Building our biocentric eco-art home has inspired the perfect homeschool opportunity for Zazu. It spurred an amazing hands-on opportunity to teach him about co-responsibility and living wisdom. We called the learning opportunity “Adventures in Ideas; Adventures in Action.” The word educate means
“to draw out.” Our bus-to-home transformation began with curiosity, and further built on body confidence and creative experiments. Our topics of study included physics, engineering, math, chemistry, art, geography, history, current affairs, writing, reading, creative visualization, inquiry-based challenges that encourage real Zero Waste in which all by-products are reintegrated into use-systems.
We explore how to live with a sense of playful responsibility through deep empathy. We investigate what it is like to live within a human-scale economy, how to question, think relationally, research ideas and problem-solve using unusual challenges such as not having electricity in our home, how to incorporate weather extremes, or how to positively function in a world that resists creative-alternatives to mainstream fossil-fuel addicted economies. Instead of being entrenched in the corporatist paradigm of you need or want? Buy it online, or jump in your car and buy it at Joanne Fabrics, Home Depot, or Lowe’s, we teach Zazu about creative-waste living. Since Zazu has been witnessing me lecture and perform about ethnic, economic, and ecological diversity since he was born (I am a former university professor), he is very familiar with interdisciplinary, creative educational models. Because I have never owned a car, credit card or smartphone, Zazu is used to actively working out solutions that are rooted in cross-cultural historical, literary, mathematical, scientific examples of symbiosis and collaboration.
