Respect the wisdom of the Earth

Life pushes back against a story that excludes it.
~ Margaret Wheatley
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We live in a culture where loneliness and scarcity is an epidemic. From this lack of connection and trust, and not knowing our deep belonging to each other, this Earth, and this life, we end up extracting and consuming from the Earth. These principles, when practiced by a community in place over time, guide us back to a relationship to the Earth and to a place of remembering our interconnectedness with all life. 
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Foundational Resources

• ​Educators as Architects of Living Systems: Designing Vibrant Learning Experiences beyond Sustainability and Systems Thinking, Dr. Barbara Widhalm
• Look to the Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Education, Dr. Greg Cajete
• Living Systems Principles and their Relevance to Design, Terry Irwin

Further Resources
Living Systems Principles Explored

• The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems, Fritjof Capra
• The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision, Fritjof Capra
• Origin of Humanness in the Biology of Love, Humberto Maturana andGerda Verden-Zoller, and Pille Bunnell

Living Systems Applied

• Nature's Design Principles, Sam Chaltain
• Education as a system or an organism?, Vivek Kumar
• Organizations as Living Systems, Manoj Puwar
• Living Systems and High School Dropout Rates
• Social justice leadership in living systems, Max Klau at TEDx
• Ecoliteracy: Learning from living systems, Daniel Christian Wahl
• From Tree to Shining Tree | Radiolab
• GaiaEducation.org – Design for Sustainability
• Next Level Transformation: Inventing Community-Based, Learner-Centered Ecosystems - Education Reimagined
• Seed and Spark, Sam Chaltain
• Flow The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Leading living systems, Kathleen E. Allen | TEDxEdina
• The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Peter Senge
• Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World, Meg Wheatley

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Springhouse examples

• Roanoke Times: Project Based Learning and Building a Banjo 
• Springhouse Community Gathers to Bless New Space
• Teen Perspective on Climate Change
• Beth Macy leads community dialogue on opioid epidemic with Springhouse learners 
• Springhouse Gets Stronger
• Floyd Virginia Publication: Springhouse Community School Has Moved to a New Building
• 'Who Are the Local People?' Native Leaders Want Ancestral Ownership Acknowledged

Reflection questions

• ​​What would a curricular or pedagogical structure that protects and cultivates curiosity, creativity, and emergence look like? 
• What are living systems principles and how do they show up in an educational or cultural or community design?​​
• How does your current personal and community design honor and foster wholeness? Self regulation or self-creation?  
• Where do you see evidence of emergence in your life and community? 
• How are you in interdependent relationship with the community you are a part of? 
• What is your personal connection to the Earth? Do you have practices that connect you to your place? Does your community? 
• What are you learning from the way the Earth works?
• What does this quote mean to you from Margaret Wheatley: "Life pushes back against a story that excludes it"? Have you experienced this? 
• What is your relationship with death? Is it important to address in an educational or community design? If so why or why not? 
• Which resources on the resource list did you study? Do you have questions?
• What questions do you have about how Springhouse experience living systems principles in its vitality-centered educational and community design?
  
  
  

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