PLEASE NOTE -- ALTHOUGH WE ARE NO LONGER ACCEPTING APPLICATION FEES, IF YOU HAVE INTEREST IN ATTENDING THE COURSE PLEASE JOIN OUR WAITING LIST. YOU CAN CONTINUE TO SEND YOUR COMPLETED APPLICATION DOCUMENTS TO US (SEE BELOW) AND WILL BE NOTIFIED IF A COURSE OPENING IS AVIALBLE.

Send completed applications to easternpennpermacultureguild@gmail.com to be added to our waiting list for this course.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST IN THE COURSE!

Teaching Permaculture Creatively:
An Intensive Professional Permaculture Teacher Training Course

March 23 through April 1, 2012

Kimberton Waldorf School, Phoenixville, PA


Consider this proposition:
Events make the best teachers.  The most significant learnings of our lives mostly come from situations we have experienced, and even when people lecture well, they make their presentation an event from which we learn.  Given that events make the best teachers, it follows that effective educators focus their energy on designing effective learning events.  How does this apply to teaching permaculture?

This nine-day intensive Permaculture Teacher Training explores how to create permaculture learning events, applying ecological principles and processes to the design of permaculture workshops, courses, and other experiences.  Learn how to quickly assess students’ learning modalities, eight intelligences, and other niche characteristics; create effective learning environments; design multifunctional, functionally interconnected courses where the whole experience is far greater than the sum of the sessions! 

Each trainee in this course will design and run short classes and exercises, speak in public, plan and budget an event, and coteach a public one-day permaculture workshop at course end.  What do whole learning systems look, feel and sound like?  Come find out!  The best way to learn is to do, and to have fun doing it!  Join us!

Limited to 27 certified permaculture design course graduates; pre-course preparation required.

Teaching Permaculture Creatively Course objectives:

• Participants experience and develop the complete suite of skills needed to begin successfully teaching short permaculture workshops and other events on their own.
• Participants leave able to contribute significantly to teaching certified permaculture courses under the mentorship of an experienced permaculture teacher.
• Participants experience taking the seat of the teacher multiple times during the course in a variety of settings, both within the course and in a public venue.  We all grasp the essence and significant details of what it means to create effective learning environments and effective learning events. 
• Participants come prepared to collaboratively co-create the teacher-training course and teach a one-day public permaculture workshop (specific requests for how to prepare will be laid out after acceptance into the program). 
• Participants collaborate to create a community of learning teachers and teaching learners:
  -we cocreate a safe, supportive, fun, healthy, and whole learning environment;
  -we support each other to take risks, share ourselves, grow deeply, move through edges and perceived restrictions, explore new ideas, and try new teaching styles and approaches
  -we share and constructively evaluate each others’ work;
  -we cooperatively develop shared resources for the larger permaculture teaching community.
• Participants clarify, articulate, and evolve their beliefs about what a teacher is and what is their teaching pedagogy.  We all experience putting that pedagogy into practice consciously.  We all have the opportunity to deprogram beliefs that inhibit our effectiveness as teachers and learners.
• We experience all of the above through learning events and experiences that express, embody, and demonstrate the principles of permaculture design in action.
• We have a total blast doing all of the above.

Course Staff:
Dave Jacke, primary author of Edible Forest Gardens, has taught innumerable workshops and courses across the country using the principles you will learn in this training.  This is the fifth teacher training he will lead.

Farmer, educator, and designer Chris Jackson works with at-risk youth and livestock at a school in Plainfield, VT, and homesteads there.  He took this training with Dave and Jono Neiger in 2007, and has taught three trainings with Dave since.

Kim Almeida hails from the south shore of Boston, where she farms vegetables, cranberries, workshops, and social systems.  This will be her second outing helping run this training, which she took in 2009.

Costs:
PLEASE NOTE:  WHEN APPLYING FOR THIS COURSE, PLEASE PAY ONLY THE APPLICATION FEE (not the course fees) UNTIL YOU HAVE BEEN NOTIFIED OF YOUR ACCEPTANCE INTO THE PROGRAM.

• A $25 nonrefundable application fee applies to course cost if accepted.

An additional (nonrefundable) deposit of $275 is required to hold your
place, once you've been accepted into the program. 

• Cost for tuition, meals, lodging: $1,300-$1,700 sliding scale.

Early application discount: $1,250 if a completed application is received before February 1!

Commuters (no breakfast or lodging included): $1,050-$1,450 sliding scale,   $1,000 if completed application received by February 1.

Full payment is required by March 9, 2010

Download a course Brochure, Student Outcomes, Partial Scholarship and Application Information at:
http://www.meetup.com/permie/files

REFUND POLICY:  50% of fees (less non-refundable application & deposit fees) refunded for cancelation prior to 3/10/12.