Coconut Thinking

In this episode, I speak with Nora Bateson. Nora is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and educator, as well as President of the International Bateson Institute, based in Sweden. Her work asks the question “How we can improve our perception of the complexity we live within, so we may improve our interaction with the world?” Yet Nora opens us up to understanding that we are so much more than any label that binds us. This was a truly inspiring conversation, one that left me humbled, hopeful, and aware. We discuss:🥥 How the gaps in between us are both a blessing and a curse, and these gaps are filled with possibilities;🥥 How sometimes it comes down to the most simple and complex of questions: How can I be a good person?;🥥 How even if we zoom in and zoom out at the same time, we get a different understanding of what is going on and yet one that will never be complete.Check out our website https://coconut-thinking.design, where you'll find our articles, podcasts, conference presentations, resources, and more.You can also find our articles and many wonderful writers and thinkers on Intrepid Ed News: www.intrepidednews.com.

In this episode, I speak with Rachel Musson is an international speaker, educator, facilitator, and thought-leader on regenerative education and wellbeing in schools. Rachel was recently listed as Natwest WISE100 most influential women in social enterprise. She is the Founding Director of ThoughtBox Education CIC and the pioneer behind their award-winning curriculum and training, currently accessed by 5,000+ educators in 76 countries. Rachel is currently working with global industry leaders and education ministers on education reform policy, hosting student workshops, empowering educators through professional development and delivering keynote speeches on transforming education at international conferences. We discuss:🥥 The work in education to help learners care for and thrive in the world we are co-creating;🥥 Whether daydreaming could be part of the "curriculum;" so it's not about doing but about being in the learning space;🥥 The importance of asking courageous questions and listening to responses with your heart.Check out our website https://coconut-thinking.design, where you'll find our articles, podcasts, conference presentations, resources, and more.You can also find our articles and many wonderful writers and thinkers on Intrepid Ed News: www.intrepidednews.com.

In this episode, I speak with Jack Miller. Jack is Professor of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at University of Toronto. Jack's work is focused on holistic education, curriculum and spirituality. He is an author of over 20 books including and his most recent book is Taoism, Teaching and Learning: A Nature Based Approach to Education. In 2009, Jack was one of 24 educators invited to Bhutan for the orientation of Bhutan's educational system towards the goal of Gross National Happiness. We discuss:🥥 How the Tao and nature teach us that if we are quiet, the action(s) that will be helpful will arise, which is particularly necessary in this time of crises;🥥 How being present for another is a show of love, so teachers can cultivate their mindfulness out of love;🥥 How a holistic education requires a curriculum of connectedness.Check out our website https://coconut-thinking.design, where you'll find our articles, podcasts, conference presentations, resources, and more.You can also find our articles and many wonderful writers and thinkers on Intrepid Ed News: www.intrepidednews.com.

In this episode, I speak with Helena Norberg-Hodge. Helena is a linguist, author and film maker, and the founder and director of the international non-profit organization, Local Futures, a pioneer of the new economy movement, and the convener of World Localization Day. She is the author of several books, including ‘Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh’, and, together with a film of the same title, Ancient Futures has been translated into more than 40 languages, and sold half a million copies. Her latest book is ‘Local is Our Future: Steps to an Economics of Happiness’. Other publications include ‘Bringing the Food Economy Home’ and ‘From the Ground Up: Rethinking Industrial Agriculture’. We discuss:🥥 the dangers of imposing a monoculture when everything is always in a state of change;🥥 living in specific natural ecosystems to create an expanded self that is able to become;🥥 shifting from I to We to move the narrative in our heads.Check out our website https://coconut-thinking.design, where you'll find our articles, podcasts, conference presentations, resources, and more.You can also find our articles and many wonderful writers and thinkers on Intrepid Ed News: www.intrepidednews.com.

In this special episode, Charlotte and I introduce the WISR Framework, which was designed to help educators create spaces in which a regenerative world might emerge. It is takes us from that instant where awe is a released and embodied experience to a mindset and paradigm shift where we respect the unique essence of all life. WISR is not meant to be a prescriptive model, rather it is an invitation to take learning deeper through embodied and connected experiences in and with the natural world. A call to respond through the ripples that local engagement initiates. It is a framework that reminds us of our kinship to more than human life and encourages us to express our oneness and harmony with the natural world.Wonder: Learning is engagement with nature through an expression of awe, enchantment, mystery and curiosityIntra-action: Learning is empathy with nature as a result of immersion, reciprocal communication and agencySustainability: Learning as guided by a set of ethics which emphasize balance of energy and resources in natureRegeneration: Learning as honoring and expressing the unique essence of every member of natureWISR is a co-creation between Coconut Thinking (Charlotte and me) and The Learning Future (Louka Parry).You can find more information on www.wisr.life.Check out our website https://coconut-thinking.design, where you'll find our articles, podcasts, conference presentations, resources, and more.

In this episode, I speak with Larissa Raymond. Larissa is a designer and leader of professional learning at EdPartnerships International. Prior to joining EdP she was a Head of Teaching and Learning at Caulfield Grammar School. Larissa has extensive experience supporting teachers to design and trial new forms of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Larissa pushes us to ask questions from different perspectives, including what can't be seen. She speaks thoughtfully about what agency really is (beyond the catchword) and what power relations are at play in any context. In this episode, we discuss:🥥 How agency is a space to be realized;🥥 How we might stick with the dialogue with young people to nurture trust and release creative energy; 🥥 Remaining deeply curious about others (all living and non-living things, including place) to we can move forward together.Check out our website https://coconut-thinking.design, where you'll find our articles, podcasts, conference presentations, resources, and more.You can also find our articles and many wonderful writers and thinkers on Intrepid Ed News: www.intrepidednews.com.

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Bayo Akomolafe. Bayo is a philosopher, psychologist, professor, and poet. He is a teacher and public intellectual renowned for his unconventional views on global crises, activism, and social change. (These are labels that Bayo may reject because posthumanism is also post-identitarian—we are processes of becoming that cannot be labeled.) Bayo speaks of the experiences of colonialism, extraction, climate disaster, multi-species relations, assemblages and entanglements. This is a special episode that examines post-activism, posthumanism, how we respond [with/in] the world, as part of the world and not separate. We discuss:🥥 Sitting with the pain, in the gaps and the breaks and not taking action as if we were separate from the world;🥥 How agency is entangled in the assemblages we cut, and does not belong to the person;🥥 How worlds are enmeshed in the past, the present, and the future, which dissolve into the assemblage.I encourage you to stay with the possibilities offered as we stumble toward these new horizons.Check out our website https://coconut-thinking.design, where you'll find our articles, podcasts, conference presentations, resources, and more.You can also find our articles and many wonderful writers and thinkers on Intrepid Ed News: www.intrepidednews.com.

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Penny Hay and Alex Soulsby. Penny is an artist, researcher and educator. She is a Reader at Bath Spa University in Creative Teaching and Learning and Senior Lecturer in Arts Education at Bath Spa University School of Education, and also Research Fellow, Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries. Penny has worked extensively in arts education across the UK and co-ordinated the professional development program for the National Society for Education in Art and Design (NSEAD). Alex is the founding director of Artist Residency Thailand and is an International Arts and Creative Education Manager and Consultant with over twenty years’ experience of Education, Creative Projects Management and Artist Mentoring. During his time in the UK as a Creative Projects and Education manager, he sat on numerous boards, trusts and steering groups that focused on arts and education engagement for young people. Alex will be sitting on panel discussions and presenting his work and approaches regarding arts integration within schools at Boston’s trans cultural exchange conference in November https://transculturalexchange.org/ He tweets at @soulsbyalexIn this episode, we discuss:🥥 How might we attend to ideas through creativity, opening space to inquires;🥥 The importance of unleashing the creative potential in all learners, or risk further aggravation of the crises we face;🥥 Sitting with not knowing, feeling the discomfort of not having the answers.Check out our website https://coconut-thinking.design, where you'll find our articles, podcasts, conference presentations, resources, and more.You can also find our articles and many wonderful writers and thinkers on Intrepid Ed News: www.intrepidednews.com.

In this episode, I speak to Jennifer D. Klein and Kapono Ciotti, authors of The Landscape Model of Learning. Jennifer is the founder of Principled Learning Strategies, which provides professional development to support authentic student-driven global learning experiences in schools. She has a broad background in global education and partnership development, student-driven curricular strategies, inclusivity, and experiential, inquiry-driven learning. Kapono has worked internationally in educational change organizations, leading the work of Deeper Learning and place and culture-based pedagogy. In these roles, he has trained teachers in over 100 schools and school districts over four continents, impacting hundreds of thousands of students. In addition, Kapono spent 15 years as National Faculty for the National Association of Independent Schools in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice, facilitating national and international learning experiences. We discuss:🥥 How learning is a personal journey and imposing a set curriculum for everyone often harms the individual and society; 🥥 How standards were designed and are maintained as a tool of control; 🥥 The idea that learner-directed should replace learner-centered in order to achieve liberation.Check out our website https://coconut-thinking.design, where you'll find our articles, podcasts, conference presentations, resources, and more.You can also find our articles and many wonderful writers and thinkers on Intrepid Ed News: www.intrepidednews.com.

In this episode, I speak with Maggie Favretti. Maggie Maggie Favretti has spent over 35 years happily helping her students to ask, “why not now?” Maggie has won scholarship and teaching awards from three professional historical organizations (WHA, AHA, OAH), a national organization of bankers (Sallie Mae Foundation Teacher of the Year), and a national organization of student leaders (21st-century Teacher of the Year). She has been recognized by President Obama for her work in environmental education, and by the Sousa Mendes Foundation’s Freedom Award for her work facilitating the next generation of rescuers, Students for Refugees. By far her greatest joy has been devising opportunities for students (and teacher-facilitators) to tap into their innate creativity, resourcefulness, and collaboration across disciplines, using design thinking to solve complex problems in their own communities and beyond. In this episode we discuss:🥥 How learning is a function of time, which might be thought of cyclically, as birth and death;🥥 The degenerative effect the race for "success" has had on education, which might be the opportunity some of us are looking for; and 🥥 How love and relationships are teachers' superpowers.Check out our website https://coconut-thinking.design, where you'll find our articles, podcasts, conference presentations, resources, and more.You can also find our articles and many wonderful writers and thinkers on Intrepid Ed News: www.intrepidednews.com.