. Taylor Hill Rd. • Montague, MA • 01351
603-831-1298 • davej AT edibleforestgardens.com

Visit www.edibleforestgardens.com for information on or to purchase my award-winning two-volume book, Edible Forest Gardens.

Mark Krawczyk and I are now writing a new book on Coppice Agroforestry!  Find out more at 
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coppiceagroforestry/dave-and-mark-write-a-coppice-agroforestry-book and support our effort by sending a check to the address above—we will honor the same rewards listed on the kickstarter website for any donations sent now.