Regenerative Coexistence With the Body, the Bioregion, and Beyond: Redefining Community Engagement in Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session 52
  In Roundtable Session: Mobilizing Youth as Agents of Social Change in Environmental Education

Abstract

In this paper we call for a redefinition of “community” within education, arguing for classroom practices that engage in ‘learning with’ the fellow beings of one’s town, bioregion, and body. We review the urgency of connecting classrooms to human community partners, and share sample projects from our classrooms. Next we argue for the need to widen conceptions of community. We offer principles of permaculture, food justice, and fermentation as examples of alternative modes of thinking about community that reject dominant exploitative metaphors and ways of relating. We conclude by considering the ways that these concepts can be incorporated into eco-democratic educational practices to engage students in community building, collective action, and transformative re-thinking about human relationships with the more-than-human world.

Authors

• Rita Turner, University of Maryland - Baltimore County

• Ryan Donnelly, The Community College of Baltimore County