The story so far

Tamara left Bunyip in April 2009 seeking what she needed to know for her permaculture future. She spent 9 months at her Aunt Catherine's farm in Arid South Australia, then 9 months at Bill and Lisa Mollison's farm in Tasmania. Now she's off on more adventures starting Moonrise School of Permaculture and teaching Permaculture Design Courses in the beautiful Dandenong Ranges near Melbourne. Ducky is there for the journey...

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Planetary Permaculture Pilgrimage! Robin Clayfield at Crystal Waters

Hello beautiful people! I am on day 2 at Robin Clayfield's Creative facilitation permaculture teacher training.



I am writing from the community space at crystal waters, a lovely big verandah where we have been eating our means. The mozzies are being kept away by Delvins dub step music :) We have been having classes up at the eco centre - a purpose built building initiated and paid for by Max Lindeger, one of the grandfathers of the permaculture community village.

We have been cooked for by a wonderful Thai resident of Crystal Waters, tonight we had Pad Thai - his mother's recipe from southern Thailand.

The classes have been awesome with the group settling in and getting to know each other through a variety of "glue processes" led by Robin. Last night we had an evening of trust games - and had a great laugh learning techniques and modeling a group of people learning with each other.

This is the third time I've done one of Robin Clayfield's courses - I felt very strongly that Delvin, myself and the pilgrims would get an enormous amount from the course - especially since Geoff Lawton's course was predominately chalk and talk, small group work and presentations to the class.

The processes we've been doing is wonderfully familiar to me - and - when we touched on revision today - at 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month and 1 year - I realised this is my one year revision from the last two courses. 


After Robin welcomed us to Crystal Waters and acknowledged the traditional custodians of this land we went into learning about our own learning styles - empowering us to take charge of our learning. There were a couple of questionaires - one on how we learned - being a visual, auditory or kinesthetic learner - I was equal between the three - apparently the best way to be - yipeeeee. Then we did 7 intelligences - I am very high on the spacial and inter and intrapersonal and low on the logic - or perhaps I didn't feel very logical when I was doing the questionaire - I do put myself down as a logical person - but I can't be that bad - I've helped organise the Pilgrimage!!!!!!





 I am really interested in the multiple intelligences I have a quote by Albert Einstein I love:

 Everybody is a genius. But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid. 



Robin used a special card game we reviewed teaching techniques that relate to each of the 7 intelligences:

nature (added by Robin)
- nature journal
-- natural collage
- outdoor activities
- pick your own lunch

spiritual (added by Robin)
- meditation
- ritual
- sacred space
- symbols

logical
- lineage diagrams
- research
- make lists
- key word cards
- cross words

linguistic
- write a story
- write a letter
- read
- rewrite notes
- diary
- journal
- write and give a speech

interpersonal
- discussion
- field trip
- study groups
- tea breaks
- small group work
- personal stories

intrapersonal
- private study
- individual research
- ask yourself
- questionaires
- meditation

spatial
- flow charts
- diagrams
- models
- mind maps
- video adventures
- plans
- art sculpture

physical
- hands on
- models
- games
- visualize acting out
- field trip
- role play
- cush ball

Its incredible how many different teaching techniques, strategies and methods Robin as already used in the course. Incredible!

Introduced to concepts in course design we explore target groups, training objectives and competency needs, as well as program design and details. Delvin, Ali Ma and I got into a group and selected three
teaching techniques to guide our process : " Ritual, Sandbox and Treasure Hunt".


I've settled in well here, though I did skin my knee last night on the walk back to the bunkhouses. I also had a wonderful swim with friends in the creek tonight and I feel really anchored in to this beautiful place.

More news and pics soon! xxxxxxxxxx

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