Thanks to Green School Village we had the opportunity to visit Sweden and take a course about how to teach, how to diversify and make your teachings better. It was again similar to PDC, with main teacher and few support teachers that helped each other and gave different points of view, shared their own experiences and thoughts about “How to” do teachings. All of our teachers had Diploma for applied Permaculture design (diploma holders) which is important and in a way necessary to have enough experience and answer the many questions that comes up during the course.
Sweden has very different climate from Bulgaria and it was extremely good to see and be in almost completely different ecological climate zone. Here in Bulgaria lately we have more problems with droughts and hot summers, whereas in Sweden is quite cold and very wet almost throughout the year. In our integration day we had looking like a tour into small national park and saw how the “wild” nature is looks like.
The place where we had the course was quite nice. Traditional buildings and good atmosphere. It was late winter and everything in the garden was still dormant but we could see that there was a big diverse garden, big lake, new building and small projects were started. We could also see how the local community and the local people were involved and taking part in different projects. The school and the place itself were really good example of how Permaculture really works in the social aspect, because other local people were interested and wanted to get involved into what the Permaculture people were doing.
The course itself was very diverse and very organized.The days went like this:
We had breakfast, morning circles and little physical activities, then lessons, then lunch, some free time, then other classes, dinner and then other classes or free time to do “homework” for the next day.
The teachers themselves were really amazing. They shared really interesting stories from their own experience. They had so much knowledge that is common for permaculture people but still was mind-blowing.
The students also were really nice with quite a bit of new things. It is often nice to have time to hear learner`s knowledge, because there is a lot to hear. And the time to listen to nice stories and to learn knowledge is never enough.
The Permaculture is constantly developing and adding more and more knowledge to itself. If implemented, Permaculture is definitely something that will benefit the regular schools and educational systems. The solutions of the many problems that humanity and the nature faces looks simple, when someone get more into Permaculture. There are so many people that are constantly developing their own knowledge and teaching skills.
Teaching is a passion, it is an art, it is something that some people are naturally good at, and others needs to practice more, but sharing positive information and how to do things better, how to garden better, how to communicate with others better, how to build communities better, is something that you could learn in such a course.
This course also gave me perspectives and ideas how to create courses in my own country. How to make the participants comfortable, how to make sure everybody are satisfied, how to avoid conflicts even, how to adapt during the course to the specific needs the current participants have.
The idea of LAND centers is amazing to me, because to some people Permaculture could be somehow abstract when hearing about it for a first time, so the LAND centers will visualize and show the results in practice. And also something very important, LAND centers will help a lot to build the community. LAND centers will be places where people can learn, teach and meet other likeminded people with similar interests and ideas.
Our goal is to continue developing Permaculture in Bulgaria, to create LAND centers, to make open teaching tours and to exchange.
