Course Leaders: 

Shawn Michael Lavoie

Brian Gleicauf

Juan Pable Barillas

Victoria Reyes

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Course Description:

Deep down, we yearn for this: to be seen, to be challenged, to feel the alchemy of transformation within a vessel of community. This yearning calls most strongly during adolescence, the transition from childhood to adulthood. Adolescents sense profound physical, social and emotional shifts happening within them, yet often lack meaningful ways to show themselves to the wider world. What they seek is a path of initiation into what it could mean to be their fullest selves. 

 

All transformation starts at a threshold: at the edge between what's familiar and what's possible. 

As teachers, mentors, and parents of adolescents, how can we support and guide our beloved teens and tweens as they cross this threshold? How can we shift our view of education from "stockpiling knowledge for advancement" to "developing inner capacities for the good of all"? 

 

Drawing on traditional coming-of-age wisdom from many cultures and Rudolf Steiner's view of the adolescent developmental tasks, this course proposes a pedagogy of initiation. We contend that an education for adolescents needs to foreground self-development within an intentional community: to see it, in fact, as our main purpose and organizing principle. 

 

This 5-day course, offered both virtually and in-person, is for teachers, administrators, parents, and mentors working with adolescents within schools and outside of traditional school contexts, who hunger for a more transformative approach to educating adolescents, one that instills values of integrity, self-reliance, self-knowing, and compassion. In addition to lectures, readings, and discussions, participants will engage in model lessons, self-reflection, exploration of biography, and real-world nature immersion. The goal is to push our own learning edge as would-be teachers of adolescents. 

 

Central topics we will explore:

 

• Adolescent development tasks

• Experiential and holistic learning

• Power of story and art

• Building Healthful Practices and Habits

• Setting Boundaries, Personal and Social

• Ritual process and ceremony in community

• Tests, Trials, Performances of Mastery

• Belonging and a sense of responsibility/care for the whole