Re-wilding and Regenerative Learning: Ancient Wisdom for Collective Liberation

ryanpleune1
Jun 13, 2023
5 min read

Updated: Jun 12

Moving Beyond the "Re" to Understand What We're Actually Returning To

Rewilding and Regenerative Learning in education imply there was once a "wild" or "generative" foundation to return to or reinvigorate in our schools. This is profoundly true on both local and international levels—there IS a wild and generative foundation that schools like Mycelium Cooperative are cultivating within learning communities committed to both individual healing and collective liberation.

At the center of both concepts lies cultivating "playful practice of learning" across all human development stages, especially crucial during early childhood. As I explored in my previous post about reflecting and responding, this pedagogy of play can seem radical, new, or extreme when it's actually ancient and wise—a powerful learning method since humans began teaching new generations.

This connects deeply to my ongoing journey since 2016's "Pilgrimage for Hope," where I learned that regeneration requires moving beyond individual transformation toward collective healing. The "re" in rewilding and regenerative learning isn't about returning to some romanticized past, but about reclaiming ways of being that honor both human development and more-than-human world relationships.

Learning from Black Educational Leadership

I first encountered this wisdom through Lora Smothers, founder of Joy Village School, who articulates in her 2014 TEDx Talk "Going Natural In Education":

"You could call it radical, new and extreme or you could just say this is how kids learn, this is how they've always learned, you could call it ancient, you could call it natural."

Joy Village School in Athens, Georgia—a K-8 school centering joy and thriving of Black youth—leads in education that honors "Learning Naturally." While not explicitly focused on rewilding or regenerative learning, they demonstrate educational approaches I learn from, especially regarding natural learning processes.

Dr. Bettina Love is featured on their website with this vision for reimagining schools:

"We must struggle together not only to reimagine schools but to build new schools that we are taught to believe are impossible: schools based on intersectional justice, antiracism, love, healing, and joy."

This vision embodies what I understand as both/and thinking—we can honor traditional academic learning AND center joy, healing, and justice. We can support individual development AND work toward collective liberation.

International Recognition of Ancient Wisdom

Ms. Smothers is referenced in "The Essential Guide to Forest School and Nature Pedagogy" from the United Kingdom, written by Jon Cree and Marina Robb. The authors acknowledge: "Although not nature-based, this TEDx talk recognizes the importance of the indigenous local way of education—'unschooling.'"

This recognition reveals how educational approaches honoring children's natural learning processes transcend specific methodologies or settings. Whether called unschooling, forest school, or regenerative learning, these approaches share commitment to following children's authentic development while maintaining educational accountability.

The Necessity of Unlearning

Rewilding and Regenerative Learning require unschooling and unlearning—particularly examining how dominant cultural assumptions about "rigor" and "standards" may actually limit children's development. Most human societies have become increasingly disconnected from nature since the 1950s, making rewilding and regenerative learning essential for reuniting humans with non-human world and life systems supporting us.

Once reunited or rewilded, Regenerative Learning Ecologies and engaged communities ultimately give back more than we take—embodying what I call regeneration as lived practice rather than mere concept.

Global Research on Play-Based Pedagogy

The overlap between unschooling (from that 2014 TEDx talk) and Rewilding and Regenerative Learning that Mycelium Cooperative programs embody becomes clear through Play-Based Pedagogy research.

A 2023 Harvard Graduate School of Education publication by six authors compiled and analyzed data from four countries across eight years of research, creating what may be "the most comprehensive book available to guide educators on how to use pedagogy of play in varying contexts."

Project Zero researchers Ben Mardell, Jen Ryan, Mara Krechevsky, Megina Baker, Savannah Schulz, and Yvonne Liu Constant write:

"Play is at the heart of childhood. Through play, children learn how to collaborate, how to negotiate rules and relationships, and how to imagine and create. They learn to find and solve problems, think flexibly and critically, and communicate effectively."

Children worldwide—from Athens, Georgia to Colombia, Denmark, and South Africa—lead their own learning, explore the unknown, and find joy in schools centered around playful learning.

Indicators of Playful Learning Across Cultures:

South Africa: Curiosity, Ownership, Enjoyment

Denmark: Wonder, Choice, Delight

United States: Meaningful, Empowering, Joyful

Colombia: Curious, Autonomous, Exciting

At Mycelium Cooperative, I align with this international learning community while adding indicators centered on Rewilding and Regenerative Learning, plus small guide-to-student ratios (typically 1:6 or less). Both approaches are academically dense while adhering to the principle that play is the method and learning is the outcome.

The Peregrine Falcon Metaphor: Imprinting on Life Systems

I view Rewilding Education similarly to wildlife biologists' work with Peregrine Falcons. When first attempting to re-establish falcon populations, biologists discovered they couldn't simply release captive-bred falcons into the wild—they had been imprinted and domesticated, lacking knowledge of wild interaction.

Success came through raising falcons on cliff ledges where they imprinted on star cycles, weather patterns, and horizons while learning survival basics. Similarly, I view Forest Schools, Adult Wildcrafting Workshops, and Outdoor Nature-Based Preschools as spaces where unbalanced human populations can rewild and regenerate themselves and surroundings by spending time imprinting on non-human life systems supporting us.

This metaphor connects to my understanding that healing individual disconnection from nature and healing collective disconnection from justice-oriented community are interconnected processes.

Regenerative Learning Ecologies: From Higher Ed to Early Childhood

Most Regenerative Learning Ecology literature applies "giving back more than we take" principles in higher education across disciplines including education, learning, regenerative design, psychology, philosophy, anthropology, sustainability, and sociology.

However, when combined with Play-Based Pedagogy, these concepts become accessible to young students and families outside higher education settings—embodying what I call making transformative education universally accessible rather than limited to privileged communities.

Four Components of Transformative Learning

Bas van den Berg, exploring "What are Regenerative Learning Ecologies?" in his PhD research blog, describes four transformative and regenerative learning components:

• Learning-to-care about self, each other, planet, life, and future life • Learning-to-know facts, figures, and cognition

• Learning-to-be someone living regeneratively

• Learning-to-anticipate toward and from desirable futures

These components align beautifully with Dr. Jessica Reyka's observations during her May 2023 Forest Preschool visit (detailed in my previous post "Reflecting and Responding is Part of a Pedagogy of Play"). They also connect to the Triple WellBeing® framework integrating thinking, feeling, and connecting capacities with self-care, people-care, and earth-care practices.

From Individual Healing to Collective Liberation

When play is the method and learning is the outcome, Rewilding Education and Regenerative Learning Ecologies become subjects we play with while developing capacity for both individual resilience and collective action toward justice.

This represents what grows when something life-affirming emerges from educational systems that have historically prioritized compliance over curiosity, standardization over relationship, and individual achievement over collective flourishing.

Your Invitation to Reflection

How would you define your Pedagogy of Play? Does it support "Learning Naturally" as Ms. Smothers describes? Does it intersect with Rewilding and Regenerative Learning Ecology?

These questions invite us into the kind of contemplative practice necessary for creating educational approaches that honor both rigorous learning and joyful development, individual growth and collective healing, academic accountability and justice-oriented community building.

Building the Web of Regenerative Learning

Through Mycelium Cooperative's Pay What You Can culture and partnerships with organizations like the Rock Center and Colorado Collective for Nature Based Early Learning, we're experimenting with solidarity economies that make transformative education accessible across economic divisions while maintaining educational depth and accountability.

My blog posts serve diverse audiences—families, guardians, parents, practitioners, graduate students, and community adults—covering the "Tangled Bank" (Darwin's enduring metaphor) of interests, initiatives, and networks weaving together when we center justice, relationships, and regeneration.

Through Outdoor Nature Based Preschools, K-8 Forest Schools, and Emergent Strategy Wildcraft Workshops for Adults, we explore perception, observation, interpretation, and reciprocity from human and more-than-human perspectives. Central to all age groups remains this understanding: Early Childhood is "not just cute, but powerful and incredibly important.’