Dynamic Groups, Dynamic Learning Courses

Feel like an adventure to South East Queensland? The next ‘Dynamic Groups, Dynamic Learning’ creative teachers, facilitators and group leaders course is happening at Crystal Waters EcoVillage from 17th to 22nd July. This started as an Advanced Permaculture Teachers Facilitation Course in 1992 and has now become a valuable and leading edge training for all professions, though at least half the participants are Permaculture People. Let Robin know if you’re interested 🙂 She’d love to welcome you to her home community and this great learning adventure 🙂 Here’s the poster at larger size for more details Here’s the link to the FaceBook event

In September it will be 30 years since Robin and Skye offered their first ‘Advanced Permaculture Creative Teachers Facilitation Course’ as a result of many people asking them how they managed to present a whole 2 week Permaculture Design Course without using lecturing and other non-participatory learning methods. The pair spent the next 12 years or so supporting people to facilitate learning rather than ‘teach as an expert’ and published ‘The Manual for Teaching Permaculture Creatively’ in 1995 to address people’s requests for written documentation of their approach to education. Since the early 2000’s Robin has evolved the bones of this early work with Skye into a Learning methodology called ‘Dynamic Groups, Dynamic Learning’ and offered it to a broad audience from trained teachers, NVC Practitioners, CD workers through to Art therapists, Healers, Genders workers and also corporate people. View a related post to see some recent testimonials. You can …

“A Practical, interesting and creatively inspiring course – I learned more applicable skills here than I did in a University Curriculum Design Course!” Jana Sacco – Canada 2019 Director of Terrawisdom Centre and Starfish Synergy Consulting. “I came into the course feeling a bit bored and uninspired by my work. I am leaving feeling totally re-energised and excited about the possibilities to apply what I have learnt. I now feel a clear sense of how I can continue to be more and more effective as a facilitator in a healing environment”. Clare Beverly – Crystal Waters 2020 Mental Health Worker “This course taught me not only how to respond to the learning needs of the group participants but gave me tools to accelerate and enhance my own learning process” Alexander Hugh Frazer – Canada 2019 Permaculture Educator and Landscape Designer “Robin is a national treasure and powerful teacher and elder. …

Robin’s wonderful creative friend, collaborator, author and documenter extraordinaire Delvin Solkinson recently asked Ben Tour to create an artistic image of her for use in her work and promotions and also for Delvin to use in his eNewsletters, books and promotions. “Thanks so much Delvin, I love it, though it is rather flattering and shows me as a younger woman! I can live with that.” Robin said recently.

I am back in France, back in school as a primary teacher. I try to implement some facilitation techniques you taught during the course. Your wild cards inspire me when preparing my class. As a kinaesthetic, remembering the feeling of your course supports me in going to work and doing my best to share a “dynamic” energy with my pupils despite the stressful conditions. Thank you Robin for the experience and the tools.

It’s early Feb 2021 and it’s almost a year since I did the Dynamic Groups facilitation workshop. Since then, I felt more confident to take way more risk in my Permaculture teaching. Many times in the past, I have used a PowerPoint to do a 9-4pm Introduction to Permaculture course and so I challenged myself to ditch the laptop altogether, and plan only interactive activities with me as a facilitator only and not THE teacher. This was risky because one doesn’t know the students, they don’t know each other, and what if I cannot guide them in covering all the content in the allotted time!?  They started in pairs introducing themselves and then introducing their partner to the whole group. In pairs again they came up with a definition of permaculture. The essence of these were shared on to a board. Even though this was an Intro workshop, I only …