Eco Learning at EcoDysgu
Tondu House Farm is a collection of semi-ruined buildings, amidst 42 acres of woodland and pasture, on the outskirts of Bridgend. It's home to the not for profit social, environmental and health organisation EcoDysgu-EcoLearn, which is repairing lives at the same time as rebuilding the architecture.
A child may be excluded from education not because they can't learn, or don't want to learn, but because formal education is not framed in a way that can reach them. Julie Lyddon is one of those people. She says 'I was in the top stream at school, but left with no qualifications - I just couldn't concentrate'.
After much travel and many jobs, Julie has found herself offering the kind of education that she wishes she'd had herself. Visitors to EcoDysgu may find themselves sitting around a fire in a wood, rather than in a classroom, or doing woodwork or gardening. But these apparently unintellectual pursuits can be what it takes to reconnect people with ambition and purpose. In some cases it has also helped people come off drugs and alcohol, or stay out of trouble with the police.
Julie says 'the other day I was in a bench making workshop with this young teenager. She was jumping up and down saying 'hooray - I'm missing double maths.' I said 'no you're not, you're in double maths - and I reminded her of all the calculations she'd had to do to make the bench.'
The secret, she says, is seeing education as a form of 'drawing out' instead of 'pushing in'. The project is also unafraid of the idea of mixing healing with education - and believes that one is connected to the other. A typical day at EcoDysgu begins with project work: children may make benches or bird boxes for their school. Drug and alcohol groups may be taught gardening or carry out woodland work to reconnect them to the earth. Young people in trouble, often angry, may learn forge work. Meanwhile a healing practitioner delivers their session in front of the rest of the group. This all demonstrates trust and an openness that leads to discussions about big subjects, from attitudes to drugs, abuse, careers, parenting, crime, health, opportunities, governments and much more.
The Police have described the effect of this approach as 'profound', and some young people involved have undoubtedly turned their lives around. Julie says 'I got a call from a headmistress, congratulating us on succeeding in turning one girl around in 10 weeks where they had failed in 10 years, this pupil had previously been excluded from school more than 60 times'.
The organisers are not afraid of some pretty unique combinations: where else would you sit in a circle for indian head massage or reflexology, in the middle of a wood, after making some bird boxes and lighting a fire? It’s easy to see how young people who can’t sit still in a classroom are charmed and drawn out by this very different version of ‘learning’.
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EcoDysgu website: Find out more about the EcoDysgu project
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