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The Buzz About the Human Hive w/ Kate McAllister
126 Plays2 hours ago
When I sat down with James Mannion to talk about the educational polycrisis back in July, his long-time colleague, friend, and collaborator Kate McAllister was right there by his side. After the recording, Kate & I spent a long time catching up about her work and its intersection with our own, and we immediately vowed to remember to hit record the next time we chatted.
Kate McAllister is both a co-founder of The Human Hive and the founder of The Hive in Cabrera, a school for ChangeMakers in the Dominican Republic, where she joined me from for this conversation. Kate has over 20 years' teaching experience and has spent much of that time training and developing teachers and educators all over the world. She is a passionate educator, published author, fellow of the Chartered College of Teachers and The RSA. The Hive, founded back in 2020, is Kate's answer to the question "what if?" What if learning could be different? What if we did education with not for others? What if we can become more self-determined in our learning? What if education can help regenerate the planet?
And as you’ll hear in this episode, Kate’s personal and educational journey is a remarkable reflection of her dedication to the fully human messiness of growing and learning in community with others.
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Transcript
Introduction & Personal Reflection
00:00:00
Speaker
I very quickly became fascinated in young people's learning journeys because I met so many other children that reminded me of me who were not finding it easy to learn.
00:00:12
Speaker
Having put those two things together, actually I'm not stupid. There's something in the way of me being able to be good at this. And it's the same something that's in the way of them being able to be good at this.
00:00:23
Speaker
So what is in the way?
Podcast Introduction & Supporters
00:00:31
Speaker
hello and Welcome to the Human Restoration Project Podcast. My name is Nick Covington. Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this episode is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Julia Valenti, Dan Carney, and Sybil Prieb.
00:00:45
Speaker
Thank you so much for your ongoing support. We're proud to have hosted hundreds of hours of incredible ad-free conversations over the years. And if you haven't yet, consider liking and leaving a review in your podcast app to help us reach more listeners.
00:00:58
Speaker
And of course, you can learn more about Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, and connect with us everywhere on social media.
Kate McAllister's Background & Educational Journey
00:01:09
Speaker
When I sat down with James Mannion to talk about the educational poly crisis back in July, his longtime colleague, friend, and collaborator, Kate McAllister, was right there by his side.
00:01:21
Speaker
After the recording, Kate and I spent a long time catching up about her work and its intersection with our own here at HRP. And we immediately vowed to remember to hit record the next time we chatted.
00:01:33
Speaker
Kate McAllister is both the co-founder of The Human Hive and the founder of The Hive in Cabrera, a school for changemakers in the Dominican Republic, where she joined me from for this conversation.
00:01:45
Speaker
Kate has over 20 years teaching experience and has spent much of that time training and developing teachers and educators all over the world. She's a passionate educator, published author, fellow of the Chartered College of Teachers and the RSA.
00:02:00
Speaker
The Hive, founded back in 2020, was Kate's answer to the question, what if? What if learning could be different? What if we did education with, not for, others?
00:02:11
Speaker
What if we can become more self-determined in our learning? What if education can help regenerate the planet? And as you'll hear in this episode, Kate's personal and educational journey is a remarkable reflection of her dedication to the fully human messiness of growing and learning in community with others.
00:02:31
Speaker
But then again, on the flip side, I, you know, the background ah for him there in ah in Southern UK was not as glamorous or or glorious as the palm trees that you're sitting behind. So I'm wondering who who really got the better end of the deal. James often says, because my thing is self-regulation, right? Nervous system regulation. And he says, I got so good at it that I regulated myself out of my old life and into this one.
00:02:55
Speaker
i mean Honestly, that's such a great entree into the conversation. Situated, of course, you know in in your context there, but Kate, for ah listeners who may not be familiar with yourself and the and the work that you do, who are you and where are you joining us from and how in the world did you end up there?
From Traditional Teaching to Alternative Education
00:03:12
Speaker
So I'm Kate McAllister. I'm English. i was I'm a mother. i have two children. I was a teacher for a long time in the UK mainstream education.
00:03:23
Speaker
um But my pathway into education wasn't standard. I wasn't a good student who'd always played schools and wanted to grow up being a teacher. That was not my story at all.
00:03:35
Speaker
and I didn't do very well at school at all. I found it very difficult. and And I, you know, back in the 80s, if you found school difficult, it was generally speaking because you weren't very clever.
00:03:50
Speaker
So I just assumed that I wasn't very clever and I left school at 15 with no qualifications and I went and got a job. And i've heard that eventually took me to another country and I met someone and I got married and unexpectedly had a child.
00:04:08
Speaker
So very quickly was unexpectedly not married anymore and had to figure out what I was going to do. So I came to the logical conclusion that I could speak French And if I became a teacher, i could be a French teacher and then I could spend more time with my child because it was just the two of us and I could earn ah sensible wage, have a good study job and also get to spend three months a year with my son. so
00:04:38
Speaker
I went off to university where it was the first time that I discovered that actually I wasn't stupid. um I just had a different way of seeing world.
00:04:51
Speaker
And I think if I were 12 years old now, I would probably have been given ah diagnosis that would have put me on a special educational needs register and it would have got me support.
00:05:03
Speaker
um But anyway, All of that to say, i ended up as a teacher and it turned out that I had a natural affinity for it and I really enjoyed it.
00:05:14
Speaker
And I loved spending time with teenagers and tweenagers, kind of 11, 12, 13 years. that age and i very quickly became fascinated in young people's learning journeys because I met so many other children that reminded me of me who were not finding it easy to learn and Having put those two things together, actually, I'm not stupid.
00:05:44
Speaker
There's something in the way of me being able to be good at this. And it's the same something that's in the way of them being able to be good at this. So what is in the way? And so that's what started my journey, looking into not how teaching works, but how learning works.
00:06:02
Speaker
or doesn't work and why doesn't it work? And so that sort of led me along this spectrum from being a French grammar teacher in a very traditional English secondary school to what I now call a barefoot unschool and I'm in Dominican Republic.
00:06:20
Speaker
So it was a long journey and it kind of went all the way along the spectrum from very traditional know to as far as you could go alternative inside mainstream UK.
00:06:32
Speaker
And then kind of hopping out of the education system and then about five or six years ago, hopping off of the map and into the void and discovering that there's a whole other world out there.
00:06:44
Speaker
um And no dragons. And it's not scary. And the world of home education and alternative education is now where I'm finding my but in my groove.
00:06:56
Speaker
but I'm always fascinated um in the stories of educators who were were angular to the system as students and then decide that, oh, that actually is a role that I want to inhabit.
00:07:09
Speaker
And those tend to be teachers that end up being angular to the system as teachers and pushing the envelope and finding a niche for themselves. And I'm wondering if you could speak to that at all. um Obviously, you you ended up finding that life was going to take you in a different direction.
00:07:25
Speaker
But how did you feel about that experience coming back into being a classroom teacher after having the experiences that you had as a student? I think i would have I have what I would now describe to other family as as school wounds.
00:07:41
Speaker
You know, like it it damaged me, thinking that I wasn't clever and that I didn't fit and that I was always in the way. um And I suppose fortunately for me in the 80s, if you were an awkward student, you could just kind of not go to class and everybody was kind of grateful that you weren't there being awkward.
00:08:02
Speaker
um So I missed a lot of school, like months, a year, really, in the middle. And so I didn't pass any exams.
00:08:13
Speaker
And so school for me was ah just a massive flop and... quite soul destroying. um So when I went back in, I was really nervous of going back in. I kind of had this sense that it might It could be the same again for me, but I'd also had a really positive experience at university.
00:08:34
Speaker
So I'd got, it was my first experience of having positive feedback from um my teachers, if you like. And so I kind of had these two sides going on. I was reliving my childhood experience and I was also having an adult experience on top.
00:08:52
Speaker
So it gave me quite an interesting lens, you know, two different lenses to look at that experience through and to think about how my students were experiencing me as their teacher, how I would have experienced me as their teacher, um and how I was filtering what I was being told to do through that filter of how it would then be experienced.
00:09:21
Speaker
And so I think I figured out quite quickly that part of my role was to block some of it. Like it was my job to stop some of that rolling downhill.
00:09:35
Speaker
um and And I felt very protective in my role as an educator. That was going to be my follow-up was just going to be in what ways, right? Did you find yourself intentionally...
00:09:47
Speaker
you know, blocking or making room or or anything else. Did it occur over a period of time or was there like an inciting incident that caused you to think like, hey, you know, this aspect of education, right, is not how I envisioned um living out my purpose in education and then prompting the shift? Yeah.
00:10:08
Speaker
So I, yes, really quickly, when I was a ah newly qualified teacher that had my first experience in a big school, and it was a good school, like i I'd lucked out, I got put, you know, like I was at the top of the, I got the best school to go to when you're training to be a teacher.
00:10:24
Speaker
And very early on, I was brought to my door, out to the corridor, there was a teenager who's probably about 14 or 15. And he wanted to leave the corridor.
00:10:35
Speaker
And there was staff, like all I can say is kettling him. There were three at one end and two at the other and they were moving towards him. And I could feel, feel, gosh, it was like 20 years ago and I can still feel it now coming up in my body.
00:10:54
Speaker
um The panic that was in this lad,
Prioritizing Children's Experiences
00:10:56
Speaker
or he just needed to run and he wasn't being allowed to run. He wasn't being allowed to do what he what his body was telling him to do. And I remember thinking then, what is so important that is happening in this corridor that he has to stay when everything about him needs to leave?
00:11:13
Speaker
There has to be a better way to do this. Like this can't be, this can't be right. This can't be good for him. And that was years before I understood trauma and nervous systems and dysregulation and fight or flight or any of that, but I felt it.
00:11:30
Speaker
and And I remember thinking, I need to be more aware. I need to be more sensitive. I need to understand what would make a teenager feel like they want it.
00:11:44
Speaker
I mean, he looked like he was going to throw himself off the balcony to get away. And I know that sounds dramatic, but it really was like that. And and And so from there, that happened really early on in my career, right at the beginning.
00:12:00
Speaker
And I remember thinking that the child and their experience was more important than the school and the school's experience. And if I could figure out how to get those two sometimes conflicting objectives to line up,
00:12:19
Speaker
then the school could enjoy being a school and the child could enjoy being a child at school. You know, like it was naive, but I still believe that. I still am looking to try to make those two worlds collide in a way that means that we can, that, you know, that they can both coexist in a healthy way.
00:12:40
Speaker
My goodness, it sounds like over the course of both your experience, right, figuring out both the way that these institutions are going to work, either from the and inside perspective as a student or a teacher um or, you know, from an outsider perspective, too.
00:12:57
Speaker
And you said that like this incident occurred before you really had an understanding of um trauma or perhaps internally what's what's going on in the mind of that student. doesn't sound like a situation that was deescalating. It doesn't sound like a situation where that student was grounded, making rational decisions. Right.
00:13:16
Speaker
Probably would have been a healthier first step instead of right. Kettling them from across the corridor. But I wonder then what, was there a formal aspect of this too then to give you the language to think like, oh yeah, that's what was experiencing this. Were there other experiences or works or um people, ideas that you encounter that help inform that aspect of it?
00:13:36
Speaker
it came gradually over time. So then we sort of moved into the- social and emotional aspects of learning language it was the every child matters agenda in kind of the 2000s um and so there was a space for that then we looked then we were talking about climate for learning uh emotional intelligence that was starting to get woven into the education model in the uk it was a new thing and of course that lined up very nicely with how I naturally felt about children and learning and, you know, like that, oh, that fit really nicely. So I took that and ran with it.
00:14:17
Speaker
And that's where I began to develop. i mean, the first thing that I developed was language awareness because i'm still a like only a languages teacher at this time.
00:14:28
Speaker
And so i had this understanding and that my colleague was, um she'd been at a Steiner school, a Waldorf school. So she'd been alternatively educated her whole life.
00:14:42
Speaker
And so together we designed we designed this language awareness program which was about getting your ears ready and the muscles in your mouth ready and having a ah concept of language and and just like getting ready for learning languages so that you were keen to do it and you felt safe doing it. I think now I realise that that was me underpinning all the sort of foundations upon which safety is the foundation upon which everything else gets built.
00:15:14
Speaker
And so without having the language for it or really understanding what I was doing, I now understand that everything about what I did back then was about psychosocial safety.
00:15:25
Speaker
Do they feel safe with you in relationship with you? Do they feel safe in the space that they're in to become, to put themselves into a situation where they feel vulnerable? Learning something new means that you sometimes have to feel silly or stupid or it's uncomfortable because you struggle.
00:15:45
Speaker
So if you also feel vulnerable, you're not going to put, you're not going to walk out onto that limb, right, and make yourself vulnerable. So everything was about creating a sense of safety in the classroom so that children could walk into learning, walk into the challenge of learning in relationship with you, and it made you feel safe.
00:16:08
Speaker
So everything kind of came from that point. And, um, ah My colleague or my very good friend, James Mannion, who's Dr. James Mannion, who started out as a colleague, he and developed a program sort of, you know, 10, 15 years later that really brought that to life.
00:16:31
Speaker
So I was sort of gently putting pieces of that puzzle together um all of the time. And then... And I still am, right? I'm still including new things in.
00:16:45
Speaker
But I only really understood trauma and nervous system regime regulation of the languaging for what to describe what I was doing afterwards.
00:16:57
Speaker
So it was only when I left mainstream education and I went to work in a refugee camp, which is a whole other story. And I worked with a trauma therapist.
00:17:09
Speaker
And I spent
Classroom Dynamics & Human Connection
00:17:10
Speaker
a year doing that. I went, oh, so everything that I was doing was about nervous system regulation and everything that I was picking up and I had been drawing,
00:17:22
Speaker
um images, maps of how children are connected in this sort of connective web. And what I was drawing was the invisible vibration of all of their nervous systems interacting in a classroom environment.
00:17:38
Speaker
And so we used to call it climate for learning. And the the responsibility on on creating the climate for learning was on the teacher. And so the teacher had to get in early and set up their room properly and make the lighting and bring the food and be the thermostat, not just the thermometer in the room.
00:18:03
Speaker
All of it i like it, you know. And then after a few years of doing that, but and I got quite good at it, I was exhausted. was just so close to burnout.
00:18:14
Speaker
And I went, no this is not sustainable. This is not, we're going up the wrong path. If we're giving, if we're making teachers responsible for everybody else's nervous system being regulated, which I now understand that's what I was doing, they've they've got to co-regulate 30 different nervous systems And dip like 150 different nervous systems a day, right?
00:18:42
Speaker
One adult cannot co-regulate effectively 150 different nervous systems a day without burning out. It's not possible. So how do we get children to co-regulate with one another, to rely upon one another, to lean upon one another, to support one another and fill in the gaps for one another so that we can all just like...
00:19:07
Speaker
So we can all learn in a much more relaxed way. um And so that's been, that's really what my work is about now, is about being able to show people where those invisible connections are and make them visible and make that the foundation that learning goes on top of. And I think what we're learning more and more about now is that those connections practices, ah that understanding, ah those the structures that support what you're talking about here are actually key. They're like the forefront ah to preparing for learning, to creating psychological, intellectual, physical, emotional safety, to prepare for it.
00:19:54
Speaker
Right. These aren't just like an add on that you can decide to do on the side. It's like a prerequisite for everything else that's to come. um And what's so interesting is, you know, I pulled up ah the human hive, which is what I think we'll start to talk about next year. And just looking at.
00:20:10
Speaker
ah or thinking about the experiences that you've just discussed that journey that you've been on and seeing all of that expressed through that work there you've you lead on the website with ah these three values we believe that real change happens when you supercharge supercharge the power of people to help themselves giving them tools to rebuild psychological and emotional safety connections to others to feel a sense of belonging and then access to opportunity to meaning opportunities to regain purpose. Those three things, safety, belonging, and purpose. Those don't feel optional to me in any learning environment.
00:20:45
Speaker
How do those inform the work that you do at the Human Hive? And what's that about? So the Human Hive came about, so I was teacher for a long time, did all of this work inside the system, got stuck banging my head against a wall, couldn't get my ideas any further,
00:21:04
Speaker
um And so I i left. And at that time, there was something happening in Europe. There was a huge influx of people coming into France from countries like Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, Eritrea. was just like the hole as a whole the world was on fire and everybody was coming our way.
00:21:31
Speaker
And so i found myself at a point. where I was watching watching TV, might and And I was seeing it happening and I had been sending clothes for years and I heard myself say out loud, why this has been going on for years? Why isn't anyone doing anything about this?
00:21:48
Speaker
And I and it, jo you know, that light bulb moment, it dawned on me, well, I'm someone, what am I doing? I'm just like sending clothes. That's not enough. You could do more. What could you do? was like, well, they're stuck in France.
00:22:01
Speaker
I speak French. I've got time on my hands. and They're mostly teenagers. I'm quite good with teenagers. Maybe I could go and see if I can be helpful. So that's what I ended up doing. And that's where I met Darren Abrahams. And he's a trauma therapist.
00:22:18
Speaker
And so together we formed what became the human hive. Because we got there and there were lots of people, loads like, it was really just...
00:22:31
Speaker
the best place and the worst place I've ever been in my whole life. um The conditions were inhumane and awful. And the, but the, the beauty of the human spirit just shone through every day.
00:22:43
Speaker
um, And so we realized there were lots of people who wanted to volunteer and they just didn't know how. There was like just like this headless chicken, really compassionate headless chicken thing going on.
00:22:56
Speaker
And so together we we we put our skills and our knowledge and all of our sort of you know collective experience together. And we formed the Human Hive and we started by training volunteers in this human-centered practice, how you support people without um dehumanizing them?
00:23:20
Speaker
How do you support them to feel human again and to be able to support themselves in an experience which is so disempowering and so dehumanizing?
00:23:31
Speaker
and And that's where it started. So that's where the framework was born. i was sitting in a cafe and I saw it and I drew it. and it And I kept trying the model out again and again. I was like, oh, I think this keeps working. So that's still the same framework that we developed then.
00:23:50
Speaker
And so the human hive now supports anybody who wants to take action to make the world a better place. Whether that's in schools, at work, we've worked with and police teams, we've worked with social workers, parents, volunteers.
00:24:11
Speaker
We did a ah an online course with Cambridge University called Volunteering with Refugees. It's a free course, it was free when we made it. I think something like 15,000 volunteers who now support refugees with language development have taken our course.
00:24:27
Speaker
So it's just, it's that thing, right? I was staring at the television going, why isn't somebody doing something about that? I'm not the right person. The right people should be helping. Everyone is the right person.
00:24:39
Speaker
That's what the human hive is for.
The Human Hive's Mission
00:24:41
Speaker
Everyone is the right person. And with a little bit of training and support, you can find a way to connect with other human beings.
00:24:51
Speaker
And it doesn't matter what you do in that space. It just matters how you do it. um And so that's that's what we do. That's what we train people to do. So whether you're doing needlework or cookery or building websites, it doesn't matter what you do together. It's about being alongside somebody, co-regulating with them, creating these conditions for psychological safety to grow.
00:25:17
Speaker
um giving them the opportunity to feel that they belong and can re-humanize, and then supporting them in finding a purpose which allows them to ground and root and become who they were always supposed to be before their lives got turned upside down.
00:25:35
Speaker
And so that doesn't just apply, obviously, to people living the refugee experience. That's every human being on the planet. Right. Sometimes life is ticking along and everything's fine.
00:25:46
Speaker
And sometimes a crisis just comes in from nowhere. You lose a family member, you lose a job. um There's a hurricane. It doesn't matter what it is, but your whole world falls apart.
00:25:57
Speaker
And so being able to rebuild from there. is really important. And being able to support other people to rebuild from there is really important. and So that's that's what the human hive does. We support people who want to get better at doing that.
00:26:15
Speaker
And I can't imagine a more urgent need, especially in this moment, right? There, think people around the world feel particularly helpless and disheartened by what they see. And they think, I wish someone could do something about that. And,
00:26:32
Speaker
having a tool, an organization, somebody else just to connect with, to talk about these and to activate and help build that capacity. So, right. It's not just all, um, heat, right. Built up inside you, but then you can turn that into light somewhere out in the world. Um,
00:26:50
Speaker
i just love the framing on here on the website of people, place and planet asking, how can you help regenerate those around you? How can you take action to regenerate your community?
00:27:02
Speaker
How can you take wider action to regenerate the earth? Like, again, it's all focused on this collaboration, this regeneration, this restoration um of so many um parts of life. um ah Could you speak to like a particular project that you so either people who've gone through your program have engaged with or you've engaged with yourself that you found, again, particularly empowering either for you or the participants or had an impact that you felt was particularly powerful?
00:27:31
Speaker
So um one one person springs to mind. So um a young man called Elliot first came to volunteer with us in around Calais time, 2016, 2017.
00:27:45
Speaker
um He took our training, he was just coming out of school, not sure what he wanted to do in the world, um but he knew that he wanted to be helpful. and and do something meaningful. So he he took our training and he did some um volunteer work with us in the UK.
00:28:04
Speaker
And then he came out to stay at the Hive in Dominican Republic with me. And he did another training and became did some education work, started working with children.
00:28:15
Speaker
And there he really developed his passion for permaculture. And so he was helping us with the garden here and it became his real passion. He's now gone back to United Kingdom and developed a whole program for introducing permaculture into schools.
00:28:34
Speaker
So he's now got his own organization that supports children to reconnect through permaculture so that they can stay in mainstream school and have a way to be successful inside the system um and continue learning.
00:28:53
Speaker
So he took, he came as a teenager, grew into a man and has now got a whole thing going that's paying that forward to the next generation of children who are going to grow up and have a passion.
00:29:09
Speaker
And so him being able to become a change maker is the language that we use, right? Whatever you want to do in the world that you feel, ah ah can do that, right? You notice something that's not working and you think, I can fix that. I can contribute towards that being better.
00:29:27
Speaker
um He's really a poster boy for us. um And we're still friends and it's lovely. And he's just asked me for a reference for a job with a university.
00:29:38
Speaker
So he's um he's really turning it into something big, which is fabulous. So that idea of change making is not just for educators or people looking to get into education, although that is certainly the story of that young man, but change making for communities.
00:29:57
Speaker
you have a section for the arts as well for individuals, students, businesses. Can anybody then just become a change maker kind of learning and connecting to your program and the processes?
00:30:09
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. like There's a ah woman who's just been in and she's got nothing to do with education at all. She's in the healing arts and she's done the training and it has changed the way that she interacts with her prospective clients. So she had and she learned that her enthusiasm for what she did, her passion for what she did was so strongly energetic that it could be like that hurt the people that she wanted to work with could sometimes be pushed backwards by it.
00:30:47
Speaker
And so her understanding of nervous system, co-regulation and how to deal with people has had a huge impact on now who she can work with. And that's got nothing to do with teaching. She's just found it has had a big impact on how she connects with her her own children and how she connects with her clients in her business.
00:31:07
Speaker
And honestly, i mean, kind of remarkable that the things that we've been talking about this whole time just so like aren't front and center in any formal education, right? You're talking about somebody who probably was well-educated, had had those experiences and perhaps at a point in that formal education was never made it explicit.
00:31:28
Speaker
Again, that grounding, understanding yourself in relation, right weighing those that co-regulation, those relationships. And it seems like maybe that was the missing piece, right? To really help her connect, not just in her professional life, but um you know person to person as they engage in that work too.
00:31:46
Speaker
i'm I'm wondering, Kate- We don't learn this stuff. No, we don't learn this stuff. It's a story to interject. And and often, Often your life has to completely fall apart.
00:31:57
Speaker
And if you're lucky and you've got enough money, you can go into therapy and you might learn some of this stuff. Right. Or if you can afford a business coach, you might learn some of this stuff.
00:32:11
Speaker
um And so there's a whole swathe of humanity who are feeling that they are just the way that they are and the world works the way that it works and they have no agency to change their human experience.
00:32:27
Speaker
And I think that's where it all comes back to that for me, this the the sense of feeling that if something is not sitting well with you, if it is not making you feel comfortable and content, that you have the power to change it.
00:32:43
Speaker
You have the power to change how you feel in your mind, how you feel inside your body. And that ripples out into i can change the dynamics in my friendship group. I can change the dynamics in my family, in my work, in in just every aspect of my life. I have the power were to make change if I want to. um And, yeah, that's that's I guess that's at the core of all of it.
00:33:13
Speaker
Yeah. and And again, that's not that's not like woo-woo or that's not metaphysical or yeah supernatural. There's not an appeal to that. Like that's just human stuff. And yeah, it's it's not made a focus of, you know, that that formal education. So people can get through all of that and realize that those are really the missing pieces that they didn't pick up along the way.
00:33:35
Speaker
Now, I'm wondering, Kate, like even in like the best... classroom context right that i'm thinking that i that i taught in you know the best day was not necessarily all sunshine and rainbows what are some of the significant challenges you know that you all have to overcome there um what are the what are the hurdles that you face in engaging in like this real frank honest human stuff i think like the key issue is nearly always that that we are are responsible, right? So this is hard. This is the hardest bit.
00:34:08
Speaker
So we are responsible for the vibrations that are coming towards us that we allow to dysregulate us. And we are responsible for the vibration that we're pushing out towards everybody else, right? so when you find yourself in a situation that feels uncomfortable, there was probably an opportunity somewhere further back that you did not take that could have changed where you are.
00:34:35
Speaker
So if, so that's the hardest thing when I'm teaching people about this model is the resistance and the unwillingness to accept that if you have the power to change everything, they go, yeah, yeah, like the way that feels, like the things that haven't changed in your life, they're on you as well, right? Like that's, that's, that's where it's sometimes tricky.
00:35:03
Speaker
Yeah, the mantra, you know, if you can't change the world, change yourself. And that's, I don't think that's a call to just be comfortable with injustice or be, you know, become um comfortable with the status quo.
00:35:16
Speaker
But right, it's a call, um I think, to then direct your energies in an action that could eventually be productive and make, you know, lead to a better situation.
00:35:27
Speaker
regulated feeling for yourself and then feeling like you have agency and, ah um you do have some sort of control over the world. Um, and again, as we were saying earlier, i think things like this are urgent in this time, especially, and something that I've personally grappled with, with that notion of like, what's within my locus of control right now, right? In a world that's on fire, you know, or, you know, your, your social media feed is, ah is, is burning through with all the bad news constantly every day. Like, what can I change about either myself or my behavior or, you know, my environment, my ecosystem that,
00:36:06
Speaker
Yes, right. Helps me feel grounded and regulated, but then let's that be a platform for action for me later on at the small scale, right? The small is all sort of idea. If I can be, if I can be good to myself, right, understand how I'm doing, then I can be a good parent for my kids, right?
00:36:26
Speaker
right And that has trigger that has impact as they go to school and they can be you know role models or good friends and peers. right They can be stewards of their environment in those in those small little ways trickle you know outwards. um I guess I'm trying to justify it or or rationalize it. right as people I think people overlook it. right They want action, action, action. And sometimes the first step is actually, no, stop.
00:36:50
Speaker
Understand you know yourself. It could be trauma. could be triggers. it could be your own barriers to getting through those. But ultimately working through that is like an investment in the action that you're going to take later on.
The Role of Feelings in Behavior
00:37:02
Speaker
I don't know. I'm just vibing, but what are your thoughts about that? No, I agree with you because when you, when you I mean, this isn't like ah an expression of of educators. All behavior is communication, right?
00:37:14
Speaker
But it's true. so When you understand that, when you think about your own behavior from a nervous system, when you start right at the core, and they go, my behavior is driven by my feelings.
00:37:29
Speaker
My feelings are driven by some kind of stimuli. Well, that means everybody else is our two, right? So if somebody's a jerk to you in the street, that's probably, there was a stimuli further back.
00:37:43
Speaker
There was a big feeling that they've not been able to deal with. So they're being a jerk. Now, you now have the opposite that's the stimuli to you. Someone's been a jerk to me.
00:37:53
Speaker
It's created a big feeling. i want to tell them what a jerk they are. And actually, what you can do is respond with compassionate curiosity. i wonder why that person is being such a jerk.
00:38:04
Speaker
And if you just assume that people do not wish to be a jerk all day, right? Like their loved ones know that there's a version of them that isn't a jerk. and I just assumed that that person is in there somewhere and that they're having a bad day.
00:38:21
Speaker
And so understanding nervous system reg dysregulation allows me to be more human in how I go through the world, right? It just allows me to be a bit more compassionate. that's just a bit of knowledge.
00:38:36
Speaker
Just because I have an extra bit of knowledge, it changes the way that I behave in the world. And so... that changes the way the people around me behave ah dadada da dada dadada and it and it goes out. So I deliberately try to smile more. I deliberately try to slow myself down.
00:38:57
Speaker
I deliberately try to do things that will not dysregulate somebody further who's already having a bad day you know I just have a little extra awareness um and that doesn't mean that I don't lose my temper it doesn't mean that I don't get triggered when somebody cuts me up in traffic um but I have learned that when I do that I can go back and repair all of that's part of it so
00:39:27
Speaker
I think once people have that awareness, it stops feeling personal. It's like, kind of wasn't me, it was my nervous system. I'm responsible for regulating my nervous system and not letting it get out of its box, right? And just run rampant in in public.
00:39:45
Speaker
um And when that happens, I go back and fix it. Yeah, I think as we had talked about um off camera, post James, you know, the, the man in podcast there was like that pause, right? Just that pause that allows that shift in, in mentality from, you know, the reactive nervous system brain, like you touch a hot stove.
00:40:09
Speaker
It, you don't have to sit there for five seconds and think about a rational response, right? Your body acts. And I think, a lot of times ah people let that action, you know, or that reaction guide their actions and their intentions and only reflect on it later on is like, oh, shoot, you know, like I overreacted or I had the wrong action action in that moment and then and then feel awkward or ashamed or anything else. And something as easy as that pause, you know, to help understand that sensation of what you're feeling um can help lead to, i don i guess, better intentional actions, know,
00:40:44
Speaker
And really, it sounds like what we're talking about is just understanding yourself as a human being and how we're all going to deal with those emotions on a daily basis. We're going to get angry. We're going to be frustrated and sad. We're going to be elated and happy. How do we not let all those vibes out of the world to perhaps ah trigger or you know set off other folks sometimes? But understanding yourself as a messy, complicated human being is like the first step towards understanding others and empathizing with them and humanizing them in whatever context of of difference or you know language barriers or you know they're just ah different interaction speeds.
00:41:23
Speaker
Sorry, I'm processing. ah ah ah it Do I have to pay for this therapy session, Kate? is this oh No, no, no, it's fine. I'll Venmo you, 50 But it seems so simple, doesn't it? It does, that's what I'm saying.
00:41:35
Speaker
I'm sitting here talking to you and thinking, you've not got much to say, Kate. Like, this is not that interesting. And then I think about all the people that I meet all the people that I meet in their adult life and then, and they do this training and they go, Oh, like, it's like, what really?
00:41:52
Speaker
Like if I just woke up in the morning and journaled, if I just took a breath, if I just and checked in with myself regularly to notice when my like nervous system was getting close to the, I could have a completely different life.
00:42:12
Speaker
And you're like, yeah, yeah. You could, you know, like every time you got fired or this happened or that happened or actually there's a pattern in your life that you have the power to disrupt.
00:42:27
Speaker
And here are some tools that you can use to disrupt those patterns. it's both very empowering and intimidating, you know, to know that I have, or I have had that ability in myself, uh, and that need for so long and perhaps it's gone unaddressed. And yeah, yeah maybe there is,
00:42:49
Speaker
you know, like ah ah some shame and baggage associated with that. But really, i think the the thing that keeps popping into my mind is like, that's the missing link, right? That's sort of the key that unlocks the success of so many other human endeavors, not just in education, but ah in any ah ah anything that involves interpersonal relations. And I can't right now think of something that doesn't unless you're you know, just sitting in front of a computer all day, not and interacting with human beings, but for ah for the rest of us, we're going to have to figure out how to how to interact.
00:43:21
Speaker
Kate, I really want to know. We are getting closer to that being a future, right? If we don't learn how to interact with each other as humans, at the moment we have to, right? So we have to push ourselves through the cheese grater of life and keep having uncomfortable experiences with other humans.
00:43:38
Speaker
But it won't be long before we don't have to do that.
Future of Human Interaction Skills & Technology
00:43:41
Speaker
So if we don't learn how to get good at it, we can choose not to do it. And I'm not sure that that's a great pathway for for growing up and feeling good about yourself. I mean, I could be wrong, but it doesn't feel like it's going to go well.
00:43:59
Speaker
And so when I started doing this work, I was thinking about... um Playground fights and wars and what they have in common, right? that That's what happened in my head.
00:44:13
Speaker
was like, this is the same stuff that's playing out in the playground that has sent all of these teenagers to walk across the world and some of them perish on that journey. Like there has to be a way of teaching children how to manage their big feelings so they don't get out of hand, right? That's what started it.
00:44:33
Speaker
And I didn't know that AI was coming back then. I had no concept of it. But now suddenly feels it feels like this is a really important piece that needs to go in so that as children are growing up into this new world, they can...
00:44:53
Speaker
They can feel their buttons being pressed, right? It's all that is. Your nervous system is pressing buttons and it's moving the levers and it's making decisions for you if you don't notice.
00:45:07
Speaker
If you notice, you have the opportunity to go, no, not not that lever. I don't need to do that right now. No, I'm going to employ this one instead, right? So you can notice when your outrage button is being pushed.
00:45:20
Speaker
You can notice when you've drifted offline and you've just zoned out. You can notice when you're deeply in flow and it's really good and expansive and you want to stay in it, right? You're not on autopilot through life. You're in the driving seat.
00:45:36
Speaker
And that applies to learning. It applies to human relationships. It applies to everything. Or at least that's how I feel about it. Well, I wonder, Kate, if other people hear what you're saying and they're vibing with that too, right? They think that describes a lot of what I want to learn about. How can people connect with you? How do they connect with the human hive? What's the what's the best way to learn about it and perhaps to take the step to to get involved in the
Connecting with Human Hive & Kate McAllister
00:46:03
Speaker
work you're doing? and So um there's the Human Hive website, or you can email me, kate at thehumanhive.org.
00:46:13
Speaker
um And we can have a chat about how you want to interact with the Human Hive. I also, ah live in the Dominican Republic because I have a place called The Hive.
00:46:27
Speaker
So the Human Hive is, there's in-person training, but a lot of it is at distance. And so i really do like a bit of human interaction, being in the same room. i want to be able to pick up on your nervous system and you be able to pick up on mine.
00:46:43
Speaker
um And so I have this sort of, um I have an actual place in the Dominican Republic where you can come and you can bring your children and we can all learn how to do this together.
00:46:55
Speaker
So it's like not a school. It's an unschool. It's like deliberately not school. but in that sense that you come together as families with children and you learn how to be more human, um that exists as well.
00:47:11
Speaker
So there's like the grown-up version, which is the human hive, and i'll you can do training with me and I'll teach you all of these tools and strategies and and coach you through applying them in your life.
00:47:22
Speaker
And then there's the children's version, which is – um the sand pit for doing all of this. There's tree houses and gardens and a swimming pool and animals and all the things.
00:47:38
Speaker
I honestly kind of thought that it was all wrapped up under that human hive. But if you want to take a couple more minutes and just speak to like the work of the hive and of those kids specifically, because I'd love to hear you speak a bit more at length about what that looks like, how many kids typically participate, you know, what, what about the families you're serving? What is that the work that you're doing there?
00:47:59
Speaker
So doing the work with the human hive took me out of one-to-one interactions with children and young people, and I missed it. And so the hive is a physical space.
00:48:13
Speaker
It's like a, it's a campus, right? So there's rooms that we inhabit, and there's a swimming pool, and there's a garden, and there's a food forest.
00:48:24
Speaker
And so it's the perfect space. playground, the perfect place really for developing these um autonomous skills in children and young people.
00:48:37
Speaker
So we we pick ah a global goal to work on around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. And we look at a global challenge through the local lens of here in Dominican Republic and also the lenses of all the different places that the children who are there are from.
00:48:56
Speaker
So families fly in from all over the world like little bees. And ah we all cross-pollinate ideas and we all learn how to do new things together.
00:49:08
Speaker
They stay for six weeks and then they go back from whence they came. And the idea is that they can then use their change-making skills in their local context.
00:49:20
Speaker
So they can then recognize an issue in their local context and And they go, oh, I know how to do something about that. I've just done something about that at the Hive. And they can start their own little change maker project back where they live.
00:49:37
Speaker
So that's how the Hive works. So it's a really, it's like a live version where it's not just, I teach you the concept and and you go off and practice on your own.
00:49:51
Speaker
This is like, I teach you the concept, you practice alongside me. We build it up together so that you feel really strong and confident in your change-making skills, and then you go off and do it by yourself.
00:50:05
Speaker
And as I click through the website, I'm also finding not just those six-week courses, you offer maybe some mini experiences in here as well, ah sort of on a smaller scale. do you want to speak to any of those?
00:50:19
Speaker
Yeah, so we do six-week change. That's big six-week changemaker program. and then there's and And that's mostly for families who homeschool, right? So you have to have already stepped off the map a little bit, right? Stepped off of the traditional education model for your children and b be looking for something like that.
00:50:38
Speaker
We then do like three-week version. It's like ah almost like a summer camp in the summer holidays in June. Yeah. And so that's a ah ah shorter, more concentrated version. And then we also do family experiences.
00:50:56
Speaker
So you can come for a week as a whole family and go on this journey together. So we we just, it's a way of...
00:51:07
Speaker
understanding self-regulation and your dynamic in your family and rebuilding with some new strategies and things that you can use and just a new way of communicating.
00:51:18
Speaker
So we do things like we've just done i a regenerative family adventure where we've learned how to make things from scratch.
00:51:30
Speaker
I know it doesn't like, so we got coconut from the tree and we drank coconut water and then we made coconut oil and we made coconut milk and we made coconut sweets and we made cacao from scratch together.
00:51:43
Speaker
and it's just that sense of Again, getting out of autopilot, right? Getting into the driving seat, doing things together as a family where the child is a novice and the parents are a novice and everybody's going, wow, coconuts can do all that.
00:52:00
Speaker
And we're doing it together so that there's a shared... ah shared a truly shared experience for families to reconnect in, and and then a sense that hopefully they will want to continue learning and doing new things together and and and creating that sense of positivity and connectedness together, you know, just like human restoration stuff.
00:52:25
Speaker
Oh, yeah. ah who Who would know anything about that? who Who would care about restoring humanity to the to the world? Wow. I mean, it sounds so comprehensive. It sounds sounds like you keep yourself busy, Kate. taken me like 20 This been 20 years life.
00:52:42
Speaker
been twenty years of my life That is just, oh, that's so amazing. And I'm not going to lie. i have about 14 tabs open with all those little things. And I'm like, man, I wonder if I could, you know, float one of those with one of one of my kids, either six week thing, perhaps that November to spring or one of those summer excursions would be would be really interesting. um Yeah, it just looks like a real incredible connective.
00:53:09
Speaker
um powerful, meaningful learning experience. um Well, my goodness. welcome. I'd love to have you. thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today.
00:53:22
Speaker
No, thank you for inviting me on. I've been following following your journey. For many years, um I was on a something, some kind of educational call-in back in like 2017, something like that. And I heard you guys speaking.
00:53:39
Speaker
And so I was following you on Twitter from then. And then when James said he was on your podcast, i was like, that's not fair. I've been following on with what they're doing for years and years.
00:53:51
Speaker
So thank you for inviting me back. And it's been really, really enjoyable waffling on about all the things that i care quite deeply about. It's so great to, yeah, to finally connect and ah give you the platform to talk about your experiences and the awesome stuff that you're doing too. I think it's so, so necessary.
00:54:16
Speaker
Thank you again and for listening to our podcast at Human Restoration Project. I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to start making change. If you enjoyed listening, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast player.
00:54:27
Speaker
Plus, find a whole host of free resources, writings, and other podcasts all for free on our website, humanrestorationproject.org. Thank you.