Twinning Regenerative Educators: Johannes Kepler School (Ecuador) & Springhouse Community School (USA)

Johannes Kepler School and Springhouse Community School are formal schools, in the Global south and Global North, respectively, applying sustainability principles in their curriculums that have participated in a year long project called the Twinning ReGENerative Education with other educational projects from all around the world. 

“I’m very glad to be part of this project because we have been able to have an overview of the global development of education towards sustainability… We can see how things that are emerging here are also emerging at the other side of the world in different places at the same time. We are able to share experiences and grow this knowledge… from the same kind of experiences but different tools appear. We were able to connect with these other learnings, with these other tools and it’s very very intense cross-pollination.” (Piedad from Johannes Kepler School)

Interdisciplinarity is a common thread between them, but while Johannes Kepler Schools focuses it’s approach on Sustainable Development and its goals, Springhouse Community School emphasises regenerative culture. 

We are living the same reality in the whole world. We face the same challenges like climate change, economic crisis, social crisis so we see each other as very common humans like facing the same challenges and working on the solutions. And also I see that the solutions we are bringing here like these tangible solutions are products that we can all use like the Manual or the Cards or the Training. This is very inspiring and also very useful because a lot of schools we are like developing the guide for transition into sustainable schools and we have this purpose that we can work worldwide with this transition. That what we are learning here today that which of these sustainable schools we are going to be able to spread and this is also the value of the network.” (Piedad from Johannes Kepler School)

They contributed to the cocreation of a Teacher Training Programme and have also shared examples of educational activities such as Honouring Water and Shape Note Singing as part of the ReGENerative Education Toolkit deliverable developed during the project.

“To work in specific products is also very tangible and very useful for all these schools that also want to make the transition”