Permaculture Teachers Training at Holma Folkshögskola, february 2024

Mette Madvig and Ditte Kathrine Engelstoftegård

In February 2024 we participated in the Permaculture Teachers Training at Holma Folkshögskola for eleven days. The course has a holistic approach to teaching permaculture, and both of us wanted to improve our teaching skills. It was intense days of learning and being together at Holma that gave us much, at many levels.

The highlights we take with us from the Permaculture Teachers Training are several and we have summed up some of them below.

Teaching methods

The micro teachings, where we had to try out different formats of teachings, from ten minutes to 30 min. and implement the different methods we had learned, but not tried ourselves yet. It was such a good experience and actually a triple learning as we also learned from the three others in the group and their micro teachings. The two of us worked together as a team at the co-teaching and both found that we really like to co-teach and collaborate. Since then we have been on a path of sharing our teaching.

The last group presentation was for 20 minutes, in groups of 5-8 people and we had to make it fun and still come up with a programme for a full PDC course. It was challenging and also showed personality differences when we worked under time pressure. We think we all learned a lot about group dynamics by that task. 

We learned teaching methods on how to be creative as teachers and get the students to use more senses and to only spend 30% time “on stage” yourself as a teacher, use group work and less “rounds” because it’s often too much to hear 30 peoples opinions. Another example of using our senses was at “the outdoor observation” with Cathrine, which was a nice way to both reconnect to nature and to our own intuition and felt good to start and end together. Overall, continuous feedback and reflections throughout the course, in both large and small groups, integrated the learnings on so many levels for us. 

Group dynamics and the social microclimate 

We learned about the teachers perspective on group dynamics with “the storming, forming and norming periods”. We got tools to handle conflicts rising in the classroom, eg. writing down “comments & ideas” on a poster, which could remove the feeling of “personal attacks” to just another “perspective”. Also, people who tend to sidetrack a debate with ideas or comments could have these placed on a “mango tree” or a “link/inspiration tree”, both great tools to use as a teacher.

Social bonds

An important positive aspect of the Teachers Training was the settings at Holma Folkhôgskola, which is a way of giving yourself time and focus to a certain topic, meanwhile we made friends along the way. The way we were living closely together (some in dorms, others in rooms) and sharing meals, breaks and free time together, was the perfect way of freeing mental space to learn new and interesting methods of teaching in permaculture. 

All Kjerstins meals, where she daily reminded us how to become more self-sufficient and sustainable and use the permaculture principles in our daily lives. These many informal moments of talking with our fellow students and the teachers can not be valued enough.

After the course, we also took with us the strength of the social bonds made at the course. These bonds which by now (december) nearly a year later have transcended into gatherings, sharing and communities here in DK. We started off as fellow students and along the way learned so much more of each other. Strong social connections and friendship was perhaps not the main purpose of the course but definitely an important “side effect” as we now are back in our own bigger and minor permaculture and transitioning work, projects and teachings. We have a community of like-minded people to support and help us keep motivated for change.

The last highlight we want to mention is the last evening, where we had a beautiful ceremony for us all: first out under the stars with a bonfire and later at our wonderful old wooden classroom where Cathrine and Andreas, handed out our certificate in a row of celebrating fellow students. Such a nice ending to our Permaculture Teachers Training.