1st Edition
Learning in the Age of Climate Disasters Teacher and Student Empowerment Beyond Futurephobia
Learn how to infuse learning with deeper purpose, connectedness, and engagement, so students feel more empowered and less anxious about their futures. In Learning in the Age of Climate Disasters, author and award-winning teacher Maggie Favretti outlines the contexts and causes of "futurephobia" and then offers Regenerative Learning strategies rooted in nature’s principles for repair and redesign. She explains how tending the soil and cultivating the roots of (re)generative power (Love, Personhood, People, Place, Purpose, Process, Positivity) help us disrupt degenerative hierarchical fragmentation. She also explores methods for co-empowering youth creativity, agency, and hope. Chapters include interviews with and contributions by children and young people, as well as key takeaways (Seeds for Planting), and tools to help you implement the ideas. With this book’s thought-provoking concepts, you’ll be able to help students overcome eco-anxiety and find healing connection and meaning for more sustained, regenerative change.
Support Material Author and Youth Contributor Bios Dedication Preface 1. Futurephobia and Renewal Interview: Génesis Ramos Rosado 2. The Power of Love: Unity in the Universe 3. Cultivating (Re)generative Power 4. Personhood and the Power Within: Coming Home to Ourselves 5. The Power of "People": Kinship With the Whole of Life 6. The Power of Place: Belonging in Contexts Batey, Bomba, and the Regenerative Power of Place-Based Learning in Puerto Rico 7. The Power of Purpose: Motivation, Flow, Depth, and Meaning 8. Power-full Processes: Democratizing How We Change Interview: Jeltsin José Obregón 9. Power-full Positivity: Empowered Hope and the Positive Civic Action Cycle 10. An Invitation to Possibilities: Creating Power-full Regenerative Learning Communities and Networks Acknowledgments References
Biography
Maggie Favretti conspires with younger learners and colleagues from around the world to democratize and deepen learning and to build agency for transformative systemic change-making. Her next steps include Earth and indigenous rights advocacy, and helping to further emancipatory and regenerative learning and civic action networks in the interest of peaceful and interrelated life. She plans to keep asking, what kind of ancestor will I be?
"So how does one teach hope and agency during our climate crisis? Gifted educator Maggie Favretti provides some powerful answers in this remarkable book. Read it, then teach it for the sake of our future on earth."
Tony Wagner, Senior Research Fellow, Learning Policy Institute and best-selling author
"Young people know that we’re in the fight for our lives—for our collective future. The climate crisis has contributed to the mental health crisis among teens because we’ve responded so inadequately. In this book Maggie Favretti outlines what school could be if focused on our collective and regenerative resilience: Personhood, People, Place, Purpose, Process, and Positivity. This is a must read for school communities searching for what’s next and what Favretti calls 'cultures of coherence, belonging and agency.'"
Tom Vander Ark, CEO, Getting Smart, author of Difference Making at the Heart of Learning
"Learning in the Age of Climate Disasters offers a fresh and empowering ecological view of design, infused with systems thinking, and most importantly, community wisdom. This book invites us to reimagine design-based solutions to societal and environmental problems with a decolonial mindset. It is a gift of change-making with an equity and justice lens."
Yerko Sepúlveda, PhD, Educator, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Justice leader, Project Zero’s Introduction to Maker-Centered Learning coach
"'Process is not a linear or single pathway, but a tapestry of potential for transformation that emerges from relationships and collective knowledges...' Yes, yes, yes! It's what I found myself saying as I read Learning in the Age of Climate Disasters. Maggie Favretti offers profound intelligence and goodness in her book and I am so grateful she is pointing the way to engage learning and design mindsets to revitalize the Earth."
Susie Wise, Author of Design for Belonging, Founder of d.school K12 Lab
"In the face of the complex and overwhelming challenges we face, youth and the adults that support and stand with them, need a vision for how to cultivate hope and empower action. Favretti’s powerful and eloquent book provides just that. Favretti explores the power of place, purpose, and processes to offer a transformative vision for education in the age of the climate crises. With love, creativity, and a deep sense of justice and equity her narrative shines a light on an actionable pathway of hope and possibility."
Robin Cox, PhD, Royal Roads University Professor & Program Head, Climate Action Leadership; Director, Resilience By Design (RbD) Lab
"Learning in the Age of Climate Disasters tackles the specter of climate change with moral clarity and abundant hope. By centering the voices of children and educators, this inspiring book illuminates the great power that exists within each of us to save this precious planet we call home. This is a must read for anyone searching for actionable guidance on how to respond to crisis with courage."
Lori Peek, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Natural Hazards Center, University of Colorado Boulder, co-author of Children of Katrina
