Education & Wellness
"Each of us has a child within, a part of us that needs nurturing, mentorship, and guidance, a creative spirit of idealistic possibilities and infinitely expansive dreams. It is to our great benefit that we care for this child, and it is our most sacred responsibility as a community to foster an environment of respect, support, and unconditional love to our youth, for the foundations we establish determine the depth of their every challenge and triumph."
Gratitude to Educators
Our teachers, administrators, coaches, and school staff have been dedicated to our children's growth and expansion, despite the circumstances. Even with relatively low social adoration, disrespectfully low compensation, constant cuts of resource allocation, and bureaucratic overreaches, they have remained committed to their jobs, not because it was easy, but precisely because they knew it was necessary. Frankly, what positive outcomes we do receive from this soulless and conditioned system, we can attribute to the persistence and presence of good teachers. Thank you to all those who serve our children in these difficult conditions. We promise to do everything in our power to make your job more fulfilling, inspiring, and to give you every resource you need to do the work you love.
A Broken System
Children, we have failed you. We have allowed this go on for too long.
It's time we call it like it is: Our education system has been degraded into a hollow box crushing the creative spirit of individuality, training us for blind obedience, division and distrust, to mentally prepare us only for an adulthood requiring most above all else our protection of the disgraceful status-quo, rather than training us to intuitively connect with our higher selves, nor the encouragement to stand up for what is right against all odds. The fact that we have any positive outcomes from this system is purely a testament to the strength of the human spirit, and a glowing example of how special children are.
Most of our children are emerging from 18-22 years of schooling without confidence, without skills, without direction, full of depression, anxiety, fear and lack of social cohesion, in addition to myriad of diseases, conditions, and a dearth of knowledge of the spiritual realm, the traditions of our Mother Earth, and mislead by a distorted historical perspective deviously crafted by the corporately controlled victor-class.
Let me be clear: this is not the fault of anyone specific,
but it damn sure is our responsibility to do something about it.
The time has come for a NEW approach.
Vocations & Mentorships
Children intuitively know who they are and what they want. What they need is the respect and trust to follow their instincts, and the protection to explore and experiment within a context that honors individual sovereignty and teaches them the grace to respect all life. Simply by presenting options to a child will they find an aptitude for a particular skill. It is our job as "the village" raising our children to expose them to the most diverse possible experiences & knowledge-base, and give them every resource they need to discover a field that excites their own individual spirit and serves our collective growth.
The early childhood years should be all about play and fun, connection with nature, experience with boundaries and manners, respect and love for all living things, and above all else an environment that is peaceful and free from stress. While the state cannot mandate a home life, we can do everything as a people to rally behind supporting everyone in our community, so no child is every lacking love and encouragement. Often, if a child is experiencing such neglect, it is because the inner child within the adults raising them is also in need of healing and unconditional love. It's morally imperative that we step in as loving neighbors to prevent this cycle from repeating itself.
The middle years before young adulthood should be distinguished by the development of emotional intelligence. This time will be when we learn about connections with our society as a whole, when we lead by example through our utmost respect for one another, our strength in forgiveness and compassion, and our dignified leadership through service. This will be the stage of most emulation, so it is largely defined by what models we give them to emulate. In addition to this, we must gracefully challenge their perceived limitations, so they become forced to re-examine their own selves in terms of re-defining what they used to believe possible. The most cutting edge research must be shared, the most innovative studies, the most difficult questions asked, and the most urgent demands of society must be raised in a responsible way, for this is the time when children grow their empathy for the condition of our planet. By blending the rigorous study of all subjects with their gut-driven emotional compass, they will find their own path to follow in the world.
By the time adolescence arrives, young people know who they are. I have confidence in the leadership abilites of a teenager, and I trust what they believe is true and just. (It is only through our disrespectful age-shaming model that teenager grow doubts of themselves). By this stage, it is time for these young people to determine their passions and pursue them with an intense flame of passion. The best way to accomplish this is to free them of non-relevant obligations and empower their full-on pursuits of their life mission. Every person is a genius in something, and I believe we should not limit the growth potential of someone just because of their age. Everyone would be 'prodigy' if we simply allowed them to follow their dreams and not burden them with irrelevant chores. For example, why would a young master at physics need to be burdened by a mandatory literature class when they could simply be in a laboratory or workshop innovating to better our future as a species? I say, let the youth go where they are called. Stop this madness of prison-like educational curriculum and let these youth interact with real world scenarios and become contributing members of our society. Let their school be a limitless sampling of vocations until they find their place of highest-expressed potential.
Austin ISD can become an open-ended place for humans to become great, rather than just another school system bound by the oppressive ideas of boring bureaucrats. The real question is, are we willing to become great and serve our children, or are we going to settle for another generation hampered by dumb rules?
Classroom of the Earth
Something seriously missing in our education system is connection with and stewardship for Mother Earth. By spending time indoors, children are deprived of the most precious teacher we can offer them: nature. Nature is our first and our last teacher.
When children develop a love of nature at a young age, they become grounded and grow with a foundational love for their environment, and a connection to something deeper.
Nature teaches us how to be curious.
Compassion & Love
Love is our truest nature, our deepest and most expansive form of connection with the planet, with each other, and with all our activities and behaviors. We can fall in love with something as simple as a gust of wind, or the graceful movement of a footstep. While love is in our nature, it must be nurtured and guided into it's fullest and varying forms of expression, so that we raise humans into the world who are confident in their ability to discern, and fully uninhibited in their unconditional love for life itself.
Yet, too often love is omitted from our education of children, not with bad intent, but rather that we assume this is being taught in the household. There are many of us who still have conflicting understandings of this life-defining topic, and we must realize it does not take one expert to write a book for us to learn; this takes a tribe-wide effort, and likely has no definite end-point. The expansion of love is infinite and ever-evolving, but nonetheless a subject we must dedicate full attention and awareness to exploring fully.
When someone is fully loving themselves and being genuine to their highest good in the moment, with this comes a deep compassion for the experience of others. This empathy is grounded in an honest consideration for each other's individuality, and how our own unique experiences contribute to the formation of the whole.
This core awareness in children helps them become higher functioning adults and overall better leaders, innovators, and contributors to the expansion of humanity. Even if some may be uncomfortable with the word 'love', one can embrace this idea as a 'wise investment' in 'developing emotional intelligence in the leaders of tomorrow'.
Who knows, when our children are raised by a village of love, they may be able to teach us a things or two about opening our hearts to possibilities...