Green Educators Course

group shot before the Saraswati ceremony. Image by Sanne. Dec 2015

This week I’ve had an amazing experience taking part in the Green Educators Course at Green School. I’ve been engaging with a team of 30 other educators from around the globe learning about Green School curriculum and philosophy. This post is dedicated to sharing some of my knowledge that I gained during the course.

There is a LOT to say about Green School curriculum, and it would be impossible to write it all here. I felt very connected with the school, though, because I think it has a lot of the same values as Evergreen State College. It made me feel even more proud to be a Greener.

Let me state here that I haven’t formally studied education, nor do I consider myself an “educator.” I think of myself more as a mentor with the kids, guiding them to make the right decisions and talking them through the challenges of growing up. And in different jobs that I’ve had before, I’ve had to take on a leadership role that involved training, instruction, and education. But being an educator– a teacher– is one of the hardest jobs in the world in my opinion. It involves asking the right questions and showing people how they can learn. Real education (not the one-size-fits-all approach) emphasizes making mistakes and learning by doing. It fosters a wider range of competencies within a given discipline and teaches people how to become good at many many different things.

At Evergreen, I learned so many different facets of a given subject on my own, rather than following a step-by-step method like in a textbook. One valuable thing that I took away from my two years at TESC was really diving into asking questions and following my curiosities. I had to learn to not be ashamed to raise my hand. In more theoretical classes, I had to pose complex inquiries that I didn’t have the answer to in order to make a deeper, more meaningful point. Doing this expanded my mind, and led to more questions, which made me more curious about myself and the world that I live in.  Asking questions taught me how to learn better, and therefore opened the door for me to be good at many things.

Last year a senior at GS wanted to dive deeper into this same topic– the power of inquiry. She wrote a brilliant dissertation called “Why Question?” for her Greenstone Project. Every senior that graduates from Green School chooses a topic to do a TED-like-talk in front of the entire school at the end of the year. It seems pretty intimidating, but they practice all year long. The topics that these seniors choose to talk about prove that Green School’s curriculum is actually pretty effective in it’s mission of “educating young leaders in global citizenship” and “to champion a new model of learning that connects the timeless lessons from nature to a relevant and effective preparation for a fast-changing future.”

Please, I beg you, watch Shanti Pockell’s Greenstone talk here.

One of the programs that Green School implements is called Jalan Jalan (meaning ‘walk’ in bahasa Indonesia), which is designed to help students link their learning to outside of school. It is about being fully immersed in a hands-on activity one day a week. The programs give students life experience by connecting them to local communities and engaging them with a “cause.” Examples of Jalan Jalan would be service learning such as Bye Bye Plastic Bags, enterprise education such as creating an app for the BioBus, and outdoor education like beekeeping or diving. Green School believes that these build critical skills like problem solving, leadership, creative thinking, etc.

I was able to go to a Jalan Jalan at Yayasan Peduli Kemanusiaan (YPK), a non-for-profit organization that assists people with physical disabilities. It was a lot of fun! We sat around in a circle and mimicked eachothers movements, sang songs in Bahasa about fruits, and divided into groups that made simple snacks for each other. I can’t stress how impressed I was with the amount of enthusiasm that the Green School kids brought to the group. They were fully engaged with the YPK kids, super helpful and attentive, and only spoke in Bahasa with them. It was truly amazing to see them in action.

There were so many other activities that we were involved in during the course! Some of the highlights include:

Building a Permaculture garden in front of Orin Hardy’s private home at Kul Kul farm:

image by Britney Young. Nov 2015

images by me. Nov 2015.

Going on a Subak walk. The Subak is the ancient irrigation system for rice paddies. The walk involved trudging through tiny caves!

images by Sanne. Nov 2015.

Marched against Palm Oil production in Canggu:

image by Sanne.

Participated in Mepantigan, traditional Balinese mud wrestling:

Attended a Saraswati ceremony. Saraswati celebrates the Hindu Goddess of knowledge. The word means “the one that flows as a river of knowledge” which will give wealth and enlightenment to those who are willing to learn or study.

image by Sanne. Nov 2015.

You can find more images of the Green Educator Course in photographer’s album on facebook. (Ps, you have to be logged in)