Creativity and Learning at the Green School, Bali

Creativity and Learning at the Green School


This week, I was interviewed by a journalist who works for an English speaking newspaper in Malaysia. She wanted to know about the experience of moving my family to Bali for our 3 daughters to attend the Green School.  This prompted me to write my blog about our Green School journey over the last 8 months:

How has it been? During the initial months when my 3 daughters came home from school, I was horrified to see them looking filthy dirty. Their well brushed, tied back, long, blonde locks ended up straggly and unkempt, as though they had been hanging upside down all day long (and they almost had been on the school's ropes course).  Their gleaming white, clean and colourful clothes had turned to a more earthern looking, brownish colour and their shoes were caked in mud that had dried to look like clay. It felt like I had abandoned my 3 girls and left them to roam in the Balinese jungle for days. Only their teeth remained white, when they grinned at what a great time they had at the Green School.

My initial emotions ranged from 'are we doing the right thing?', 'will this do them any harm?' 'what are they learning academically?' to 'they are so lucky to get this once in a lifetime experience', 'they are much more aware of their environment' and 'they are learning by doing and having fun.' What better way to learn?

I have seen our girls grow socially, explore their own creativity and their self-confidence has blossomed. It is a pleasure to see and hear them saying how they are enjoying the Green School. I enjoy seeing their happy, smiling faces when they finish their day at the Green School and they are excited to tell me about their day. In response to my question 'what did you do at school today?' their responses have changed from 'nothing' or 'can't remember' to they have been rice planting, they are responsible for looking after a chick who has lost her mother, they have made their own musical instrument out of bamboo, they are in charge of growing basil, they are learning about mathematics by designing and creating a garden and they are celebrating earth day by producing a play which will take place in the school's mud pit where the monthly mapantigan (Balinese martial arts) is usually held. Some days I don't ask and they tell me what they've been doing.Yesterday my eldest daughter told me how her mathematics lesson didn't feel like a lesson at all.  Her whole class went to the school's 'Warung' (cafe) and they learned how to perfect their measuring skills by making their own home-made ginger fizz, coconut juice, lemon juice and lemon squash drinks.

When I was at the Green School at the beginning of the week, my daughters proudly showed me the 'ogoh ogoh' monster they had made for the Hindu celebration called 'Nyepi', the Balinese New Year.  The monsters symbolise evil spirits and are carried around the villages and cities of Bali in a spectacular carnival on the day before Nyepi. At the end of the carnival they are burned to drive away the evil spirits.By connecting our children to the traditions of Bali, the Green School is enabling our children to learn and appreciate a unique culture that is not their own and become more aware of cultural diversity.

This morning, our daughters delivered breakfast in bed. Our eldest daughter's class had harvested some of their vegetables from their garden at school and made an omelette. They sold the vegetables they did not use at their school warung and our eldest bought some of these fresh, organic vegetables to make our omelette. It tasted wonderful.

Am I glad we moved our family to Bali to attend the Green School? I must admit I was worried about our girls settling into an untradtional and unconventional school in the middle of the Balinese jungle where the school buildings are made out of bamboo and the classrooms are 'open'. Our girls, however, have thrived. They enjoy the 'open' concept and they have demonstrated to me how much potential we human beings have for growth and change. I am very proud of them and proud of the fact that their environment allows them to learn in a fun, 'hands on' approach, which in turn leads to creative, meaningful and sustainable learning. I'm glad our children have the opportunity of this once in a lifetime experience and are in an environment where they discover that they want to learn.

As Ken Robinson, who was knighted for his contribution to education and the arts, says in his book 'The Element':-

"Put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions."

Take a look at his outstanding TED talk:-

 http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

In my 20+ years of personal and professional development, I have observed that the most effective learning happens when it is viewed as fun and memorable, rather than a chore.

I like the following quote by Glenn Doman, founder of The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential:

"Children want to learn to the degree that they are unable to distinguish learning from fun. They keep this attitude until we adults convince them that learning is not fun."

Take a look at www.greenschool.org

Learning is in the doing, make sure you have fun too and let the creativity flow.


Janet

Learn Something New

When was the last time you learned something new? Was it when you were at school or has it been more recent? When did you last take yourself out of your comfort zone and learn something that was unfamiliar to you?

Every year, I set myself the goal of learning new things whether it is through reading books, attending seminars, workshops or by talking to people. For many years I have consumed much new learning about self development, leadership and motivation. I'm passionate about self discovery, overcoming limits and enhancing personal fulfilment. Last year I decided to learn something that I knew absolutely nothing about. I decided to learn about financial planning and investments.To many people this may sound dry and I must admit that I wasn't exactly excited and motivated about the subject matter.

Last May, a close friend invited me to attend a financial investment planning 3 day seminar with her. I joined her to appear willing and keep her company more than anything else. I had no real expectations of the training, apart from that I would go in with an open mind and with a curious hat on. At the end of day 1, I soon realised how little I knew about investing in my future and that my 'seat of the pants', hoping 'all would work out' approach was not the best strategy to have for when I get older.  My friend and I got so enraptured about the importance of investments, we decided to understand more about the money markets. We signed up to a weekend's training on Forex / foreign exchange trading and we attended last weekend.

I can safely say that I have never been so confused in all my life! The trainer took us rapidly through a thick, ring bound workbook, 400 pages long that taught us everything we needed to know about Forex trading. Unfortunately, I followed my usual approach to training and did not do any preparation before the workshop. I see myself as a kinaesthetic person who learns by doing and aptly used the excuse that I couldn't prepare beforehand as I had to be taken through the training first to understand anything.

The Forex trainer whizzed us through the notes, as if we were already experts and repeatedly asked 'does that make sense?'. A little voice in my head was saying 'no that doesn't make sense' and the more I thought about it, the more confused I got. The 200 participants who were mostly Asian, were equipped with rulers, calculators and currency charts. As they held their heads down, busily writing the answers to the questions in the manual, I felt that I was in the wrong room.

At the end of the workshop, it felt like I had been read the maunal to fly a plane but nobody had sat down with me in the plane to show me all the controls! When I got home, I re-read the manual and looked through all the charts on my computer to make sense of my new learning.

Although I still have a long way to go until I get to a competent level, my new learning experience has opened my eyes to a whole new world. The next time I talk to a group of traders, I'll have more idea of what they do and may be able to converse with them. I am now learning about a whole new field which is interesting and I do have occasional light bulb moments, even though my head is aching from all the new neuron connections that are being made. I'm pleased with myself to be learning something new and to be out of my comfort zone. It makes me think in new and different ways and as Homer Simpson says "Every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain."

It's a good feeling to stretch the brain, create new neurons and get rid of the old stuff. We're never too old to learn something new and it's never too late to learn. Learn something new with our next NoLimits NLP programme: 

Invest in yourself: NLP in Bali June 2010

 NoLimits Intensive Business NLP Practitioner in Bali http://bit.ly/9AvChA

Searching For Treasure

Have you ever done something that is easy first time around and feels almost impossible the next time? It doesn't go as you expect it to? What do you do? Do you keep on trying or do you give up?

My family and I drove a 3 hour journey to East Bali over the weekend. We stayed at our friend's hotel called Life in Amed, an attractive boutique hotel that overlooks the calm sea and beautiful coral formations. On Sunday morning, I went out snorkelling with my 11 and 9 year old daughters. We had stayed at Life in Amed before and had ventured out snorkelling the last time we visited, so we decided to do this again.

I encouraged my daughters to follow me as I knew where I was going. Or so I thought I did.......... I noticed this time that the tide seemed to be further in. We swam and swam, further and further out and all we could see through our snorkelling head gear was sandy, blurry sea water. There wasn't a fish in sight, let alone the coral that we saw last time.

Disenchanted, my eldest daughter decided that her flippers were making her feet hurt, so she headed back to the shore. I wasn't sure whether to give up myself, but we had paid for the snorkelling gear and I was determined to find a fish before returning to shore.

"It must be here." I exclaimed to my younger daughter. "The coral couldn't have disappeared. It was definitely 6 coconut trees along the beach the last time we saw all those fish. Let's keep on looking." My daughter dilligently followed as we found ourselves going further and further out to sea.

Although part of me was saying 'just give up', the other part wasn't happy to stop looking until I had searched all of the sea. I could have been on a long trip! As we were heading a bit far out, I decided to change direction, swimming across the sea rather than further out and heading closer to the shore.

Magically, we found the hidden treasure. The coral wasn't at all in line with the sixth coconut tree. It was in the complete opposite direction! I'm not sure what was going on with my bearings on this day, but it was worth persevering, changing our direction and having belief that we would find the fish. The wonderful display of tropical fish of all colours, shapes and sizes made our determination to keep on trying very rewarding.

When have you felt like giving up and have you failed to try?

“You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need” The Rolling Stones.

Stuck in the Mud

Have you ever had one of those feelings where you are stuck in the mud? The faster you go and the more you try to get out of it the worse it gets?

Last night my parents, my husband and 3 children ventured back from our 3 day expedition in North Bali. We had a fantastic time. We saw breathtaking views of Bali from the central volcanic mountains, we felt the fresher, cooler air in the mountains and we drove further north to the coast of Lovina, where we went on a small fishing boat at dawn to see a group of 20 dolphins playfully skimming the waves as they dived head first into the ocean for their early morning feed. On our way back home to the West of Bali, we decided to have dinner at our local eating place at Echo Beach. A perfect end to a great weekend.  Or this is what we thought it would be.........

After dinner, we jumped in our car ready to go home. Rather than reverse out of the space, my husband decided to drive in a loop across the car park (Bali's version of a public car park by the sea is a rough piece of land covered in black volcanic sand with rocks, stones and pot holes). It had rained and was dark at this stage. There was no overhead lighting to help us see where we were going. Suddenly, we hit a big puddle of squelchy mud, much more swampy than what we had anticipated and the car refused to move. At first my husband tried to gently manoeuvre us out of the deep rut, but the wheels just kept on turning round and round. My husband pressed his foot slightly heavier on the accelerator and asked us all to rock back and fore to nudge the car forward. Goodness knows what any passer-by would have thought of us rocking back and fore like a bunch of demented lunatics. We grunted and sighed hoping that our rocking would push the car forward but all it seemed to do was rock us further into the mud!

An Indonesian security guard noticed our distress and offered to help. He took off his shoes, rolled up his trousers, beckoned each of us to get out of the car and with my Dad, tried pushing the car out of the hole, but to no avail. Frustrated, the security guard gesticulated with his hands that he should jump into the driving seat. My husband let him have a go. The security guard revved the car so hard, the engine started screaming, puffs of white smoke blasted from the exhaust into the black sky and a smell of a burning clutch hit the air. By now we were all covered in a thick, black, volcanic sand paste. I know that there are many beautiful spas in Bali where people will pay exorbitant prices for this kind of treatment, but the novelty of being in this stuck state was starting to wear thin by now.

"Stop! You'll burn out the clutch.You have to do this gently" My Dad shouted to the security guard.
The security guard clearly didn't understand English and continued to rev the car. The back wheels slipped and skidded burying the tyres deeper and deeper into the mud. Furious, my Dad opened the driver's door and gesticulated to the security guard to get out.

By this stage, we were gathering quite a crowd of on-lookers and a jeep with flashing lights appeared. It was the beach patrol guards. I thought they had arrived to help, but they got out of their jeep and went for a coffee! A Scottish man who was moving his own car volunteered to help us. He took off his shoes and helped push the car with my husband and the security guard. The harder they pushed and rocked the car, the more it seemed to stick in the mud. We could only see the top half of the back wheels. The bottom half had been engulfed by the black, volcanic sand. We were well and truly stuck.

To get out of this stuck state required a different strategy. It required doing something different and 'out of the box' thinking.
"I'm going to phone the car hire company and ask them to bring a rope to pull out the car." I suggested.
An hour later the car hire company arrived and gently pulled out our stuck car with a rope using their car. It took seconds and we were no longer stuck in the mud.

Have you ever repeatedly done more of the same thing, faster and harder to find you're getting more stuck? Rather than wedge yourself further into the mud, take the lead and think of ways in which you can find a solution. I'm going to refer to my 'stuck in the mud' story whenever I'm feeling this way!