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  • From: Jenny Katz <jennykatz@sbcglobal.net>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] more on greenschooling
  • Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 11:42:27 -0400

Thanks, all, for your replies. Great suggestions and very much in line with what I believe. Linda, I'm going to check out your link about the Small School. Kathyann, I do have Brent Cameron's book, Self-Design, and agree with you that it's outstanding. In fact, it may have been from you, some months ago, that I first heard about it! (Many thanks!) And Stephen, it made me laugh to see you mention the Wilderness Awareness School. I took two of John Young's workshops last year--Building Strong Naturalist Communities and the Art of Mentoring, both at the Vermont Wilderness School. The 64 cultural points chart reminded me strongly of the periodic table, and got me (even more) interested in putting together a pattern language for education. I'd love to talk to you all further about this.

Ken, I'll put together my thoughts about curriculum over the next couple of days and shoot it back out to all of you. Much as part of me would like to completely knock out the current system of schooling, the principle of gradual and incremental change makes me think it'd be more effective to create something that allows people to work with what we've got now--which is why I think awareness techniques might be the way to begin. For instance, I took my kids to the Art of Mentoring workshop last October, and one of the games they played there was to try and "clothespin" people--to clip a clothespin on someone's shirt without their noticing you. It's a game of awareness; all of a sudden you notice your surroundings in a much different way. You look around with "owl eyes." You walk with "fox walk." You recognize yourself (whether you're the pinner or the pinnee) as a much more integrated part of things. Why not help kids develop the skills of tracking even while they're sitting in class doing dittoes? Do the dittoes, yes, but also be aware of your body in space, of the physical and energetic relationship between you and other people, of the way the teacher's movements and words give insight into what's happening now and what's happening next. What's the system? How can we be ever more aware of the system, its needs and constraints and possibilities?

And how about waste? (Tom, I wrote you about this.) Natural systems don't have any. So if you're feeling a "waste" of your time and energy, your heart and mind, what kind of focus can you bring to your experience at that moment in order to convert waste to food? I don't know how explicit you can be with little kids about this kind of thing, but I know there's a way to make it work.

Lots of thoughts germinating in my head. With your kind permission, I'll continue to let 'em grow out loud. The insight and inspiration of this list has been instrumental in my getting even this far!

yours,
Jenny




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