Welcome Rosemary Morrow author of Earth User's Guide to Teaching Permaculture

Photo Source: Permanent Publications

This week Rosemary Morrow will be joining us to talk about permaculture education.

There are four copies of her book, Earth User's Guide to Teaching Permaculture up for grabs.

Rosemary will be stopping by on the forum over the next few days answering questions and joining in discussions.

From now through this Friday, any posts in this forum, ie the permaculture education forum, could be selected to win.

To win, you must use a name that follows our naming policy and you must have your email set up in Paul's Daily-ish email.

The winner will be notified by email and must respond within 24 hours.

Posts in this thread won't count, but please feel free to say hi to Rosemary and make her feel welcome!

Hi Rosemary - welcome to Permies. How great to have you here!

Thank you so much for inviting me on to this Forum. Ive been teaching permaculture since 1986, before some of your readers were born. I often think how lovely it would have been to have had permaculture as a career option at 20 years old. But it didn't exist at that time. So I studied Agricultural Science and Horticulture. The basic sciences were useful as foundations but the policy at that time was to turn Australia into English garden soil through removing every tree and scrub and add heavy fertiliser. Essentially it was an enormous work to convert dry Australia into an English garden. Such damage was done in the trying. I recognised the truthfulness and thought about the "place" itself and its needs in permaculture. However being a skeptic, I searched to see what else was available and to this day I have not found any thinking, program, big idea which delivers such a comprehensive solution for our societies.

Having been a development worker in some African countries and having found myself at a loss for relevant approaches, I decided to use my time and knowledge for people who cannot access good quality information. And so my teaching career was launched but I could not have envisioned the outcomes.

So from having been a scientist working in development, I had to unlearn. But what seemed so profoundly unfair what that people I lived and worked with in Lesotho, had no possible way of accessing good information - in this case permaculture which would improve the quality of their lives. Permaculture appeared to have many of the answers.

I returned to Australia for family reasons and decided to learn about teaching. I was offered a radical course in Non-formal education. It made sense. No top-down curriculum, no entry qualifications and a long exciting history whose first records we have go back to Socrates. And later through the ages and in the 20thC people like Gandhi and Paulo Friere. It meant your bag was the permaculture curriculum and some butcher's paper and you carried that out to the market and places where people are and offer it. Absolutely no one controlled it and once you had a PDC you were able to be start.

My PDC was very chalk and talk - the Sage on The Stage. I'd had years of this at Univesity and reckoned it was disrespectful to adults who had a lifetime of experience. So I focussed on learned-centred education. This was wonderful. People know about food, they garden or their parents did. They know about food. Their knowledge and the curriculum became a dance. And it has never ended. The music goes on.

I write once a year to David Holmgren and Bill Mollison and thank them for Permaculture and giving me a life with such meaning. It seems we carry a sacred trust in having it. But I also thought that the curriculum was a bit one sided on the Care of the Earth ethic and the actually delivery of a course need to demonstrate Care of People and so create a community of Learners that would continue after the PDC. So I simply asked participants for behaviours which meant that we treat each other well and teachers to model it. I didn't develop a curriculum but rather gave help for behaviours that challenged me.

Next I'll chat about the curriculum and why I wrote my books.

Hi Rowe - nice to see you here

Hello Dawn:

Are you teaching now? It'd be good to hear if you are and what your experience is.

warmly

Rosemary

Welcome Rosemary!

Rosemary Morrow wrote:Hello Dawn:

Are you teaching now? It'd be good to hear if you are and what your experience is.

warmly

Rosemary

Very informally - we have started a Home School co-op and the kids come here twice a week and those who want are making a community garden. We also have volunteers here and people just dropningen by to see what we are doing. We had planned to host a PDC w. Alfred and Melanie this fall - but I don't think we had completely fathomed just how much work we have here - just renovating the house and building food systems for us is /a lot/ - but we are getting there.

I saw that you have had courses with Milkwood farm, and several times wished that I could go to Australia to participate - but I am sure Marcus, Melanie and Alfred will give me a faboulus PDC either way you have taught them well!

Hello Michelle:

Are you teaching? What is your approach and what joys and sorrows do you have.

warmly

Rosemary

So I ran the winner picker app in the forum software and we have 2 winners.

Robert Curris
and
Matt Powers

Congratulations Robert and Matt!

I sent you an email to ask for the email address of the person that first referred you to Permies.com. That person (if qualified) will also get a copy of the book and a permies care package.

Thank you so much Rowe, Paul & the whole Permies.com crew for the copy of your book; I'll have to return the favor soon!

There's nothing a teacher is more interested in than the discussion of how to teach better. I can't wait to learn how to teach Permaculture better!!

Thank you!

MP

Hey Permies.
Thanks. Great to win the book. I'm a teacher. Never knew it till I was in my 50's. NowI want to spread the word on Permaculture but there's so much I still have to learn and to try.
Thanks again
Rc

Thank you Rowe!
Thank you Cassie, Paul & the whole Permies team!
I can't wait to absorb this!

So excited for you to read it and tell us how it is.

I can already tell you it is in a format designed for teachers with prompts to ask students, tasks for students & a whole series of other treatments that are for teachers and found in all good manuals. I think it might be best to use it in a PDC to know its true value. I was toying with that idea for this winter...