An Evolving Vision for Bioregional Education

[Updated slightly on April 4th, 2014. Lots has changed since I initially posted this on January 20th, 2013, and some of what's below hasn't been updated yet to accommodate new ideas or alterations.]

Sometimes, about once a month at least (and usually more frequently), I find myself super excited about the idea of starting a K-12 school that integrates regenerative farming and agroforestry practices, and which weaves aspects of regenerative enterprise into place-based, hands-on curriculum and student-initiated, mentor-supported projects.

It gets me buzzed for awhile, mapping out all the ways this idea could work. But sooner or later some nagging/discouraging voice within chimes in: Really, Greg? Would that really be the most scalable, replicable means of addressing our interconnected social/environmental/economic crises and empowering today’s youth to thrive in the world they’re inheriting? Does it involve doing things that bring you joy? Does it ACTUALLY leverage your strengths and incorporate your passions?

These are the questions that swirl through my mind quite often. They deserve consideration. In the meantime, I’ve been laying out a vision and I’m finally going to share it with you. For the record, my current answer to the above questions is "YEAH. Yeah, this excites me like you'd never understand." But if I'm being fully honest I also have my moments of self-doubt – a concern that it's not really "what I should be doing with my life".

Anyway. What follows is a “work in progress”, an evolving “drawing board” onto which I’m painting a vision of the kind of school I’d like to see in the world. Incomplete and at times messy as some of the following writing is, I hope you'll give it a read and share your feedback. I may not have much time (or an internet connection) for the next 10.5 months — during which time I’ll be living/working at an educational farm — and I want to get this out there. Furthermore, there’s no telling whether or not I’ll get hit by a car and die tomorrow, morbid as that may sound, and recognizing that such omnipresent possibilities are ultimately real, I’d like to share this with the world now... not tomorrow! Not the next day! The time of perfectionism and holding things in has passed! I need to practice putting things out there even if they're not perfect, so... here's an idea.

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Part of what I most feel called to do with this amazing, precious life I have is to channel my strengths and passions toward empowering the next generations of our youth with the skills, knowledge, and motivation to become actively engaged citizens who — wherever they go — see it as their responsibility to ensure that the systems within their line of work are healthy, just, humane, and socially/environmentally regenerative. I envision a school in which this mission comes to life.

The mission statement might read something like this...

Providing a generation of youth with the skills, knowledge and motivation to become actively engaged citizens whose professions merge their unique strengths and passions with the world’s greatest needs.

Ideally those "greatest needs" will be met first and foremost within the local, bioregionally-specific place in which the students are growing up.

Here're some quotes that inform the overall attitude and philosophy guiding the school:

“We stand at the threshold of a singular passage in the human experience: to reimagine how to live on the earth in ways that honor the web of life, each other, and future generations. To move from breakdown to breakthrough, the coming years will be the most important years in the history of civilization.”
– Kenny Ausubel

"The planet does not need more 'successful' people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every shape and form." - David Orr

“Kids come alive when they understand that their work has a public purpose.” - David Sobel

...and, to give credit where it’s due, we are REALLY heavily inspired by this TED talk from Zoe Weil!

“What Is Education For?”

What is education for? A very foundational question. I’ve reinterpreted/rephrased it (and thrown some suggestions out) below with the following prompt: “I envision a future in which education encourages...”

– LISTENING TO (AND FOLLOWING) ONE'S HEART & INTUITION, EVEN WHEN IT LEADS OFF THE WELL-WORN PATH
– NOT BEING AFRAID TO FAIL
– RISK-TAKING
– QUICKLY REBOUNDING (AND LEARNING) FROM ONE'S MISTAKES
– HAVING THE COURAGE TO PURSUE BOLD INNOVATION
– 'REAL-LIFE' EXPERIENCES (RATHER THAN CLASSROOM EXERCISES)
– STARTING "TRIPLE-P" BUSINESSES, DOING WHAT ONE LOVES ... AND BEING SUPPORTED THROUGH MENTORING/APPRENTICESHIPS, ALONG THE WAY
– INTERGENERATIONAL LEARNING
– VALUING DIVERSITY
– THE "THREE C's": CURIOSITY, CREATIVITY, & CRITICAL THINKING
– THE "THREE R's": REVERENCE, RESPECT, & RESPONSIBILITY
– PURSUING ONE OR MORE "ARTS/CRAFTS"; BEING PROVIDED THE RESOURCES/SUPPORT TO DO SO
– SEEING ONE'S OWN STRENGTHS/TALENTS AS PRECIOUS GIFTS TO BE SHARED, NOT SQUANDERED IN THE NAME OF "PLAYING SMALL"!
– SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING
– SYSTEMS THINKING
– THINKING WAY BEYOND 'DISCIPLINES'
– "AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP" SKILLS (SUCH AS THESE)
– MASTERY OF NONVIOLENT COMMUNICATION
– DEVELOPING A SUPPORT NETWORK (INCLUDING ONE OR MORE FORMAL/INFORMAL 'COACHING' RELATIONSHIPS)
– BEING VULNERABLE; SEEING VULNERABILITY AS AN ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT FOR SUCCESS IN LIFE
– EMPATHY/CONNECTION TO THE MORE-THAN-HUMAN WORLD (AKA “NATURE”)
– A RECOGNITION THAT THEY (CHILDREN) HAVE THE CAPACITY, AND THE RESPONSIBILITY (ALONGSIDE THEIR ELDERS), TO CONTRIBUTE TO A BETTER WORLD

Curriculum

All curriculum is rooted in experiential, place- and project- based learning. The school encourages student ownership of learning, demands documented or demonstrated competency of Graduation Expectations (requirements), and allows for a highly individualized path towards graduation. <-- drawn from JCOS as a placeholder that really resonates; this will be refined/clarified further.

Although “the basics” (e.g. verbal, mathematical, scientific literacy) are covered en route to graduation, all courses are interdisciplinary — explicitly and implicitly blending “disciplines” so students can see that everything exists through connections and relationships. Emphasis is placed on community stewardship (designing innovative solutions that improve the  
social, environmental and economic health of their school/neighborhood/city/region) and social entrepreneurship.

The school is connected to local businesses, many of which act as “extended classrooms”, offering practical mentorships/apprenticeships that provide real-world learning to students. At all age levels there are a variety of opportunities for service learning.

Self-directed learning is an integral component of the student’s path at our school. To this end, the approach to “curriculum” may veer toward a model more akin Sudbury Schools or Summerhill. This is still being hashed out.

The school is both ungraded and nongraded. It is “ungraded”, in that students do not receive letter grades but rather self-guide evaluations with support from advisors/mentors. It is “nongraded” in that students are not segregated by the year they were born, but by age groups. [again, this is drawn from from JCOS].

Travel & Global Citizenship

While all aspects of the school will aim to instill a sense of place that is specific to the particular bioregion in which the school is located, there may be a component that enables students to travel beyond that locale. This could take the form of weeklong (or longer) apprenticeships/work-trades, “study abroad” partnerships, and/or volunteer projects in other parts of the world. There will be opportunities for group trips, as well as self-directed trips that a student designs in partnership with their advisor(s). Each student's trip will – through journal entries, blog posts, written reflections/evaluations, projects, art/music/poetry and/or presentations – be used as a vehicle for fostering a tangible sense of global connectedness and for furthering their social, emotional, ecological, and academic development.

Regenerative Food Systems

Comprehension of, and experience maintaining, regenerative food systems (RFS) is an integral part of the school. This practice incorporates aspects of agroecology, permaculture, biodynamics, regenerative design, natural process farming, etc. There is at least one diversified, beyond-organic farming operation connected to the school (producing both annual and perennial fruits/vegetables in addition to herbs and flowers), produce from which goes toward school lunches, nearby restaurants, cooking classes/cook-offs (creations from which get served at school lunches). 

Alongside the farming operation will be a "food forest" (aka an "edible forest garden") that students will help design and install. Over the long term, this system — a dense planting of perennial polycultures incorporating numerous fruit and nut trees — will increasingly yield food, fuel, building materials, medicine, and more. Multifunctional farm animals such as sheep, goats, pigs, cows, and chickens will ultimately (and ideally as soon as possible) be integrated into this operation to increase on-site fertility while simultaneously providing diverse, healthy forage to the animals grazing below.

Beyond the farm and forest garden, further out in the well-established woodlot adjacent to the school will be a forest farming operation that focuses on the cultivation of edible/medicinal plants and fungi within an already existing forest. These include American ginseng, goldenseal, blue/black cohosh, ramps, shiitake mushrooms, and more) — and all will be processed/preserved and used in school lunches, sold at the school farm stand (and if appropriate/worthwhile, farmer’s markets). By the way, much of this area will also serve as the "classroom" for early childhood education – drawing heavily on the newly-named yet age-old concept known today as "Forest Kindergarten"

Students will participate in the establishment of a riparian buffer zone near any streams/rivers that runs near campus, as a means of addressing runoff and decreasing water turbidity (in addition to yielding yet another source of food/medicine and building materials via water-loving plants such as elderberry and willow).

Additional food for lunch is sourced from nearby farms, a number of whom will offer apprenticeships to interested students. All food is cooked on site (or in partnerships with local businesses), with ample opportunities student involvement throughout the whole process.

A variety of outputs from the farm (worm poop tea or worm castings [from the vermicompost bins that’re fueled by the school’s food scraps], student-designed seed packets, edible and medicinal mushrooms, honey from the bees adjacent to the food forest, fruits and vegetables, dried herbs, etc.) are sold at a school farm stand, farmer’s markets, and nearby stores.  With guidance from mentors (if necessary), interested students are helping run these businesses (and earning money through them) and are encouraged to start their own micro-enterprises (e.g. hand-woven scarves and hats from plant fibers grown on-site [jute, hemp, bamboo]) that earn them money and course credit at the same time, while providing a real-world opportunity learn what it takes to start and maintain their own business(es).

School Democracy

School governance is democratic, with students having a real voice in all matters related to the school. This will be an evolving process. It will likely involve [‘authentic’] consensus processes (such as those laid out by Tom Atlee).

Youth leadership is encouraged through sub-councils (e.g. a farm team, school zero-waste team, etc.), and by providing older youth plentiful opportunities to teach what they know to younger children (through workshops, lessons, and in some cases as paid classroom assistants). The farm will be managed by the students, likely with guidance from highly experienced mentors.

Homeschooling

The school also aims to align itself with nearby homeschooling families / resource centers (offering them opportunities for homeschooled children to participate in the school's activities, such as working on the farm, wetlands restoration projects, riparian buffer zone plantings, etc.).

Ecological Design Literacy

“Ecoliteracy” (or ecological design literacy) is built in a variety of ways.

Among other things, this means students will...

• Perceive systems and patterns

• Have a basic comprehension of...
• The laws of thermodynamics
• The principles of ecology
• Carrying capacity
• Energetics
• Least-cost, end-use analysis
• Appropriate technology
• Appropriate scale
• Sustainable agriculture and forestry
• Steady-state economics
• Environmental ethics
• Practical experience with
• Growing food
• Building shelter
• Using renewable energy
• Knowledge of local soils, flora and fauna
• Knowledge of the local watershed

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The above section draws heavily upon part of David Orr’s essay, “What is Education For?”.

In the earlier years, this is brought out through activities which encourage (mostly unstructured) play and adventure outdoors (probably in the forest), schoolyard forts & fairy houses, fantasy and imagination, empathizing with animals, maps and paths, “special places” (nooks/crannies for students to find and/or construct, and retreat to), creating “small worlds” (building miniature towns/villages from gathered natural materials), and “hunting & gathering” activities (collecting/gathering materials, going on treasure hunts). Yes, I am drawing heavily upon on the writing of David Sobel yet again. What can I say, I love the guy.

In addition to the surrounding farm / forest garden and the surrounding forest / rivers/streams, the schoolgrounds and buildings themselves serve as a natural landscape of imaginative possibility. Filled with nature-infused nooks and crannies, willow / bamboo structures, etc., they incorporate numerous design ideas from Asphalt to Ecosystems.

Social & Emotional Learning

Social & Emotional Learning (SEL) and Mindfulness are integral components of the school. TBC... this component is super important!

Circle council is held in a variety of settings — for parents, for school staff, and in classrooms. Through this, a safe space is created wherein participants can practice communicating authentically and listening deeply to one another.

Conflicts are resolved using nonviolent communication, restorative justice, and other means resolving conflict in which all parties feel heard.

Funding

Diverse revenue streams support the school, including but not limited to:

• fundraising events (auctions, galas)
• online crowdsourced fundraising campaigns (e.g. indiegogo, kickstarter) for specific projects
• grants and foundations (e.g. SARE)
• state/federal funding (e.g. USDA)
• “innovation-in-education” consulting firm (from a partner non-profit wing?)
• workshops & classes open to the public
• food/materials from the farm, forest garden, and forest farm...
• unique varieties of plants (sold in seed packets, seedlings, and full-grown/harvested)
• edible mushrooms, cultivated from food scrap waste (e.g. coffee grounds)
• compost and compost tea from our vermicomposting operation
• building materals (e.g. bamboo) grown on-site
• value-added food products (e.g. pickles from excess veggies, preserved/fermented foods)
• dried herbs
• beekeeping & honey harvesting
• savings generated by energy/resource efficiency measures, such as...
• energy efficient buildings
• renewable energy (PV, biomass)
• rainwater harvesting
• greywater systems
• solar hot water heating
• composting toilets
• closed-loop geothermal heating/cooling

hot water made through solar power and wood burning stoves

if sufficient food ‘waste’ is generated, this organic matter can be sent to a methane digester for a renewable source of energy


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This section is sooooo unfinished...

Grades & Grading Rubric

Students are not segregated into “grades” by the single year they were born. Rather, the school consists of different “stages”. For instance, it might be: Pre-K, K-3, 4-5, 6-8, 9-10, 11-12.

At other times – for certain classes, for instance – students are merged into groups by interest in a particular topic.

Intergenerational learning is a CORE part of the program.  Providing older students the opportunity to pass down their knowledge/experiences to younger children.  Providing them opportunities to teach (perhaps at other schools).

Rites of Passage

From Jefferson County Open School (JCOS). 

The integration of Rites of Passage into the school structure is critical. Drawing upon the models employed by other schools (e.g. JCOS), our school will have an innovative sequence of processes for 'initiating' students into adulthood.

TBC.

Misc.

Somewhere, someday (hopefully soon!), there will be a strawbale-built music recording studio and classroom w. ample musical instruments (many created from on-site materials, by students).

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So, there you have it. A messy outline, certainly... but it's there. And I will sleep better tonight because of that. Expect this post to evolve over time, and – as I said earlier on – please DO share your feedback (either here as a comment, via e-mail, or in person)!

Inspired to action,
Greg

A Home That Is Ours, But Not Ours Alone: Biomimicry in Education

Recently I’ve been visiting my brother in Bellingham, Washington, and in the process of adventuring here I’ve been graced with a few unforgettable experiences. Riding mountain bikes over steep, precariously mud-drenched trails (and living) was remarkable; equally so was the view from a recent hike we took.

An hour or so into an uphill climbing through acres of lush (cold, dripping, unrelentingly beautiful) forest, our path opened to reveal a clearing at the top of the ridge. From the vantage point of this particularly high mountain peak, I found myself greeted with a reality check in the form of a 360° view of sprawling human metropolises webbing their way across wide swaths of the coastal and forested landscape. Wow! I was at once fascinated, astounded by this visceral reminder of what human ingenuity is capable of – and slightly terrified, as the design of these human colonies reflected a relationship with the land based more upon dominion and control than reverence and partnership. Hmm. Indeed, it was not unlike observing an ant colony on steroids – with cars buzzing along in trails like ants foraging for food – except I know full well what fundamentally distinguishes us from ants. It isn't our size or scale; it's our design.

Everything ants produce, including venom, is biodegradable and contained in a 'cradle to cradle' system that replenishes rather than depletes. These creatures have been around for millions of years, exist all across the planet, and their activity nourishes the surrounding plants, animals, and soil where they live. [1] By contrast, human societies tend to end up in positions of ecological overshoot. [2]  "Tend to" does not mean "will", and at this moment in time we have the opportunity to design a different future: one modeled after the "best practices" that ant colonies and other natural systems have revealed to us.

If drawing our inspiration from ants seems a tad irrelevant, or besides the point, think again; we have everything to learn from them! As Chemist Michael Braungart has put it:

"We are not too many people on this planet. If you take the total weight of the planet's ants on one hand and the total weight of human beings on the other, you'll see that the ants' weight is four times higher. It is not only the number, but ants outweigh human beings. Further they have a much shorter life span than we have. And because they work much harder physically than we do, the calorie consumption of ants equals about 30 billion people. It is clearly not about the fact that we are too many. Ants don't produce waste. They don't need to minimize waste. They produce nutrients. Again, it is a design question.” [3]

Designing instead for regenerative human communities that are entwined in mutually beneficial relationships with their surrounding ecosystems will require that we reimagine our models for education. This post presents a glimpse at what the emerging field of biomimicry has to offer us, with regard to creating new models for education that are truly relevant to the world today's children/youth are inheriting. The first part, "Setting the Scene", summarizes the evolutionary context that underpins the second section, “Our Extended Family", within which I've taken the liberty of exploring some already-existing and soon-to-exist intersections between biomimicry and education. "From Inspiration to Action" is my attempt to conclude this exceptionally long post. Future posts will be shorter, I promise.

––––––––

Setting the Scene

It was recently brought to my attention that 99.9% of all species that have ever existed are now extinct. While that may sound rather grim, I invite you to consider seeing it differently.

Try this: in a moment, I'd like you to throw your hands up while saying in a celebratory manner, "How FASCINATING! We've made it this far!". I guarantee you, you'll experience elation if you commit to doing this right now. Just go for it!

As I see it, just being here deserves celebration. Nature has rather high standards for quality control — and it's a downright miracle that we humans are one of the nearly 9 million “best of” candidates that get to continue dancing through the journey of life a blue planet somewhere in a great big universe.

Equally miraculous is the rate at which we've been changing — for better or worse. If you were to condense this planet’s history into a single calendar year — starting January 1st, and ‘ending’ today at around 11:59pm on December 31st — homo sapiens arrived just fifteen minutes ago. All of recorded history occurred within the last 60 seconds. [4]

This infographic from Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone's Active Hope puts it in perspective: 



...and now let's put just those final 5 seconds into perspective:


The information compiled within these two infographics comes from a multitude of sources; if you wish to do further research the sources you'll get referred to through this page might be a good place to start.

What do you notice? What stands out? For me, what feels overwhelmingly clear is that as a species, we're incredibly young.

Right alongside this condition of relative youth, however, there's a very real sense in which "every particle in your body goes back to the first flaring forth of space and time", in the words of Joanna Macy — and as Paul Hawken observes, "one quadrillion cells make up a human being, and 90 percent of them are bacteria, fungi, yeasts, and other microbes, without which we could not survive. Therein lies a paradox: what makes us fully human is, well, not human." [5]

We're every bit as "old" as we are "young" — yet, as indicated by the last 20 seconds of the second infographic, we are (with the exception of our indigenous brothers and sisters across this planet) collectively behaving like shortsighted teenagers who've yet to realize that a lifestyle based on infinitely expanding, increasingly decadent parties cannot continue for very long on a finite planet.

In this special holiday season of doomsday scenarios and "end of days" predictions, it seems as important as ever to remember that escalating crises (of which we have so many right now it's hard to choose a single one and assign a hyperlink to it as if to say "Believe me now?"... but, if you insist, here's a good starting point) have, from an evolutionary standpoint, frequently served as the catalysts for both breakdowns and breakthroughs (aka evolutionary leaps). The conditions of our world right now do not represent a closing-of-the-book on humanity; they're an open invitation to create a better one.

––––––––

Greeting The Extended Family

Taking up this invitation will require us to expand the reaches of our empathy and our curiosity toward the wider web of life itself, the extended family of ours that David Abrams calls the "more-than-human world". Over the course of 3.8 billion years, life has "has learned to do some amazing things: to fly, circumnavigate the globe, live at the top of mountains and the bottom of the ocean, lasso solar energy, light up the night, and make miracle materials like skin, horns, hair, and brains. In fact, organisms have done everything we humans want to do but without guzzling fossil fuels, polluting the planet, or mortgaging their future. So, yes, we are part of nature, but we're a very young species still trying to get it right”. [6]

"Trying to get it right", indeed. As of late — and right alongside all the doom-and-gloom news, but without the same media coverage — there's mounting evidence that this young species of ours is entering a new phase of maturity: one focused less upon ourselves, and more upon learning from and living in partnership with our extended family.

This "extended family" I speak of is the 9 billion elders that surround you right now, and the "learning" is taking place in the form of buildings inspired by termite mounds that use a tenth of the energy of comparable buildings (and save themselves millions of dollars in the process); a carbon-neutral replacement for portland cement inspired by coral reefs; woodpecker-inspired bike helmets made of cardboard with three times the strength of standard standard helmets; a catalyst that converts CO2 into biodegradable polymers (mimicking the processes by which plants convert CO2 into starches, sugars, and cellulose); oil-repellent coating inspired by water bugs; digital screens inspired by butterfly wings that use only a tenth of the energy that LCD screens use; and self-cleaning building paints inspired by the structure of leaves. These represent a mere handful of the ways in which biomimicry is re-wilding our anthropocentric imaginations. 

"Biomimicry", as Janine Benyus describes it, "is innovation inspired by nature, looking to nature as a teacher". As an emerging design methodology, it is yielding cutting-edge breakthroughs in everything from shoes to cities — but it also represents far more than an avenue for product and building design. In Benyus’ words: 

“Seeing nature as model, measure, and mentor changes the very way you view and value the natural world. Instead of seeing nature as warehouse, you begin to see her as teacher. Instead of valuing what you can extract from her, you value what you can learn from her. And this changes everything.

It requires us to visit wild places and keep asking, How does nature teach? How does nature learn? How does nature heal? How does nature communicate? Quieting human cleverness is the first step in biomimicry. Next comes listening, then trying to echo what we hear.  

When we finally realise that unencumbered evolution is precious, the rationale for protecting wild places will become self-evident . . . After all, it's not a new gadget that's going to make us more sustainable as a culture; it's a change of heart and a new set of eyes, a new way of viewing and valuing the world in which we are embedded and on which we depend. We're a young species, but we're very adaptable, and we're uncanny mimics. With the help of our ten to thirty million planet-mates, I believe we can learn to do what other organisms have done, which is to make of this place an Eden, a home that is ours but not ours alone.”

It wasn't long after I began encountering example-after-example of biomimic design leading to remarkable innovations that I began to wonder: what might it look like, if we took the same 'design principles' that led to these breakthroughs — that is, the underlying patterns/principles revealed to us by nature's 3.8 million years of R&D — and applied them toward our social systems and our economics? Toward our models for leadership? Toward education?

I'd be happy to highlight existing examples of all the above in action, and to outline new biomimic possibilities for each. However, my intention is to focus specifically on education in this post — and for good reason: comprehensively incorporating biomimicry in schools and amongst this emerging generation of youth would more likely than not generate biomimic design solutions within all the other realms of human society.

If indeed we want a humanity that relates to nature as its "model, measure, and mentor" — one with such a depth of connection to the wider web of life that our politics, economics, buildings, city planning, food systems, art, culture, etc. are inspired by and designed to mirror the core patterns and principles of life itself — then we need to be designing educational environments that are alive with this spirit.

What might this look like? For starters, it could mean having "centers of learning" (a diverse range of schools, online education systems, decentralized homeschooling networks, etc.) that incorporate all the following...

Expanded upon below...

These fancy graphics comes from Biomimicry 3.8, who apparently has been studying, compiling, and trekking through mountains of scientific research to identify the underlying patterns and principles that we find amongst "successful" creatures (the ones that have evolving for 3.85 billion years). If there were a "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" for living on this planet, period, it would look something like this.

Conveniently enough, the same group that created the above diagram is the one that's pioneering new ways to integrate biomimicry into education. Their numerous education initiatives use workshops, online courses, certificate programs, hands-on K-12 lesson plans, children's music CDs, and more to empower youth and educators alike to inject biomimcry-everything into our culture.

All in all, I am thrilled by what they're doing. The larger intention — to "teach, connect, and nurture a community of biomimics who will amplify this work and spread it throughout the world" — is great, and I can understand why they are mostly focused right now on creating/compiling K-12 lesson plans and training educators at every level to bring biomimicry into (and beyond) the classroom.

At the same time however, I don't think we're going far enough. What would it look like, if we were to apply Life's Principles toward (1) the physical design of schools and schoolyards, and (2) toward larger systems... such as the US education system as a whole?

Comprehensively answering these questions in succinct, engaging prose requires a bit more experience with systems thinking and writing skills than I currently possess, but hey — I will give it a try. What shows up here on this blog is my firm commitment to speak from the heart and put ideas out there, even when they're primitive and/or messy.

The first (the physical design of schools/schoolyards) has been detailed elsewhere (see the Center for Ecoliteracy's "Smart By Nature" principles, as well as the section on Buildings that Teach, and for case studies of actual schools check out Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability), so in the interest of time I'll focus on the less-explored latter topic.

Being the systems thinking advocate that I am, I tend to view the US education system itself as a gigantic, highly complex organism. Every single individual who's involved with educating our youth, in some way or another, is a part of this organism. It exists in nodes upon nodes upon nodes of nested structures — families/parents, classrooms, schools, school districts, coalitions, conferences, education-related research/consulting organizations, etc. — who, in concert, shape the children and youth that shape tomorrow.

From this perspective, the question that's most alive for me is this: 

What does a resilient, diverse, locally attuned, highly adaptive, resource-efficient "education organism" LOOK like?

I don't know... but let's find out! Let's create it. I may not have answers today, but I have a starting point for finding them. It is outdoors, in your body, in every living system you see around you; it is called LIFE. It also happens to be getting cataloged at AskNature.org, where you'll find specific examples of how the rest of nature does the whole gambit of things that we humans also need to do to survive — but without burning fossil fuels or spewing toxins into our bodies and surrounding environment. Have you ever wondered how the rest of nature builds resilient systems, or what strategies nature uses to build diversity, to cooperate, to manage complexity? Well, I certainly have — and I’m stoked to now have an abundance of researched examples to turn to for guidance.

No better time to start that learning process than now, so here's a relevant point to close on. Given the complexity and messiness of our current education system in the US, we can do ourselves a favor by looking at how "complex social insects" (e.g. ants, bees) manage complexity. According to research, the success of their swarms (they are almost everywhere in the ecosphere) can be attributed to three main characteristics:

• FLEXIBILITY (the colony can adapt to a changing environment);
• ROBUSTNESS (even when one or more individuals fail, the group can still perform its tasks); and
• SELF-ORGANIZATION (activities are neither centrally controlled nor locally supervised).

This was interesting, too:

"Business executives relate readily to the first two attributes, but they often balk at the third, which is perhaps the most intriguing. Through self-organization, the behavior of the group emerges from the collective interactions of all the individuals. In fact, a major recurring theme in swarm intelligence (and of complexity science in general) is that even if individuals follow simple rules, the resulting group behavior can be surprisingly complex--and remarkably effective. And, to a large extent, flexibility and robustness result from self-organization." (Bonabeau and Meyer 2001:108)"

One of the most exciting political/social/economic analogs I see for integrating that last aspect can be found in the work of Tom Atlee, by the way. Check that article out! 

Anyway: what I took away from the above is that designing systems which encourage self-organization is of critical importance. But what migt that look like, in the context of education in the US? I don't have fleshed out answers right now, but here's a start: we need to (re)learn how to listen empathetically and communicate clearly with one another across lines of difference. For this, we can begin by fully integrating “social innovations” like circle councils into schools (both within classrooms and at staff, committee, teacher/parent, and/or community meetings) and designing infrastructure (e.g. organizations like the The Ojai Foundation) that facilitate the spread of this practice. If you can think of a sexier word for this than “social innovations”, I’d love to hear it.

While I think technological/web-based innovations in the realm of education (14 of which you can learn about in Forbes list of “30 under 30” for Education) can be great, what to me seems of equal or greater importance for creating a resilient, highly adaptive, self-organizing education system in the US is the development of social innovations that build our collective capacity to witness each other, speak vulnerably, and listen deeply.

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Moving Forward: From Inspiration to Action

Inspiration without action is ultimately of minimal value; action, grounded in a bold, passionate vision, is needed to create the transformations I’ve outlined above. In that spirit, I hope that reading this has moved you, challenged you, and amused you; most of all, however, I hope it inspires you to act toward creating the world you want to live in. Whether you identify as an artist, teacher, politician, economist, farmer, entrepreneur, or something else entirely, we all have a biomimic designer within us who is innately capable of problem-solving by asking first and foremost, “How would 'nature' do it?”.

Most likely, you also interact with kids at some point or another. To bring this capacity out in children, all of us can and must share with them our fascination with this more-than-human world. Rachel Carson’s famous words — that “if a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder . . . she needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in” — take on new meaning in the context of biomimicry. This begs this question: What opportunities will create the conditions for children to experience a sense of wonder/awe/reverence AND a clear recognition that “nature” – the dynamic force of which they are a part – happens to be an ingenious teacher?

Anyway. This has to end sooner or later, and frankly I'm having a really hard time "concluding" a post on such a generative, open-ended topic. It has become the unexpectedly large outpouring of enthusiasm that it is because, like Benyus, I share the conviction that with the help of our roughly 9 million planet-mates, “we can learn to do what other organisms have done, which is to make of this place an Eden, a home that is ours but not ours alone.” 

Here's to taking bold action to create that home...