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Land Based Practices in Education
91 Plays6 months ago
In Episode 8 of Season 2, we're talking about land based practices in education.
In this episode we hear...
• A reflection from our host Tiffani Marie, who shares with us her experiences incorporating the natural world in her pedagogy
• Youth expert Isaiah who illuminates the joys and the happiness he experiences in nature
• Theo Johnson and Jas Wade, sit down with Kenjus T. Watson and Jewell Bachelor for our Mic Check..1,2,3! round table segment and talk growth, land stewardship and accountability to the natural world
Drawing From The Well is hosted by Tiffani Marie.
The podcast is co-produced by Tiffani Marie and Jon Reyes with music by Jansen V.
DFTW is supported by Community Responsive Education.
Continue the conversation at youthwellness.com
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Drawing from the Well'
00:00:01
Speaker
Drawing from the Well is a podcast series from the youth wellness movement. We are educators, researchers, healers, parents, and community members striving to repurpose schools to address the critical wellness gaps in our youth's development.
Challenges for Students in the Pandemic
00:00:19
Speaker
Founded by Community Responsive Education.
00:00:26
Speaker
I was a classroom educator during the pandemic, and it was really hard for my young people because it was their senior year in 2021. 2020, we were online, and then 2021, think a lot of young people were expecting to go back to school, be in person, and it was particularly hard for my young people because it was their senior year.
00:00:51
Speaker
It definitely wasn't the senior year that they had envisioned. So we were doing the online thing and we were trying to still incorporate a lot of our practices We were still focusing on an ethnic studies
Outdoor and Ethnic Studies Classes
00:01:10
Speaker
model. We were trying to be culturally relevant and responsive, but we were trying to do this thing through the screen.
00:01:16
Speaker
And it was hard. There were days that were really solid, but young people were fatigued. They had a lot of screen fatigue. And they had a lot of schooling, very little education. And so we took a risk.
00:01:27
Speaker
And we asked certain parents, actually asked all of the parents and some were willing and felt safe enough to allow their children to meet us in person.
00:01:40
Speaker
And we held class in the land, on and with the land. We still did our online program along with schools and other school communities around the nation, but we had strategic time once a month where we were masked and we turned our classroom into this space that existed beyond the four walls of our school.
Leadership and Growth in Nature
00:02:12
Speaker
And that time you know consisted of, there was hiking, there was meditation, and it was such a really profound time and experience with the young people that we were allowed to work with whose parents felt comfortable because we saw sides of them that we hadn't seen before. I think a lot of educators have seen this often when they, sometimes when you take kids camping, you see a side of children that you just don't see in the classroom.
00:02:43
Speaker
Usually a lot of the young people who are the ones who are reprimanded the most in schools are the ones who shine in the natural world, who shine on those camping trips. I've always noticed this in like 16 years of teaching.
00:02:59
Speaker
And it's intense to me. And I started to really think about that. And you start to see certain leadership skills develop. You start to see aspects of these young people and how they blossom when there are particular weights. And I say the weights of schooling that are eliminated or that are removed.
00:03:20
Speaker
And what we began to see in this time together was a lot of emerging of their emotional lives, their social emotional realities, we started to see our young people as whole beings.
Nature as a Learning Environment
00:03:41
Speaker
And even though we thought we were doing and engaging in really expansive frameworks, the natural world was such a more beautiful classroom because We didn't control the means of learning.
00:03:59
Speaker
We didn't put caps on our time limits on what learning looked like, how it happened, and what the objectives were.
Student-led Nature Lessons
00:04:09
Speaker
You know, I remember when first went and young people ran toward the tadpoles and there was a biology lesson there that they led, that they engaged in, that they incorporated their own hypotheses around.
00:04:20
Speaker
You know, there were like feathers within certain flowers or trapped on weeds and young people navigated there and made sense of like what could have happened that night. They developed theories about which animals had been there and what had been happening.
00:04:38
Speaker
We were, you know, planting and taking care of plants in the natural world and we asked them to speak to the plants and meditate with the plants and hear from the plants.
00:04:49
Speaker
There were profound senses of knowledge production that I just had not seen in the classroom. And I've been impressed by young people, but there's something about the trees. There's something about the sun. There's something about the air that i think these elements served as additional teachers to us, to our young people.
Limits of Traditional Schooling
00:05:16
Speaker
There was space for them in much more profound ways to connect to the ancestral realm. In those moments, I thought about how much we were keeping from both ourselves as teachers and educators in our understanding of learning and of education and what that can look like when we confined it to schools and how much more robust and generative our practices can be when we are immersed in the natural world.
00:06:03
Speaker
What's up, y'all? And welcome to Drawing From the Well. I'm your host, Tiffany Marie. Today's episode focuses on land-based practices and education.
Focus on Land-Based Practices
00:06:13
Speaker
You just heard a reflection from yours truly.
00:06:16
Speaker
And up next, we have youth expert Isaiah, who illuminates the joys and the happiness and the slowness that he experienced in the natural world. And for our Mic Check 1-2-3 segment, we have Theo Johnson and Jazz Wade. Two land-based practitioners who are going to inform your practice in ways that you can never imagine.
00:06:38
Speaker
They'll talk about growth. They'll talk about land stewardship. They'll talk about accountability to the natural world. You're in for a treat.
00:06:56
Speaker
Exploring nature with my peers in high school really allowed me to connect with my peers and understand them on a deeper level. And it really allowed me to connect with the environment we were meditating in When I first started doing this kind of work in high school, when I first met my peers, doing this kind of work allowed me to be comfortable around them, you know, and allowed me to understand how they see the world and how the world affected them.
00:07:24
Speaker
And because of that, that allowed us to grow and accept our differences. Now back to myself, doing that kind of work in high school allowed me to find ah deeper meaning of myself and to reconnect my past with my future, you know, and allow me to really just move forward, like for ah actual meaningful purpose, you know, for actual reason.
00:07:50
Speaker
But the work I did in high school and the nature I explored in high school allowed me to improve myself, allowed me to just heal from my past. And when I say heal from my past, I mean like actually reflecting on what traumatized me and what I've been through in my past life and how it shaped me to be who I am today.
00:08:14
Speaker
The work I did in high school is the reason why I started to meditate in the woods and with nature. Because before I even started meditating and before I even started doing this work, I didn't even know how helpful meditating was and that what it really can do to your body and to your mind.
00:08:32
Speaker
And this kind of work really just got me into healing myself and to just reflect on the bad things in life, you know, and just look at the good things and what life can bring you besides of the things you see in the world, you know?
00:08:48
Speaker
And when I started to meditate on my own, I really started to just see how many emotions I was just hiding from myself. you know How many like feelings I was just trying to just throw away. you know And you know when they say like those feelings really stay with you, where don't really like let them like out, where you don't really meditate and reflect about like your past and your traumas.
00:09:12
Speaker
that stuff really do stay with you. you know Even if you try to forget about it, it stays with you. So when I started meditating by myself, I really started to just free myself from that and started to free myself from those feelings and those emotions and those thoughts that I thought I can just throw away.
00:09:29
Speaker
you know and The way I did that and the way I just did my meditations was really just finding a quiet place somewhere in nature and being able to see the ocean or being able to see the sunset or the sunrise in the skies. Because I really learned that looking at the sunrise and looking at the sunsets and the waves and the ocean really can bring balance to your spirit and to your soul.
00:10:00
Speaker
And when you're going through that process of like healing, when you're going through like that healing meditation, I feel like those bad meditations are not... I wouldn't say they're hard, but i feel like you're really starting to feel that pain you felt when you were traumatized and when you experienced that bad situation. you know And it's really just all about connecting with...
00:10:22
Speaker
your hurt emotions and accepting the fact that you can't take back the things you experience and the things that happen to you, but you can move forward to create a better life for you and for those around you.
Introduction to Jazz and Theo
00:10:55
Speaker
All right. Well, microphone check one, two is Kenjus and Jewel coming at you with, uh, we have, uh, just so excited, blessed today have with us some profound land-based educators, holders of wisdom and doers of all things good.
00:11:17
Speaker
Inviting with us today, Jazz and Theo. Welcome y'all. Thank you Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be in circle with y'all this morning and hold space for some juicy and important conversations.
00:11:32
Speaker
yeah ah say Yeah, me as well. I'm grateful to be a part of this and thank you for inviting me. Yeah. We're just so, again, honored, blessed by y'all joining the space here. And we're just going to start off with your history.
00:11:48
Speaker
connection and how you came to be in relationship or stewardship with land. So maybe if it's cool, we'll start with jazz. Welcome jazz. Thank you again. When I was thinking about my journey to land, returning to land, it's like, when did it begin?
00:12:07
Speaker
And I feel like it definitely began and my childhood. i grew up in ah a big family and my parents worked a lot. And so being outside the city,
00:12:22
Speaker
gardens and picking fruit from trees. Like being outside was definitely a sanctuary space for me. It was a space where I could gather myself to center my emotions and really to daydream.
00:12:40
Speaker
So it definitely starts in childhood. And then more formally and undergrad, really started in learning about and getting involved in environmental justice movements.
00:12:52
Speaker
that have you know their roots in communities of color, black communities. And before I returned to Atlanta, I was a long time, full time organizer, community organizer, focusing on organizing against the criminalization of our communities. And that looks different ways. That looks like criminalization of discipline, criminalization of poverty, of survival and stopping jail construction.
00:13:20
Speaker
And most of this organizing was pretty focused on policy. And so it looked like a lot of visits to police commissions, to school boards, to all the boards, right? All the theaters of oppression, in my opinion.
00:13:40
Speaker
And I was getting really drained and having really heartfelt conversations with my community members around their needs and basic needs and how oftentimes our organizing efforts fell short of addressing basic needs.
00:13:59
Speaker
that they had, whether that was food, whether that was different resources. And i started to get really drained and really frustrated.
00:14:11
Speaker
and luckily, you know thankfully, I was able to travel to the South for the first time and gather with Black organizers and have these conversations around what our movements need, what our communities need, and how we're processing all of it.
00:14:29
Speaker
And in these retreats that we would have, we would be in a practice of somatics. And that was my first introduction to somatics. And we were asked to write out our commitments, our personal commitments and our movement commitments. And this program is called Bold, ah Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity.
00:14:51
Speaker
And it was in those spaces where I was confronting like my own frustrations and desire to be of greater service to my communities more than asking and organizing them to share their stories in spaces where they were often dismissed.
00:15:12
Speaker
And the root of my commitment evolved into wanting to explore ways that I can support my own and my community's agency and ways that we can further build self-determination while also in the process of struggling against oppression and against systems of domination.
00:15:36
Speaker
And that led me back to the land. That's the more formal aspect. But really what deepened my foot in meeting with the earth was really my own healing, my need for healing, particularly in relationship with my immediate family and the need to heal through trauma.
00:16:02
Speaker
And at the time, ah was estranged from my family and I was feeling kind of rootless, like I didn't have roots. say didn't know where I belonged and feeling really alone.
00:16:14
Speaker
And i started getting back into gardening and that led to a whole process of recovery of memory, memory of my grandmothers, my big mama and how their gardens were also their sanctuary space, how they were also organizers in sharing what they grew in their gardens.
00:16:35
Speaker
and preserving foods and really focusing on the well-being of their families and communities. And so that became site of my synergy of my organizing and returning to the land. And so I followed that.
00:16:55
Speaker
I followed that to farming in Santa Cruz and upstate New York and continuing that growing community and service to the land and also my communities here in South Central.
00:17:08
Speaker
What a powerful story and a return back to land and parts of your lineage's story as well. Thank you for sharing that.
Theo's Journey with Nature and Food
00:17:19
Speaker
Theo, when I went to Georgia, I met you and your three acres of land and was so shocked by your story. and I think it might be like in direct opposition of jazzes, which is so beautiful.
00:17:32
Speaker
I'm wondering if you could share your story and how you got connected back to land. Yeah, it's a little different. I mean, um from Oakland, so I had no relationship with land at all.
00:17:45
Speaker
as far as growing. No one in my family ever grew. No one gardened. I grew up in a food desert, never ate any fresh food. All the food that i and we consumed was from canned goods.
00:17:57
Speaker
I mean, my grandmother every now and again did make something fresh. like Maybe she had some sweet potatoes and made like a sweet potato pie or something. But most often time, we would only go to a grocery store like once a month. So there was never really any fresh food. And maybe there was bananas from like the corner store maybe. But we know how those corner store bananas go.
00:18:16
Speaker
And so when I moved here to Georgia, because I live in Georgia, and decided to buy a house, I was thinking that instead of just buying a house in any old neighborhood, I would buy a house that essentially had some sort of land connected to it or had a bigger plot connected to it.
00:18:36
Speaker
In theory, from my thought of saying, well, because at the end of the day, if all else fails, if the house goes to, then at least you can always start all over again, tear it down us all over again. So that was my thought process as far as trying to own some land, not necessarily just buying a platinum neighborhood somewhere.
00:18:54
Speaker
So then I bought this house. And then it had more land than I even thought it had initially because I thought it was just the way my house is set up is very strange, but I thought it initially just the house and then the back portion, which was like an acre.
00:19:08
Speaker
But then through the process, I ended learning that I own the entire corner of my house because live in a cul-de-sac. And so I learned that I had an entire, probably close like three acres. And so that was exciting to me. So then I was thinking, well, I'm here.
00:19:22
Speaker
I have all this land. Why don't I try to garden? I wonder what it's like to eat fresh food for the first time. Because again, interesting enough, and I tell people all the time, that though I'm an adult and I've had a long line, a lot of years to have eaten fresh food and tasted stuff that was...
00:19:42
Speaker
from a farmer's market of some sort. The reality is a lot of us do what we know. So it's like, even if the access is there, because you're not accustomed to the access, you're just gonna eat what you know. So I've always only eaten things out of cans. I mean, I remember in college, I ate canned goods and rice all the time. I never thought to make a salad or buy some fresh ingredients and then whip something up. I never thought to make real meals out of fresh food. It was just always like, yeah, you go buy some canned goods and do what you know.
00:20:12
Speaker
So then when I moved into this house and I bought the land, i thought to myself, having my own children, my two sons who are at this time seven and 10, ten I wanted to give them a different experience. So I said, hey, well, why don't we garden so then they can have the opportunity to actually try to taste fresh food straight up from a garden, an experience I never had. So in my mind, I thought that would just elevate and change their lives or just give them something new to be excited about or to talk about or to add to their experience in life.
00:20:47
Speaker
And then like most gardeners will tell you, once you start gardening, you get bit by that bug and then there's no turning back. So I think it was the first time my son pulled a carrot out of the ground and he bit right into it.
00:21:02
Speaker
I mean, my life was just changed. Because that connection for me was like, that's how that's supposed to be. I never thought about it. Maybe you guys have. But I never thought that that's how it worked. I thought it was like, yeah, you go to a store. Maybe you buy some carrots in the store.
00:21:17
Speaker
You take them home. You wash them. You cook them. You eat them. My son said, no, we're not going that process today. I'm just going to pull it. And I'm just going to eat it. So literally everything in between that I thought in my head was all cut out.
00:21:33
Speaker
And then once I learned that that was okay, because I was freaked out. I mean, came out of the ground. I'm a little worried. you didn't trick either one This is worrisome. Just wash more I did it the internet, do some research.
00:21:45
Speaker
And then the researchers is all saying, and that is the healthiest way to eat. to eat it. It's the best way to eat produce straight from ground. It's the most nutritious.
00:21:56
Speaker
You're going to get some of that life that comes from the soil into your body, which is going to help you with your immune system and things. So things that I had knew nothing about All of that just came to reality, brought a tear to my eye.
00:22:09
Speaker
And so from that point on, was like, this is what I am supposed to do, is to provide more of this for my family, to provide more of these experiences with my children, and to feed us fresh food every single day. So since then, I've just been doing just that, just gardening, gardening, gardening. And then Georgia, because of our weather pattern, it's much easier for us to grow year round. So I literally went from having four garden beds to now garden about 40,000 square feet of a garden that I literally produce food year round. So we eat fresh food throughout the entire year.
00:22:46
Speaker
And so I haven't been to a grocery store in three years. So. Wow. Yeah. I mean, it's been a fascinating journey and and I've been very excited about it. And this gets better and better every year. Yeah. I'm loving it.
00:22:56
Speaker
I'm loving it. Oh, that's such powerful testimony from these different places around I guess what's coming up for me is memory.
Jazz and Theo's Childhood Nature Experiences
00:23:07
Speaker
Jazz, you mentioned memory that came to you as your feet are on the ground, hands with the relatives of past experiences in your lineage. And Theo, you know, we have an elder parent of one of the young youth that we've worked with before. I remember her saying that children show up 100%.
00:23:27
Speaker
you know It's the world that kind of like starts to deteriorate that knowing. So hearing the story of your son knowing to pull the the carrot out of the ground and eat it, that's just a powerful testimony as well about the memories that are embedded within us all.
00:23:43
Speaker
And I guess I'm wondering for you to maybe go even deeper into these childhood experiences about when and how you're in your youth, despite whatever may have been disconnected, there was memory or relevance or connection to the earth.
00:23:59
Speaker
you have any memories about that when the natural world was centered in your life? So my grandmother... And my family was a part of the motorcycle clubs in the Bay Area.
00:24:11
Speaker
I don't know that's still a big thing now, but it was a big thing when I was a kid, the whole motorcycle gangs and things of that sort. So my whole family was a part of that. So there were times throughout the year where they would do picnics, block parties, and go camping throughout the year.
00:24:26
Speaker
So i always had a relationship with nature and being outside. Number one, my grandmother raised 15 grandchildren and... the majority of us were boys.
00:24:39
Speaker
And so we weren't allowed in the house when it was a nice day outside. And again, Oakland, I mean, that's, what is that? 300 days out the year. Because we were so destructive, we weren't allowed in the house. So we had to stay outside.
00:24:50
Speaker
Now, again, don't get me wrong, there was no gardening. We're not gardening. We've been destructive. at the same time, that relationship of having to be forced to be outside, locked outside, which I do to my children all the time now, which my partner gets upset about. But Being locked outside and being forced to find something to do, right? To get into.
00:25:10
Speaker
Whether it's, you know, dirt mounds, whether it's planting the mud, whether it's planting with water puddles that rain the day before, whatever. So that relationship was already there, having grown up in that environment. On top of that, having the experience of going camping and going to the different picnics in the parks and things of that sort.
00:25:29
Speaker
So always having that connection with land and feeling like that was something to do. And so as a child, we did that often. Because I think for a lot of people today, I mean, especially for Black people is that we don't have that connection with land because a lot of us don't spend time out in it.
00:25:44
Speaker
We don't spend time out in nature, so we don't really understand it, right? And so, but having been forced to be out there, but then also being taken out there with my grandmother and her clubs and things of that sort and doing the picnics and doing the camping allowed us to have access to do something that was outside of the norm every day being in our neighborhood.
00:26:04
Speaker
So that was exciting. So I think naturally, again, I would say naturally, I think that because of that background, I've always felt comfortable being outside. Like I don't feel comfortable being inside, like, you know, walls are restricting.
00:26:20
Speaker
So I would much rather be outside. and I think I had an outdoor wedding when I was married. I got married outside on the beach. I think it was, you know, I spend my birthday every single year hiking. I would much rather be outside. My children love camping. It's their favorite thing to do.
00:26:35
Speaker
I road trip all my life. We always road trip, but that's just what we enjoy doing it. So I guess from that perspective, it was only a natural transition to get into doing some sort. i mean that's what everyone tells me. was It seems like that was naturally something you going to end anyway, gardening, because if you're always outside and you have all this land, what else would you do with it?
00:26:52
Speaker
I guess you're right. don't know. i know I guess I wouldn't actually start gardening. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So i also grew up in the city, like second generation Central, born and raised here in Los Angeles.
00:27:06
Speaker
And, you know, we spent so lived in South Central in an apartment and it was pretty full. So similar to Theo, you know,
00:27:20
Speaker
the kids being told y'all got to get outside, some peace in the house, go outside. And then in Compton as well, just like playing outdoors was such a thing. One, it felt like a break or a refuge from being under an adult gaze, but also the freedom to run around, to be loud,
00:27:46
Speaker
And also, you know, my dad, but i definitely grew up in a basketball household. And so I spent a lot of time at city parks. And, you know, my dad would be playing ball until the sun went down. And so just spending literally the full afternoon at the playground, rolling around on grass, getting itchy.
00:28:07
Speaker
Right. And there was a stint of about like three and a half years where my parents moved us to San Diego and they commuted to work still in L.A.
00:28:21
Speaker
And so during that time. It was a pretty lonely time. i mean, I have six siblings. And so i wasn't like alone in the fact of like the company, but missing that connection with my parents. And so my older sister and i we had a lot of fruit trees in San Diego. and So we would just spend all day outside. It just felt like a much more...
00:28:47
Speaker
don't know, solid company, you know, going around the yard, seeing which fruit is ripe, seeing if it is, trying it out, and spending hours like in the blackberry bush.
00:29:01
Speaker
Blackberries have taught me early lessons in boundaries and patience, you know, as far as learning how to navigate thorns, you know what I mean? And the patience and the now, right? I wasn't thinking this as a kid, right? When I reflect on it, the patience and self-awareness of moving my hand through the bush.
00:29:26
Speaker
And if I go in too soon, you know, end up scraped up. But when I do have that patience and I get that berry, it's just delicious, you know? and I would just pick a whole bowl of blueberries that would then, know, oftentimes when we did that, my mom would make a cobbler. and spending those time with my sibling inside the house, it wasn't perfect. There was a lot of traumatic things that actually happened in my childhood during that time. But when I reflect on just that juxtaposition, right, of kind of like the turmoil and harm that was happening,
00:30:08
Speaker
And then what being outside actually gifted and healed for me. It was really significant. In my grandmother's gardens, you know, the garden wasn't a playground, you know, you you don't play in her garden. And so it wasn't necessarily that same experience, but it definitely was the joy of seeing things grow.
00:30:34
Speaker
And I feel like for me, that affirmed some of my own like early power of putting a seed in the earth and watching it gradually grow.
00:30:45
Speaker
You know, as trauma works, you know, our memory gets fuzzy and we forget things. But having conversations with my sister and remembering like, oh, remember we grew corn? I was like, wow, don't remember that.
00:30:56
Speaker
But what I do remember is that joy that the fruit gifted to me in that time. And then as far as like inside of schools, the main thing that comes up, I was at a private school for most of my high school years.
00:31:14
Speaker
And there was a week of outdoor education where they would take different grades camping that was the first time I've ever been camping in like literally not like outside at a city park you know but in nature like immersed in nature you know that first year i had some conflict with it You know, you want us to walk in the dark?
00:31:41
Speaker
Like, where's the kitchen at I go dirty. There's no showers. You know what I mean? Just just like those amenities that I'm used to. And by the second year, i really got in the groove of it.
00:31:53
Speaker
And I really started to enjoy it. And it was the first time that I was able to see like a night sky full of stars. you know Growing up in LA, you don't see stars or even get to experience the level of quiet that I was able to away from home outside of the city.
00:32:15
Speaker
and it just started to grow this like link between nature and an inner peace. nature and like space to hear myself to allow space for whatever may be coming up you know navigating inside the house, you know, in my family's house, but also navigating the city, you know, and like experiences of being like catcalled in middle school, you know, just these different experiences of growing up in an urban setting, be able to like digest that a little more.
00:32:50
Speaker
And that association with peace and safety started to brew and being able to camp. And being able to be comfortable with the lack of sirens, you know, the lack of like a ton of light, but actually...
00:33:09
Speaker
Feeling like there's space for my whole self outside, under the open sky, in being able to like daydream and just see the clouds drift, see animals move, see other life that wasn't as confined as you know my experience was growing up in LA. Mm.
00:33:32
Speaker
You had said like it really impacted you seeing a seed grow into something much more. Theo, remember when you said that.
Creative Carpentry and Connection to Land
00:33:44
Speaker
And i want you to speak to what you've grown outside of fruits and vegetables on your three acres, Theo.
00:33:51
Speaker
Because you start with fruit and vegetables. But when I went there, you had a compost system, a water filtration system. You built so many things.
00:34:03
Speaker
I really want us to explore, like, not only did you, you know, connect back to land and learn how to live off the land with food, but you've also learned how to build and like commune with land.
00:34:16
Speaker
and repurpose a lot of things. Can you talk a little more about that experience you've built on your Three Acres? So I went to art school. I went to school to be an artist, performing arts actor, director, of that kind of thing.
00:34:31
Speaker
And so all of my life, I've always only wanted to be somebody who was on stage or in front of people pretending. Then when I stopped doing that after I had kids, because then you got to make money, right? You got to take care your family.
00:34:47
Speaker
When I stopped doing that, um I felt like all was lost. I think the first thing that happened to me was I was, someone had given me a carving knife and a piece of wood. And it was like, oh, well you should try to carve something. It was like something random like that was someone was like, oh, you live in the South. So, you know, you people out there like to do slower things. Why don't you try to carve something with this thing? All right, whatever.
00:35:10
Speaker
If I was to be honest, I would say that I feel like, in all honesty, that that my true gift to life in its truest form would probably be something that along the line of carpentry.
00:35:25
Speaker
And why do I say that? Because from that moment on, that's all I wanted to do. Like, when I started carving something, like my whole entire world was blown open.
00:35:37
Speaker
This is long before gardening. This is just trying something artistic and creative to do because what I love doing, which was being in the arts, I was no longer doing because I was trying to provide for my family and work.
00:35:53
Speaker
And i was really depressed. And so this person helped me to find an outlet. Their thought process was, well, find an outlet for your art form in the form of something else. But then that just took hold.
00:36:06
Speaker
So when I ended up moving into this property and living on this land and gardening, again, my garden was small at first, but I was thinking, you know, I want to build a commune. Like I want to have a community of people living here.
00:36:21
Speaker
I think that'd be cool. So then I started thinking of building things. Why have the space? Why not build something? So then Nashville, just started building structures with the intent of having people come and stay, you know whether they were living here, whether they were visiting here, whether they were passing through.
00:36:40
Speaker
So that started of to take shape. And then again, like I said before, when you get into those kinds of things, you naturally just start elevating to another level. So when I started building smaller things, I think the first thing I built was like a playhouse for the kids.
00:36:55
Speaker
That was the first thing I built. A, they didn't like it. They never stayed in there because that's how children are. You build them something, I'm good. You know, like at first they love it. Oh my God, this is amazing. Dad, you're the greatest ever.
00:37:07
Speaker
But a week later, they're never in it. They're somewhere else. They're bothering something else. They're messing something else. So again, it was just me trying to control my children. Like Ken, like you said earlier, yeah, you try to control, you but they're going to bring it back 100. I mean, they're going to come and let you know, no this is what I'd rather do.
00:37:25
Speaker
And naturally, they just started doing other things, whether it was digging in dirt, whether it was tearing something else down, whatever, but they were never in the playhouse. So again, I was just all like, to go back to what said, Jewel, is like, yeah, I was like, well, instead of me tearing this down or not doing anything with it because they don't do anything with it, then why don't I repurpose it into something else?
00:37:44
Speaker
Because it was huge. So was like, maybe someone can stay in it. you know And that's so why I started to reconfigure it. And then again, i started to dive into, whether it was YouTube, whether was books, whether was other podcasts I was listening to as far as people homesteading, because again, I wasn't homesteading yet.
00:38:02
Speaker
But people were saying different things that you could do or different ways in which you can take different elements that you would do on land and then try to interconnect them, which i don't know if you guys have ever heard of the term permaculture.
00:38:14
Speaker
So permaculture is all about that. Permaculture is all about taking many different elements and ideas, but having them all symbiotically like work together. So then that's when I started doing things like composting, right?
00:38:27
Speaker
um I mean, have all these leaves all the time. What are you doing with them? Everyone in the South is obsessed with burning leaves. Why? I have no idea. This is fertilizer. This can fertilize your land. You people are crazy. That was my thought.
00:38:40
Speaker
So then I started, again, composting. Hey, you have all these food scraps after you eat your food. What do you do with it? Throw it in the trash. Where's your trash go? To the ocean. So compost it, right? So then those things start happening.
00:38:52
Speaker
So then I build a compost. And then, yeah, things just started working out that way. At some point time, my rain gutters had broke and I had a rain barrel near the rain gutter.
00:39:04
Speaker
It was random. And then water was filling up from the rain gutter that was broken into the wheelbarrow. And then when I was watering my garden, I was using water from there. Light comes on. Wow. Like that's how you collect rain water, right?
00:39:16
Speaker
So these things, these elements that you don't know that have a relationship with each other, you naturally find that they have a relationship with each other. Then I built a rain shower. I think, June, when here, you saw the rain shower.
00:39:28
Speaker
So i was like, hey, people like the idea of showering outside. hey I think that's pretty cool. Why don't I create some kind of way where you can shower outside, but not with water from the sewer line, but water that comes naturally from the sky.
00:39:39
Speaker
It's so dope. So collect the rainwater. And then again, i found out that in the summer, Rain water is naturally hot.
00:39:50
Speaker
I didn't know that. I thought all water was cold. But in the summer, rain water is naturally hot. So when it collects, you actually have hot water already. You don't have to heat it up.
00:40:01
Speaker
So you can take a shower in the summertime and it feels like you're taking a hot bath and you're hot. And it's a mixed i it's unbelievably amazing. So that's how I ended up with my rain shower that people loved when they would come and stay. So all of these kind of things.
00:40:16
Speaker
that I didn't know before that I just started learning as I started to dabble into it. But again, if I step back, I would say that once I started building or even carving, like I said, start off be carving. But once I started that, if I said something that I felt like was deep and rooted into my very existence that I had no idea lived there, it would have been that because I feel so comfortable, innately comfortable.
00:40:46
Speaker
making something like innately comfortable making something. and It doesn't matter what it is. Like I'm not me anymore. Like I'm not feel to know you. call No, no, I am completely something and someone else.
00:41:00
Speaker
And it feels so natural to me. And so, like said, for the longest time, i think that in my former life, in my past lives, I had been a carpenter. There's no way someone can convince me otherwise because nothing feels more natural to me than that.
00:41:15
Speaker
And I've never had that experience before in my life with anything else. And it was just unreal. All I want to do is just build. I just want to create something. structures and things.
00:41:27
Speaker
and I built almost everything in my house. but My dining room table, or I built our island, our kitchen island, I built our cabinets, I built ah i mean everything in my house that's wooden, I built it out of reclaimed wood because it just feels like that's what I should do.
00:41:43
Speaker
I just have to say, and now you have four structures behind your home. ah Last time I came, there were four structures and you were working on another yeah with the hot tub.
00:41:55
Speaker
yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah. You see that, Jazz? that's what Listen, it's a situation. and And working on the outside kitchen. Listen, Theo, I've been telling everybody about you ever since I've been. That's why I keep texting you, like Jewel mentioned you. Yeah, because this is amazing.
00:42:17
Speaker
But a hot tub with rainwater that's hot, like I'm still there, actually. Yeah, yes. I mean, that the itself is amazing to me, the whole hot water thing. And then like like she said, the thing that I'm most excited about right now that I'm working on right now is I'm actually trying to build an actual greenhouse kitchen so that people can come and just cook fresh food here.
00:42:37
Speaker
I mean, that's just my new adventure now. Yeah. I want you to walk around the garden. I want you to pick out what you want. I'm going to show you how to cook it like in the garden. So that's my new thing.
00:42:48
Speaker
You know, there's so much here that I feel like directly connects with some of the work that we're trying to do.
Land, Spirituality, and Healing
00:42:54
Speaker
Right. And I'm constantly sitting in circle with people who are just beyond inspirational.
00:43:03
Speaker
and are providing these really critical reminders of the necessity for us to remember and root and then transcend the trappings that hold us, right? That's always our guiding star.
00:43:17
Speaker
And I feel like what you all are offering here are these really powerful you know protocols and then navigational, almost like landmarks of where to move. And Jaz, I've been sitting in circle with you for many years and understanding or learning more about the work that you have are doing or articulating manifesting more directly in relationship to healing and wellness to the medicine of the earth offers us for our own sustainability longevity. I'm wondering if you can share a bit about how maybe this is grounded in your soul or spirit.
00:43:56
Speaker
Hmm. First of all, I feel and believe that nature is a natural expression of abolition and and natural expression that goes against themes of domination and exploitation and really a lot of teachings around relationships.
00:44:22
Speaker
connected to like my journey and returning to land, like it was such a significant aspect of my own spiritual growth. And it was like that memory recovery, you know, as I was traveling, but also initiating through African and traditional religions.
00:44:42
Speaker
And how our spiritual evolution, right, which is centered on building good character, is directly connected to our relationship and reverence for the natural world.
00:45:02
Speaker
and our deities, multiple deities, and this is, yes, in multiple like African traditional religions, but also more expansively, indigenous spirituality centers nature.
00:45:16
Speaker
There is an understanding that plants, nature, they are caretakers, and so we take care. Our well-being and wellness is directly connected to Our ecology that we are a part of early in my farming. Right. Simultaneously, as I'm like returning to the land, relearning, because I believe that growing or farming, whichever word we use, it's for black people, for people of the global majority. Right. Non-white.
00:45:52
Speaker
It is a relearning. It is a process of relearning because a lot of this wisdom has been co-opted and also intentionally severed.
00:46:03
Speaker
And so my process of relearning also included how much spirit has been taken out of agriculture. Right. And I believe agriculture is another system of the state, how it's been taken out of that.
00:46:22
Speaker
And so as I was journeying through and learning, wow, like different African deities, they are actually the embodiment of different natural forces, right? Forces of nature. The deity of Oshun and Yemoja, that is freshwater, that is river.
00:46:40
Speaker
Ogun, right? That is carpentry, working with iron, but also forest, right? And so when I want to connect or learn from these different principles that are embodied in the deities, right? I go to the river, i go to the forest to relearn this and to reposition spirit in the center of what I do.
00:47:09
Speaker
And that repositioning there for me, growing and farming and working intergenerationally with young people and older folks, right? Seniors who are in their fifties and sixties, healing is such a big part of that.
00:47:28
Speaker
Working with land is a healing venture, right? The land holds memory. And so, There's so much like just as spirits and taking out of agriculture, that is also the same for schooling.
00:47:42
Speaker
And as it connects to abolition, so much of schooling is to, in my experience and in my witnessing and supporting young people who are, you know, being schooled or in those institutions is taking us away from ourselves.
00:48:00
Speaker
And in these institutions, right, it's like we're being told who we are what we are meant to do, what is expected of us, and any deviation from that is criminalized.
00:48:17
Speaker
And when i have worked and when I do work with youth outside, there's just such a expansiveness and space to build a self-awareness.
00:48:29
Speaker
And no matter the subject is English, is science, like the indigenous ways of learning is learning how we're in relationship to everything and how, you know, the relationship of soil to sun, the relationship of sun to plants and what is our role as caretakers of yes, the innate and indigenous wisdom within ourselves, right?
00:48:56
Speaker
But also our growth as a person needs to be connected to the healing and balance of the earth, right?
00:49:11
Speaker
So much of the state and what we're taught is that, and even you know, with colonization and Christianity, which are often separated, but the same way policing makes way for gentrification, Christianity made way for colonization.
00:49:32
Speaker
And so when we're in the classroom of the garden or in the classroom of nature, it is in this healing and remembering unlearning these systems of domination, which are false, right? We see that today with climate chaos, you know, and the domination exploitation of land is actually the suffering of the earth, which means the suffering of ourselves, the suffering of our communities.
00:50:06
Speaker
And so when I am teaching, I just center healing so much, one, because the earth needs it, needs that rebalancing, and we need it.
00:50:19
Speaker
in nature, like it was so significant for me, like as ah black queer trans person. And I say queer because that is the human language, right? And there's more, if I had, you know, my indigenous tongue, I'd be able to speak more poetically about this, but there are so many queer expressions in nature.
00:50:41
Speaker
and when that,
00:50:44
Speaker
that plants and flowers and also other animal relatives have such an embodiment of multiplicity, i found home in that because i was conditioned, you know, to believe that who I am, how I express myself is unnatural, is not normal.
00:51:07
Speaker
And learning that there is a multiplicity in being and expression that flowers have where you know humans we've been indoctrinated into the gender binary so has nature right they pull apart our parts and say this is female this is male this is masculine feminine but there's such a hole in expression with these plants and animals who organize themselves socially and organize their family structures in a way that is radical and queer.
00:51:44
Speaker
And so that unlearning affirmed for me and affirms for young people and older people, right, that what we were conditioned to believe is not the truth.
00:52:01
Speaker
but that we find these lessons of solidarity, find these lessons of interdependence as we're growing. And even it doesn't have to be like the growing the seed from seed to plant. It's also just like being in relationship with the natural world.
00:52:21
Speaker
We are taught that we are separated from it and in my work with youth, you know, and it's a range, you know, like not every youth is like, oh my God, this is exciting. You know, like in my experiences, youth are like, I don't not trying to mess up my shoes or, you know, screaming at a bug, you know, flying around. But even in these,
00:52:45
Speaker
All of it is welcomed for me because there isn't ah policing of expression. There isn't a policing of thought. And those lessons and teachings of relationship actually grow.
00:53:02
Speaker
one, our own self-awareness, but also our own power and agency and teaching of the cause and effect. You know what mean? So that's a bit of it but it's significant for me because ah returning to the land is also a returning sub balance for our planet and for our communities.
00:53:26
Speaker
Yeah, and it's a source and place of healing. see. I see. really thinking about your all's collective work i don't know if this is how you feel jewel but this is what's coming up for me in my spirit you have given us jazz and theo this glimpse into the future right as much as it is a invitation to connect with our past, with our bloodlines, with our roots, right?
00:53:58
Speaker
It's a glimpse into what we think is the necessary future of what it means to be in relationship to young people, elders, intergenerational communities in the work of education.
Homeschooling and Education Views
00:54:10
Speaker
And so we're wondering how does your life's work provide maybe an important lens for how parents and communities can envision the future of education for their children?
00:54:23
Speaker
There's always like a, how is this relevant to our work tomorrow? We're thinking about this in relationship to educators, to parents, to other caretakers, lessons, offerings that your work could provide.
00:54:34
Speaker
So this year is the first year my children actually went to regular school, public school. My youngest son, who is seven, is quite the social butterfly.
00:54:46
Speaker
And so he no longer wanted to be homeschooled because he just thought that there was something else happening out in the world that he was not taking part in. So I allowed him that opportunity to go to school.
00:54:56
Speaker
I didn't want to deny him that opportunity. So they both are going to school this year, but I homeschooled them up until this year. so even pre pandemic, I mean, that whole feeling of being home with the kids was nothing new to me. I was always home with them, but I think what I've been doing and what I'm learning through the work that I do on the land,
00:55:20
Speaker
in relation to nature, as well as raising children, is learning that, like Jazz is saying, is everything is so interconnected and it's all just so important.
00:55:31
Speaker
And I think that I like to share with other parents when I'm talking to them in general, is I'm saying, you guys need to take that time back. Like we've created a society that has us so dependent on wealth and money and these systems where it's so easy for us to get caught up in that.
00:55:55
Speaker
And it's so easy for us to just hand our children away. The most uncomfortable thing for me is dropping my kids off at school. Not because I think that something's gonna happen to them, because I don't wanna think that way, because that would just be a downer for me.
00:56:09
Speaker
But because I know in that span of time, when they're away from me, their level of learning, their level of growth has been stunted. It's like Jazz said, right? So, you know, at school, they're teaching them to be something particular.
00:56:26
Speaker
They're not allowing them to flourish. They want them to be constrained. But when they're home with me and when they're outside and we're gardening or they're fussing with me because they don't want to garden or because they don't want to clean up the garden or because they don't want to hold a nail in place while I'm trying, whatever it is.
00:56:46
Speaker
But there's a level of growth there that I know that they will never lose, that can never be taken away from them. Versus the notion of handing them off to someone else or to some other institution and expecting them to give them lessons that they can take forever.
00:57:04
Speaker
Like, I feel like that's something that we should stop doing. As a community, we can teach our families and commune together as a community, we have to get out of the habit of thinking that it's someone else's responsibility to engage with our children in a way that would elevate them to a higher self.
00:57:24
Speaker
Because no one else is going to do that. I mean, you know, I think my son's classroom has 30 kids in there. I mean, what individual lesson are you getting when there's 30 kids in there? Like none. But when you're home, your attitude, your behavior,
00:57:42
Speaker
your quest and thirst for knowledge can be attended to. And when my son is having his, my oldest son, because he's going through puberty. So when he's having his moments of,
00:57:55
Speaker
aggression, right? Or his moments of boundary testing, if they want to call it that, then he's allowed to do that without being reprimanded, right? Like there's no feeling of, I'm not allowed to grow and feel this out.
00:58:09
Speaker
Like, no, bro, like you can yell and scream where you want to. You just won't yell and scream in my face or your mother's face or your brother's face. Go yell and scream outside. I mean, no one's going to stop, right? So like, I feel like when it comes to what I do here,
00:58:23
Speaker
and my connection and what I'm working through on the land is allowing my children to grow and flourish in a more personal way than they would get in any kind of schooling environment.
00:58:40
Speaker
And again, that's clear because both my younger mom my younger still wants to go to school, but my oldest is all like, yeah, I'm good. This isn't what they want to do. So we want to go back to the homeschooling notion.
00:58:54
Speaker
Shay, thank you. A lot of what you shared, Theo, resonates a lot. And as far as, you know, the future of education, I do believe is in unschooling.
00:59:11
Speaker
And this isn't to say that school abolition means abolition of learning. think that's very short-sighted and I think intentionally instigating.
00:59:26
Speaker
Understanding that schools are institutions that of the state and to carry out the best interests of the state.
00:59:39
Speaker
That looks like racial capitalism. That looks like incarceration, right? A carceral state. That looks like domination, right? And that looks like indoctrination, right?
00:59:56
Speaker
For me, it's not surprising, like, in remembering and acknowledging that schools are tools of the state. And so that means schools are not invested in growing free thinkers and growing beings who understand impact and who understand, you know,
01:00:24
Speaker
the importance of life and how life works. Life meaning ecology. Life meaning like how are we supported, right? The value and importance of water, the value and importance of growing and critical thinkers, especially as relates to labor. You know what I mean? I think holding that, just the truth of how schools were intended to operate and what they were meant to produce is important in this conversation, right, of school abolition.
01:01:00
Speaker
and so... I think, yes, school abolition is the future of education, must be the future of education, especially if we are to see a future of living on this planet.
01:01:13
Speaker
And young people know this, you know what I mean? so Yeah, I just want to take a breath for that and acknowledging that because oftentimes it's like, so no one's going to learn. And it's like, no, that's not what it means. But we need a radical shift from how things have been.
Advocacy for Land-Based Learning
01:01:34
Speaker
we see the effect and consequences generationally, right, on our communities of and just the planet as a whole. And it'd be different if in spaces of learning, when we're talking about water, you know what I didn't mean? When we talk about water, there's subjects of history in that.
01:01:58
Speaker
There's subjects of science in that, you know what I mean? And that is that is the root of indigenous learning and teaching, is that interdependence and relationship.
01:02:11
Speaker
Also, like for me, is, you know, how to support young people, learners, right? No matter the age of building greater presence and awareness of ourselves and how to cultivate greater harmony and alignment between our minds and our hearts, which is what schools are kind of like the antithesis of, you know, like I remember being in classrooms and being taught things and I'm like, but that like, I feel, I didn't have the language for it but I'm like, I feel contradictions.
01:02:54
Speaker
in my body, you know, even if, it you know, history, I feel like is the easiest target, you know, as far as like how stories are told and whose stories. And this is all in support of, you know, concretizing this belief and buy around systems of power. And all that needs to just.
01:03:18
Speaker
dissolve and be released and really recentering okay like to whom and to what do we want to be accountable to do we want to be accountable to ourselves and what our values and beliefs are be accountable to elemental relatives whether that's you know animals earth you know what i mean because in ecology like everyone has purpose and everyone has value.
01:03:54
Speaker
And so much in schooling, there's this harm. in Schools are site of harm. And even, you know, in themes around disability justice and like who is assigned value based on class, based on race, right? Based on gender.
01:04:15
Speaker
And
01:04:17
Speaker
School abolition and like land-based pedagogy, just like that reintegration and repositioning of ourselves in relationship to the ecology we belong to is a learning that everyone, every being has value and a returning of the sacredness of life is so important.
01:04:43
Speaker
And also, you know, learning spaces should hold like self-exploration creativity centers, because if we learn about, you know, what are the needs of our community?
01:05:00
Speaker
You know, composting is a whole science lesson, you know, like where does food Oh, food turns into soil, ah you know, like, oh, we built the soil. Like who's, and you know, like just those like baseline honoring sacred, like radicalizing and shifting, like who we hold allegiance and accountable to is just so important.
01:05:28
Speaker
And that harmonizing where we can lessen the contradiction between our hearts and minds. It's everything.
01:05:41
Speaker
And it is anti-capitalist. It is anti-imperialist. You know what I mean? Because when I'm thinking about school abolition and when I'm in connection to land, in connection to growing our food and medicine and saving seed, like,
01:06:04
Speaker
All of that is up against what schools have stood for, which is furthering the interest of colonization, furthering the interest of imperialism. And i think returning to the land is a powerful place to start in that because, you know, questions are whose land are we on? What is the history of this land What happened on this land?
01:06:30
Speaker
And we're here now in the present. And so how can we meet in a healing intention to move forward so that we can live healthy lives, so we can move towards greater liberation? ah say thank you both.
01:06:49
Speaker
I say I say. As we move towards greater liberation, yeah I hope we're all welcomed. i hope we all invite ourselves back to working back with land, to being connected back with land, to being like Theo's child and pulling the rooted vegetables from the ground and knowing that we are supposed to eat it with the dirt on because we are of the
Reflections on Nature and Learning
01:07:11
Speaker
dirt.
01:07:11
Speaker
We are the dirt. And we co-create with the dirt. even through like how I'm thinking of how Theo explained the compost to me when I was out there and how even people's like personal waste, that is a part of the process of the compost and how he named it black gold. Was that it?
01:07:32
Speaker
You said black gold? I didn't make that up. I think someone else called it that, but yeah, that's they call it, black gold, you know? Yes. So we're ending with the black golds, you know, and I'm just thinking how we co-create with the soil. We are the soil. We come from the soil. So we give thanks to Jazz and Theo for giving us knowledge and story and oral traditions on how to connect with the soil and connect with the land. Give thanks, y'all.
01:07:59
Speaker
Yes, thank you.
01:08:09
Speaker
Y'all remember back in the day trying not to get your shoes dirty. I think about that. this relationship between dirty and earthy. have such a different relationship with the natural world today.
01:08:23
Speaker
i try to get my feet immersed in the soil. I try to get as earthy as possible as often as I can. i'm so grateful for folks who have...
01:08:34
Speaker
giving us lessons from the land. And though I wasn't able to sit with them, I learned so much from Theo and Jazz and i appreciate Kenjis and Jewel for holding it down.
01:08:45
Speaker
We're talking about a return. yeah We're talking about a return to a very particular way of being that requires a posture That is antithetical really to the fast paced movement in our capitalist society.
01:09:02
Speaker
My folks in Arkansas, they know about that posture. They know about that slowing down. They know about that intentionality that comes. with tending to the earth that comes with growth, with growing healthy children, growing healthy communities. And we hope that during this season of drawing from the well you've grown with us, we're so grateful for you in sitting with us for yet another season.
01:09:30
Speaker
On to the next, y'all.
Credits and Acknowledgments
01:09:50
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this episode of Drawing from the Well, brought to you by the Youth Wellness Movement. I'm your host, Tiffany Marie. This podcast is co-produced by yours truly and John Reyes, with music by my boy Jansen V. Drawing from the Well is supported by Community Response of Education.
01:10:11
Speaker
Continue the conversation youthwellness.com.