Regenerative Ed

This week I'm talking to teachers AND musicians, Shanna and Eric of By Light We Loom, who have their music has been featured in movies and countless stages. We check in about how music can teach us about teaching, focusing in on four areas: presence, process, rhythm, and emergence.

About Shanna and Eric

Since its origin in late 2014, By Light We Loom has toured heavily with highlight stops at MidPoint Music Festival, Brite Winter Festival, NEO Cycle Music Festival, The Heights Music Hop, and opening for notable indie acts: The Paper Kites, Car Seat Headrest, Maps & Atlases, Telekinesis, Lucy Dakus, Sondre Lerche, Deep Sea Diver, The Mynabirds, Twin Forks, The Kin, Kopecky, Radiation City, Matt Pond PA, Frontier Ruckus, and more.

By Light We Loom released their debut EP, "The Ignition," in May of 2015 to critical acclaim and local radio play. Maturing their sound through live performances, they quickly released a more realized EP, "Caught in the Tide," in January of 2016. "Caught in the Tide" received nationwide radio play, landing the album in the Top 100 of the College Radio Charts. The success of this album resulted in By Light We Loom being named Cleveland Magazine's "Best Indie Rock Artist of 2016" . Songs from "Caught in the Tide" were also featured in episodes of PBS's "Roadtrip Nation" in 2017 and 2018. They followed up this release with an intimate four-song EP "Canopy" that pays tribute to Eric's father who passed suddenly the year prior. Most recently, By Light We Loom's original music was featured in the award winning film "The Enormity of Life." Eric and Shanna are currently working hard on a new release due out in October of this year.

Regenerative Ed Links (UPDATED SINCE THIS EPISODE AIRED):

• WE ARE VERBS! It's a program and a community for educators who are interested in regenerative futures, and we'd love for you to join! You can now get a podcast-specifically-for-you, access to the resources on the blog, access to the breathing room (breathwork for educators!) for FREE (forever) by joining our first tier. Check it out!
• If you love Patreon, we're on there! For as little as $3 you can support this podcast and join in the co-creation of this podcast. THANK YOU SO MUCH! Patreon.com/regenerativeed
• If you enjoyed this episode, you could also choose to support us through a one-time donation or recurring donation on our website! Thank you so much!

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Today I'm sharing about a potential purpose for ed we can rally around while recapping what we mean by "Regenerative Ed" (surprise-- they're similar!). While I share my own thoughts, this episode is meant to be a conversation starter, not an end-all-be-all answer!

Share your thoughts about what education is for on our Regenerative Ed Mighty Network (ya'll, it's free.).

We believe that reciprocity is an important part of a healthy living system, but that doesn't necessarily mean $$ through our Grounded Teaching Patreon. If you got something out of this podcast, send us a word of affirmation, share the podcast with a friend or rate/review, or even shoot a prayer/send a good vibe-- we will take it! :)

There are so many entry points with the potential to jostle us awake from what we may perceive to be "just the way things are"-- and gender binary is one of those (major) ways our culture can get stuck in black-and-white thinking... which is, as you know because you're here, pretty incongruent with the idea of being better educated. Finn Menzies shares queerness as one entry point--one portal-- to being able to see and live more freely. So let's dig into it!

Finn Menzies has been an educator for over 10 years. He has taught in classrooms ranging from preschool to college. Currently a kindergarten teacher, his priority is creating an environment that promotes connection, awareness, and curiosity.

Finn is well known in his community as a teacher of trans experience. He offers guidance to LGBTQ families & has shared his story as a part of FLASH, King County's comprehensive sexuality education curriculum.

When Finn is not teaching kids or consulting grownups, he is either writing poetry about the magic and the albatross of growing up as a trans man or facilitating UNdoing Ego: a writer's workshop on meditation and generative writing.

• https://www.qinclusion.com/
• http://picturesofpoets.com/Poets/finn-menzies/
• http://www.finnmenzies.com/

Other mentions:

• Podcast I mention that features the mycologist, Guiliana Furci, who notes that "without decomposition, there is no regeneration".
• Regenerative Ed Mighty Network-- our new free community for any education professional who wants more life in the system!

It's a twin talk! Which means I sit down with Grounded Teaching co-founder (and my twin sister) Jess, who also happens to be a wildly talented high school English teacher going into her 17th year in the classroom.

We start out by introducing our new Regenerative Ed network--it's totally free!

What is the Regenerative Ed Network? We're trying to distance ourselves from facebook and wanted a place we can build a movement of teachers, ed leaders, etc. who really care about the future of holistic education.

Best part: you can meet and interact with people from all over! Today is the launch day, so if you join today, welcome! You're one of those people that shows up to the party first! But please engage on there.

We can't wait to connect with you there!

Place Based Ed: Jess spills the details of her year-long Edshed project. We cover

• What we mean by "Edshed", and how our experience co-organizing a local fashion group helped us come up with the term.
• The details and challenges of the project, including
  • the dispositions and skills students learned
  • the concept of only issuing one grade at the end of the year-- what happened when she tried less grades and how she did it
  • how she worked with other teachers in her building
  • the student results at the end of the project (whoaaa!)
  • what differentiates this edshed project from other place-based projects

We may beat ourselves up because this year didn't go as planned. STOP! "Should have" is rooted in fictional fantasy of the past, and it's not a helpful centering of reflection for moving into a more regenerative way of being, teaching, leading, parenting, etc. We aren't in the past. We are here. Quit shoulding on yourself.

In this episode we talk with Dr. Brad Kershner, a school leader, educational researcher, and author of many essays and a book titled Understanding Educational Complexity- Integrating Practices and Perspectives for 21st Century Leadership. We get into the goal of education, identity, educational leaders (not managers!), definitions of faith and hope that could be helpful for all of us in ed. We even get to touch on social media, polarization, and technology-- this conversation spans a lot of really deep topics, and I hope it can be a springboard for our own contemplation about our roles in the ed system.

More About Dr. Brad Kershner:

An Earth Day episode where I take a good look at the work I did today as a literacy coach, and, maybe how it's effective or not, but more importantly, how the whole dang thing might be anchored in the wrong stories. Some solo musings, today, friends!

Are we wasting our energy in ed? Short answer is that it's complicated, but based on the perennial, indigenous, connected wisdom that there is no such thing as "waste": THE ANSWER IS NO. But it feels like we are.

Because, why else would we be SO tired?

Jess and I try to tease it out by thinking about reciprocity, living systems, and the mechanical ed system in this twin-talk episode.

We're in a season of melting here in the Northern half of the US. If we think about education as a living system, we've been in a frozen winter structure forever. Let's take a lesson from nature. It's time to thaw out. In this episode we mention: Free Breathwork Workshop on March 19

I'm F*cking Tired: An Energy Retreat for Teachers