Origins: Holistic Learning & Regenerative Practice by Originateve

This is a rich conversation with seasoned Ecological Educator Peter Kindfield.

Peter reveals his insights on moving from an "All Children Left Behind" system to educational environments that mutually "leak value" between the participants.

Highlights include:

Home School Learning Communities

Synthesis through Integrating Dualities (chaos: domesticity)

Assessment Feedback Loops

Ecologically Driven Pedagogy

In this episode we digest some of the nuances and challenges of working with calendars and revisit the origins of how we developed a cyclical leveling system for assessing development by connecting with the Mayan sacred calendar.

A big shout out to antimoon.com for their content that helped provide direction and reassurance in fluid language learning. Thanks guys!

Carl and Ron reflect on how their time abroad has changed the way they consider their relationship to country.

Music is a fundamental part of early literacy. Engaging old folk songs employs rich language and allusions that inform critical thinking and cultural development. In this episode, Pete Best-Hall joins us to discuss our journey with song and early childhood instruction.

In this episode we continue the conversation of plants as mentors and draw out the analogies to holistic education. Rudionna Garza joins us to share her journey and insights as a regenerative gardener and lead mentor of FLORA: the Forest Laboratory of Regenerative Arts.

This week we had the fortune to speak with Nathan Hastler Brooks of Tine and Toil Farm in Pottstown, PA. Nathan walks us through how he came to community based agriculture, the leap to running his own operation, and his relationships with plants and the soil.

Learn more about Tine and Toil Farm at: https://www.tineandtoilfarm.com

Where do you get your wild harvest processed?

In this episode we speak with Chester Emmons and Justin Howard of Chester's Wild Meat and Game Processing in Kalamazoo Michigan. Chester Emmons (yes, Carl's brother) describes his journey as an independent butcher and how he has grown a successful, community-oriented deer processing business.

https://chesterswildmeat.com/

In this final episode of season 3 (Calli), we review the essay by Thomas Moore "Educating for the Soul" which appears in Holistic Learning And Spirituality In Education: Breaking New Ground (2005), edited by John P. Miller and more.

We discuss the idea of breaking from the path of secular/conventional education that is not designed to teach for the soul. Why is the soul important? How might we change our behaviors and strategies to open up an embracing of soul centered learning?

Link to book: https://www.amazon.com/Holistic-Learning-Spirituality-Education-Breaking/dp/0791463524

Other Citations:

Alphabet vs. The Goddess: https://www.alphabetvsgoddess.com/

Michael Meade: https://www.mosaicvoices.org/

Terrance McKenna- Understanding Consciousness: https://spotify.link/FXJDpcdWAyb

Kristina Flint, Mama Chief of Children of the Wild forest school in Casco, Maine joins the podcast this week to discuss her venture into an in-home early learning business. We address challenges to launching into a solo endeavor and the people who inspire us to tale the leap.

How do we allow space for the unexpected to drive learning? How do we suppress our need for control in order to see the never-before-seen moments germinate into authentic relationships that build trust and fruits of development for all participants in the learning environment?

In this episode:

Herman Hesse- Beneath the Wheel- What is the aim of conventional education?

Penetrating our little boxes of ideology and the natural tendency to categorize

The importance of humor (Trickster Energy) in and out of the classroom

The relationship between toil and gratitude

How does the design of a Learning Environment propel or limit learning potential?

In this episode:

Designing a learning environment to move beyond utilitarian function and secular aesthetics to exalt something greater than us.

How does the design of a learning environment (and sometimes the adults themselves) limit growth?

Rant on why children should be able to eat snow.

Learning Pods and Forest Schools.

How do our resources define our relationship with our ecology and creativity?
In this episode Carl and Ron discuss the evolution and process of developing a creative eye for seeing the possibilities in turning refuse into resources for holistic learning environments.

Buzzing this week . . .

Jenn Bonilla reminisces about her process of learning English in an immersive, hands-on environment of anything-goes learning with los Gringos Locos at Studio 1 (Amerikanoestudios) in Esparza, Costa Rica. She describes her process of adopting two children within the Costa Rican social system. Jenn also emphasizes the importance that hearing stories and myths at the studio have stuck with her through the years.

We get into:

why we don’t need an army of English speakers born from English grammar bootcamps

killer bees

machismo vs. feminism

processing grief

Matthias Zimmerlin is a vice principal at the Peter Thumb School in southern Germany.

Matthias and Carl met when Carl's punk band was touring Germany in the mid 2000s. Now they reconnect having both ventured into education. We dig into School Development through Change Concept of Performance and look for shared insights between the current education qualities of Germany and the U.S.

A question we explore is, "How do we educate for what students will need in the future?" Are trade schools a better route for success than academic degrees? How do schools share the role of parenting? 

Buckle up- it's a long one!

Put the wild back in education!

More crazy holistic education stories as we discuss deepening relationships with animals.

In this episode we discuss some ways that animals (dead or alive) help add enrichment to education. We share ways that we have used road kill, sudden death of class pets, and hunting byproducts as (inexpensive) class resources. We explore these practices as veneration for the animals.

This episode kicks off season 3 (Calli) and explores the practice of exchange that happen and in many ways dictate the ways relationships are built and maintained within communities.

How do we build relationships and educational leverage without grades?

Where is value expressed that goes beyond the cash transaction?

How do we give a gift to something bigger than us?  How can education include service, celebration, and veneration to non-human elements responsible for life? 

Carl talks about corporate culture: contradictions, exploitations, and immature leadership. 

What constitutes a gift for the divine?

Why investing in local relationships is more regenerative than mining exotic cultures of tourist wisdom?

Educator, coach, father, writer Micah Sturr joins us this week where we discuss a shift of focus from merit to virtue in instruction. Micah brings his positions as a high school girls basketball coach and English teacher to frame what works on the court that doesn't happen in the classroom.   

Ron and Carl bring in special guest Dr. Paul Darvasi who is an educator, game designer, and researcher who keynotes, lectures, writes and consults on the intersection of digital games, simulations, narrative, social justice, culture and learning and happened to be Carl's high school teacher of English in Santiago de Chile. Carl and Paul revisit those early years and hash out life as a game touching on:

- Pul's current project, an Afghanistan Reforestation video game

- Paul's origin as an educator in Santiago de Chile

- Saturn’s return and patterns of the universe

- The scripture of Catcher in the Rye- life is a game

- Games as a microcosm of life- how do you hack the game?

- Play is not guided by efficiency but the conventional education system is all obsessed with efficiency

- The difference between work and labor?

- The corrupt negative energy of teacher lounges.

- Turning a class into a living game- the Ward- What would it look like if your class was a game?

- Eating salmon to get smarter

- Using fear to push yourself into new learning

- Reinvesting in play to engage authenticity

Listeners can reach Paul at:

https://twitter.com/PaulDarvasi

https://goldbuginteractive.com/

Largely inspired by the work of Wade Davis, cultural anthropologist, ethnobotanist, author, and photographer, Originateve began practices of multi-lingual holism. See Davis' Ted Talk  here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL7vK0pOvKI

In this podcast, Ron and Carl dive into common challenges with the conventional thinking and practice of multi-lingual learners in the classroom.  How can we see diverse languages as a gift rather than a roadblock to learning? How can teachers within the English domain coming from different mother tongues utilize their gift to benefit learners with the added richness of their "ways of being and thinking" that com from their linguistic heritage?

Finally, how can mono-linguistic instructors begin to diversify the language content in their literacy class to holistically cross connect disciplines and improve relevance through the investigation of etymological roots of English?

Hosts Ron Green and Carl Emmons complete the mini-series on Emotional and Spiritual Learning bouncing off of the ideas of theologian James Fowler.  They touch on Fowler's stages 4-6 diving into:

- The nutrition of delicious conversations

- Transformations due to living abroad

- Pursuing personal passion vs. submitting to the "Real World"

- Universalizing faith- the pursuit of compassion and love for all

- Questioning personal authority rather than implied authority 

- Call Out/Cancel Culture

- Personal Responsibility

- Rumi Poem

Our hosts sit down for a 3rd take on how to foster Spiritual and Emotional Intelligence. Life happens and they head down the rabbit holes of:

-Using Whatsapp to promote Active Listening
- The decentralization of education
- The exasperation felt/caused by the government on the achievement gap
- Recap on the difference between Storytelling and Story reading
- The art of cold reading and the aberration of round robin/popcorn reading in our classrooms
- A few reasons behind the failure of High School English programs
- The primary deficit in primary education: PLAY
- Theatre: A Holistic Possibility
- Teachers Wanted: Broadway

This episode also details why we have chosen WhatsAPP as the medium for pre/post discussions with our listeners.
If you are interested in joining a discussion group that expands on these topics, let Carl know: carlemmons@originateve.org

The Origins podcast series, usually, follows the thematic breakdown of Originateve's Certified Mentorship program. For more info, please visit:

https://originateve.org/certified-mentor-program/

In Part III of our segment on Emotional and Spiritual Learning, we take a jab at Fowler's Stages of Faith which seeks to outline a pathway towards spiritual development parallel to what Kohlberg defined as Moral Development and Piaget did for Cognitive.

The Origins podcast series follows the thematic breakdown of Originateve's Certified Mentorship program. For more info, please visit: https://originateve.org/certified-mentor-program/

If you are interested in joining a discussion group that expands on these topics, let Carl know: carlemmons@originateve.org

This Episode is a continuation of the topic of Emotional and Spiritual development. The conversation this week kicks off with Ron's "imix" immersion into his first hunt. This becomes an apropos scenario by which to consider crucial aspects of learning:

• The need for mentors
• Kairos vs Chronos
• Lifelong learning
• To live is to play out the ancient myths (Toe Bone and Tooth, The Listener)
• How to foster Ritual
• Cyclical Learning
• Natural cycles that follow the seasons
• The folly of the educational calendar, school gardens and bean sprouting
• How missing something is indicative of our spiritual and emotional relationship building

The Origins podcast series follows the thematic breakdown of Originateve's Certified Mentorship program. For more info, please visit: https://originateve.org/certified-mentor-program/

If you are interested in joining a discussion group that expands on these topics, let Carl know: carlemmons@originateve.org 

In the wake of the passing of Carl's father, our hosts return with the fifth episode of the second season of the Origins podcast and plunge into the importance of emotional and spiritual learning. How does it happen in education? How do we support it? How do we address these realms that seem to be taboo in conventional education? 

Topics addressed:

• Learning ritual from other cultures and mentor who model spiritual practice
• The important of ancestors in the spiritual process
• Being open to learn what you may not be intending to learn
• The linguistic roots of imperialism/anthro-centrism: belonging vs being. 

Origins Warrior of Beauty Cipactli podcast Episode 3: Play in times of COVID-19

As COVID-19 subsides in China, our co-host: Carl Emmons kicks off this episode with a comprehensive sharing of new programming that has unfolded in Shishi now that kindergartens have, thankfully, closed their doors. Our host, Ron Green, then brings around the stark contrast between how conventional education, seeking to mold the child into what society wants them to be, misses the mark of what Steiner states we should be doing: facilitating a child's discovery of who they are.

Key questions and prompts include:

- Daycares vs Preschools
- Forest Schools
- Helicopter Parents, Tiger-moms
- Rigor in play leads to a rigor in academics
- Mentor role of observation and evaluation
- The etymology of teachers vs mentors
- Why has the US dragged so much in coming to holistic models early childhood educational programming?
- When a myopic notion of FREE PLAY is as detrimental if not more than standard academics, how to strike the balance?

ORIGINS is an Originateve podcast that addresses both the theory and practical applications of regenerative and holistic lifestyles. Our hosts: Ron Green (aka Lucian Nathair) and Carl Emmons (aka Gluskabe) are the co-founders of the Originateve non-profit established in 2013--based out of Denver, CO, USA.  The ORIGIN podcast follows the curricular framework of the ORIGINATEVE Certified Mentorship Program.

Originateve, a non-profit based out of Denver, CO, established in 2012, seeks to reestablish and promote vibrant, regenerative connections to nature, community and spirit.

For more information, please visit: www.originateve.org

Origins Warrior of Beauty Cipactli podcast Episode 2: Repairing the Education of the Past

This episode addresses the need for breaking bad habits within educational practice as well as our personal lifestyles in terms of our relationships with ourselves, others, the planet and cosmos. PLAY THERAPY is introduced into, what we refer to as, the conversation that never ends. Key questions and prompts include:

- What if PLAY were the framework for best educational practice?
- Instructors as monitors vs playmates: Why are we so hands off during recess?
- How can we foster and participate in a culture in which we are all learning, all the time?
- What would you do differently if you were in the shoes of the educators that you deem "messed up" your learning?
- How to avoid leaps of judgement as educators.
- Kairos vs Chronos Learning: The role of epiphany. The need for patience.
- Good Learners/Mentors are Masters of Observation.
- The folly of content-based timelines and objectives.  

ORIGINS is an Originateve podcast that addresses both the theory and practical applications of regenerative and holistic lifestyles. Our hosts: Ron Green (aka Lucian Nathair) and Carl Emmons (aka Gluskabe) are the co-founders of the Originateve non-profit established in 2013--based out of Denver, CO, USA.  The ORIGIN podcast follows the curricular framework of the ORIGINATEVE Certified Mentorship Program.

Originateve, a non-profit based out of Denver, CO, established in 2012, seeks to reestablish and promote vibrant, regenerative connections to nature, community and spirit. For more information, please visit: www.originateve.org