This is permaculture teacher training with a difference!

Linda Woodrow and Peter Lewis both have decades of experience in off-grid permaculture homesteading, social permaculture and intentional community, commercial permaculture primary production, community garden development, and for the last four years, retrosuburban permaculture. Linda Woodrow is a Permaculture Australia Board member, long term blogger at The Witches Kitchen, author of the best-selling "The Permaculture Home Garden" and the prescient novel about setting up for climate change "470". Peter Lewis works as a facilitator in a social housing community garden and is President of Coffs Regional Community Gardens.

But knowing something and being able to teach it are two different things.

This course is seven days of intense, experiential learning with two people who are not only permaculture legends but also qualified and experienced teachers, of teaching.

What they also have in common is a background in education. Peter is a qualified high school teacher with a special interest and expertise in teaching people who come from a background of educational disadvantage. He is also a graduate of a Rowe Morrow Permaculture Teacher Training course. Linda Woodrow is a qualied vocational education teacher with a Grad Dip Voc Ed and a TAE Diploma, who has years of experience teaching teachers within the vocational education system.

Whether you aim to teach classic a Permaculture Design Course, short courses in community garden settings, vocational training, university courses or school garden courses, face-to-face or online, adults or teenagers, this course will equip you with the skills and confidence to launch into a vocation and right livelihood as a permaculture teacher.

Course requirements:

If you haven't done a Permaculture Design Course (PDC), talk to us before you enrol. This course is very much designed with the expectation that everyone has this as underlying knowledge.

You will learn:

The social dimensions of learning - people care in learning spaces
Non-verbal language and managing contagious stress
Learning objectives and learner-centred education
Learning styles and learning cycle
Beyond chalk and talk or Death by Powerpoint - experiential and interactive learning
Transformational learning - how we create memorable experiences and "aha!" moments
Structuring a session plan and managing time
Pace and responsiveness - staying on track and being open to being led off it
Challenging situations
Designing a PDC or other longer course
Asking for feedback
Doing all this in alignment with permaculture ethics and principles

It's a jam-packed seven days, but there is also time to hang out with your classmates, make some big permaculture connections, and possibly do a little whale watching?

Text books

Included in your ticket price is a copy of Rosemary Morrow's "Earth Users Guide to Teaching Permaculture". This course draws so much from her wisdom and expertise.

Where is it?

Coffs Harbour is on the NSW mid-north coast. It is lovely in late winter/early spring. Daytime temperatures are around 20°, and though the course is intense, we've allowed for couple of late mornings so you can walk up to the lookout on Muttonbird Island and see if you can spot some migrating whales.

Coffs Harbour Regional Community Gardens is a short 15 minute walk from the centre of town, ten minutes drive to the beach. It is adjacent to a park and has a lovely, semi-open-air teaching space, breakout spaces, tea, coffee and lunch facilities.

Getting There

Coffs Harbour is on the trainline, and there's an airport. We can arrange for you to be picked up from the train or the airport and ferried to and from accommodation.

Food and Accomodation

The price includes morning and afternoon tea and lunches each day. Let us know your dietary requirements and we can cater for them. We've scheduled the course for off-peak time so accommodation will be cheaper - Coffs is a holiday destination so there's ample choices for camping, cabins, hostels and Air BnB. Let us know if you want to share accommodation and we can connect you with others who also want to. There are no formal evening sessions, but we hope for some wonderful debriefing sessions over dinner some evenings.

Price

We've kept the price as low as we can for everyone, but we can offer a small concession for unwaged people (student, pensioner, unemployed). If we get more than minimum enrolments, we may be able to offer a partial scholarship for someone - message us to enquire.

Early bird until 30th June- $790 unwaged/$860 waged

After 30th June - $890 unwaged/$960 waged

Cancellation and Refunds

If we do not have enough enrolments by 12 July to allow the course to go ahead, it will be postponed to a new date and all tickets will be refunded.

If you need to withdraw before 12th July, we can refund your enrolment. After that, you are welcome to pass your place on to a friend or family member, or let us know and we will try to fill your place. If we can't fill your place we can't guarantee a refund as the budget is tight.

Questions?

Any questions, hit the "Contact Host" button below. We'll get back to you as quickly as we can. There's no silly questions!