This will probably be a long one, partly because GroundEd was a lot to take in, and partly because it sat right in the middle of so many things I care about: geography, climate education, teacher wellbeing, outdoor learning, curriculum, community, young people, and what it actually means to keep going when you know too much about the climate and nature crises to pretend everything is fine.
I was there with several hats on, as usual. Coffee & Geography podcaster, Schools Climate Hub person, former teacher, climate education person, tired human, and the slightly ridiculous person who had driven from Norfolk to Northumberland and decided that sleeping in the car would be a reasonable and character-building plan. It was mostly reasonable. I am not sure about character-building.
The practical purpose was to record audio for Coffee & Geography. Meryl Batchelder had invited me to GroundEd, and because I have a habit of saying yes to things that sound important before fully thinking through the logistics, I found myself at the Homestead in Northumberland for a two-day gathering described as regenerative and transformative Continuous Professional Development (CPD) for educators.
I have been to a lot of CPD, and I have delivered a lot of CPD. Some of it has genuinely changed my thinking and practice. Some of it has been the kind of thing where you can feel your soul slowly sliding off the plastic chair while someone reads out the bullet points already visible on the PowerPoint slide. I do believe in professional development, but I also think teachers are often expected to leave a training session “inspired” from formats that are not especially human, embodied, relational or inspiring.
GroundEd felt like Meryl was trying to test a different possibility. Not simply CPD about regenerative education, but a form of CPD that tried to act regeneratively itself.
Arriving at the Homestead
The Homestead did a lot of work before anyone formally started speaking. It is a five-acre smallholding in the North Tyne Valley, near Northumberland National Park and the International Dark Sky Park, and it very much felt like a lived-in, worked-on, loved place rather than a polished venue.
There were tents, trees, food growing, uneven paths, workshop spaces, dogs appearing at the edge of things, compost loos, and the general sense that a lot of people had put in a lot of labour to make this happen. It was not glamping, and Meryl was very open about that. In her closing reflections she said:
“The facilities are slightly basic and it’s not an apology. We try and walk the talk.”
I appreciated that because there is a tendency in sustainability work to make everything look very smooth and aesthetically pleasing, which can sometimes hide the reality that most of this work is compromise, maintenance, learning, rethinking, failing, trying again and asking other people to help. GroundEd did not feel like it was trying to perform perfection. It felt like a group of people trying to live honestly with the questions they were asking.
The event was hot, full, busy, imperfect and sometimes logistically stretched, because events are made by humans and humans are not logistics software. But the imperfection did not undermine the event. If anything, it kept it grounded. There was no sense that anyone was pretending to have solved sustainability, education or teacher wellbeing. Instead, people were trying to create a temporary space where those things could be explored together. And I absolutely loved it for that.
Why connection came first
One of the strongest messages from the first part of the weekend was that nature connection is not a decorative add-on to climate education. It is not the “nice” bit before the serious work starts. It is part of the serious work.
Liz Knapper’s session on awe, wonder and children’s connection with nature really brought that home. She spoke about children needing direct experiences of the natural world and the importance of adults leaning into curiosity rather than closing it down. One line especially stayed with me:
“Wonder is an essential survival skill.”
I loved that because wonder is too often treated as something soft or childish, when actually it is one of the ways we begin to pay attention. Children noticing a worm, asking why a leaf feels a certain way, stopping to look at moss, smelling herbs, getting muddy, handling soil, finding language for what they encounter. That is not a distraction from learning, but a route into learning.
Hannah’s early years session made that very practical. Mud kitchens, rosemary, chives, lemon balm, sensory language, oracy, motor skills, children getting mucky, reclaimed resources, and the reminder that children do not leap straight into writing because an adult wants evidence in a book. They build towards writing through bodies, speech, experience, movement, handling, play and meaning. It reminded me how much early years educators understand that the rest of the system often forgets.
The forest bathing session did something similar for the adults. People were invited to slow down, enter the garden, breathe, notice textures, listen to the sounds around them, and leave some of their worries at the threshold. In a different setting it’s easy to see how some might have felt awkward about it, and I guess I did a little too given I am still a recovering secondary teacher and therefore occasionally allergic to anything that feels too earnest. But at GroundEd it made sense. Teachers are bodies. Climate educators are bodies. We carry stress physically, not just intellectually, and there was something important about adults being asked to practise the kind of attention we often say children need.
Katharine Burke and ecological understanding
Katharine Burke’s session was one of the intellectual anchors of the weekend for me. It was not a resources session, though there were very practical implications. It was more about how we understand ourselves in relation to the living world.
The phrase that stayed with me was:
“We cannot unconnect.”
That is such a simple phrase, but it shifts the ground. We often talk about reconnecting young people with nature, and I use that language too, because it is useful shorthand. But Katharine’s point pushes deeper. It asks whether the language of reconnection already accepts too much of the idea that humans were ever separate from nature in the first place.
We are not separate. We are made of food, sunlight, water, soil, air, bacteria, labour, systems, histories, relationships and infrastructures. Our classrooms are ecological spaces even when they are full of plastic chairs and fluorescent lighting. A school meal is ecological. A child’s journey to school is ecological. A geography lesson is ecological. The teacher standing at the front trying to make sense of the world with thirty young people is also ecological.
That has implications for climate education because knowledge alone does not necessarily transform practice or feeling. Katharine talked about young people knowing the facts and still reaching for humour, distance or defensiveness as ways of coping. I recognised that from teaching, and I recognise it in myself. Sometimes joking is what happens when the thing underneath is too big.
So the question becomes not only how we teach climate change more accurately, although that matters, but how we create learning experiences that help young people understand relationship, responsibility and possibility without simply loading them with dread.
Questions as a way through
Geoff Norman’s Philosophy for Children session followed that thread in a useful way because it moved from ecological understanding into pedagogical practice. He described Philosophy for Children as being about:
“questions and exploring deep, deep, deep questions.”
There is a lot in climate and sustainability education that young people need to know. I am not about to argue otherwise. But they are also growing into a world where many of the biggest questions do not have fixed answers.
What is a good life?
Who holds power?
What does justice mean in a climate crisis?
What do humans owe each other, and what do humans owe the more-than-human world?
What should schools be for?
I am leaving those questions in a list because they are questions, not because I am trying to do a neat rhetorical flourish. They were the sort of questions that seemed to hover over the weekend.
Geoff’s emphasis was on inquiry rather than debate as performance. Listening, building on ideas, being caring, collaborative, critical and creative. The phrase “curious not furious” came up, and I have thought about it a lot since. I do not think fury is wrong. There is plenty to be furious about. But fury on its own is not a healthy place to leave young people, and it is not enough to sustain educators either. Curiosity gives us somewhere to move.
Messages from the Wild
One of the sessions I was very glad to have recorded was Annabel and Ruth’s Messages from the Wild. The premise is playful: participants interview animals or plants, with someone speaking from the perspective of that species. But the session was doing much more than being quirky or entertaining.
It was biodiversity education, oracy, empathy, perspective-taking and more-than-human geography in a form that teachers could actually use. I especially liked that one of the memorable examples was a slug, because it is easy enough to get people to care about red squirrels or other obviously charismatic species. It is a more interesting educational challenge to ask people to develop curiosity and respect for something many humans would ignore, avoid or happily remove from the garden.
The activity asks what a species might say if humans stopped assuming they were the only ones with a meaningful perspective. What does it need? What does it do? What is its role? What might it want from us? The session was funny, but it was not trivial.
It also fitted beautifully with the earlier sessions. Katharine had talked about entanglement, Geoff had talked about questions, and Messages from the Wild gave people a way to practise listening differently.
Music as a hinge
The Ladies of the Midnight Blue clip became the hinge between the two podcast episodes because it seemed to shift the energy from the first part of the GroundEd story into the second. There was rhythm, drumming, voice, call-and-response and a spoken message about courage, compassion, curiosity, rest, and educators not needing to be exhausted superheroes.
That phrase, “exhausted superheroes”, is one I think a lot of educators will feel in their bones. Schools often rely on people pushing themselves far beyond what is sustainable, and climate and sustainability work can intensify that because it feels morally urgent. The music created a space that was not just about thinking, but about processing. Sometimes music does that better than discussion.
Putting climate learning into bodies
The theatre and climate change session in the second part of the weekend was lovely because it was so obviously about doing. Participants became sunlight, heat, greenhouse gases, Planet Earth, city cooling inventions and other strange things that make complete sense in the moment and are quite hard to explain afterwards without sounding slightly odd.
One line captured the pedagogy:
“So that is how I teach the greenhouse effect. I put it in their bodies.”
That is excellent teaching. Climate education involves so many abstract ideas: greenhouse gases, radiation, feedback loops, albedo, mitigation, adaptation, risk, resilience. We can teach those things through diagrams and explanation, and sometimes that is exactly right, but movement and drama can make processes memorable in another way. For some learners, it will be the bodily experience that makes the concept stick.
Zines, school grounds and data
The National Education Nature Park and zine-making session linked school grounds, biodiversity data and creativity. I liked the idea that data can be a voice for nature, because it helps move data away from being something cold or detached. What is on the school site? What habitats are there? What is missing? What could be improved? What do learners notice when they actually look?
The zine-making then offered a way for young people to communicate something. A piece of paper becomes a little publication, a story, a message, a reflection, a call to action, or just a small creative object that helps someone process what they are learning. I liked the low-pressure nature of it. Not everything has to become a polished display. Sometimes the value is in making, folding, thinking and saying something in a form that feels manageable.
Willow and curriculum
The willow bird feeder workshop was a small thing that opened into a much bigger curriculum conversation. People were weaving, laughing, noticing the smell of the willow, asking whether birds could perch on it, and then talking about design technology, templates, CAD/CAM, primary, secondary, extension tasks and curriculum links.
My ADHD brain was flooded with ephermal ideas that I simply blurted out a typical display of frankness:
“All this nonsense about we can’t put this stuff in the curriculum, you bloody well can!”
I know schools are under pressure. I know the timetable is packed. I know accountability can squash good ideas before they have a chance to breathe. But sometimes we internalise those barriers so deeply that we stop noticing the places where things are possible. Willow weaving is not just “craft”. It can be materials, design, ecology, birds, habitats, mathematics, local knowledge, heritage, wellbeing and probably much more if you let a group of teachers think aloud with a cup of tea.
Action and young people
The action sessions were careful in a way I appreciated. There is a version of climate education that tells young people frightening things and then offers them a list of personal actions, as if turning off lights and recycling harder can carry the entire moral weight of the climate crisis. GroundEd was better than that.
Liz Knapper’s later material on values and Good Life Schools made the point that young people often care more than they realise, but they may not know their peers care too. That perception gap matters. If a young person thinks they are the only one who cares, they may stay quiet.
OASES then took the climate anxiety point further. Joe Appleby spoke about awareness no longer being enough, because if young people know what is happening but do not see routes into action, we risk deepening anxiety. The idea that young people need to feel listened to, know educators share their concerns, and see action follow felt very important.
Climate Friendly Schools gave a practical route into that through whole-school climate action teams, audits, action plans, practical actions and evidence. I liked the whole-school emphasis because the model where one keen teacher carries everything is not sustainable. It burns people out, and when that person moves on, the work often disappears.
Imagining future schools
The Ministry of Eco Education session brought the action theme into future thinking. Paul Turner talked about big questions and the need for young people to engage with the kinds of societal problems adults have not solved. Food, energy, waste, water, nature, transport, society, justice. These are not side topics. They are the context young people are growing up in.
Then Tess Draper led a future-school imagination exercise, drawing on Rob Hopkins’ work. We time travelled to 2040 and imagined a school that was greener, less tidy, full of allotments, orchards, birdsong, workshops, kitchens, intergenerational learning and community skills. The boundary between school and community had become much softer.
It could have felt too dreamy, but I do not think it did, because the whole weekend had already been practical and grounded. Imagining a better school felt less like escapism and more like trying to build a direction. Afterwards people talked about bringing back joy, intergenerational learning, children running towards school, and education being less separate from everyday life.
Climate education cannot only ask young people to imagine disaster. It also has to help them imagine futures worth working towards.
Burnout and human sustainability
By late Saturday afternoon, Kerry Trevett brought the focus back to the adults in the room, which was absolutely needed. After all the talk of action, curriculum, future schools and young people, someone had to ask what sustains the people expected to do this work.
Kerry spoke about human sustainability and said:
“It’s us, we’re the most important resource.”
She also asked:
“If the humans are delivering it, but they’re running on empty, how can we bring that back?”
That question feels central to climate education. Teachers are tired. Sustainability leads are tired. Outdoor educators are tired. Climate educators are tired. Charity workers, researchers, teacher educators and activists are tired. Many are also joyful and committed, but they are tired.
Kerry named burnout, panic, heaviness, physical pain, emotional regulation, boundaries and the importance of listening to the body. People shared honestly, and the room felt safe enough for that honesty to happen. She also said:
“We are not AI, we are not robots.”
That line feels increasingly important. We need sleep, food, breath, movement, humour, quiet, boundaries, connection and time outside. We need to stop pretending that passion makes people inexhaustible.
Kerry’s three pillars were connection, consistency and communication. She led breathwork, a butterfly scan and a gratitude practice, and she reminded the room that:
“’No‘ is a full sentence.”
That one is probably worth repeating in every staff meeting where someone is asked to absorb yet another initiative with no time, space or resource.
Meryl’s closing Big Green Hug
Meryl’s closing reflection felt like a very Meryl ending: funny, emotional, tired, political, grateful, self-deprecating and rooted in the place. She talked about climate education not needing to be heavy:
“Climate education doesn’t have to be heavy.”
She talked honestly about trying to live sustainably without pretending to be perfect: trees, solar panels, an air source heat pump, growing food, eating less meat, drinking cow’s milk in tea, and all the compromises that come with being human rather than a sustainability case study.
She also talked about joy:
“There is joy here and I’m really, really happy to share that stubborn, defiant joy and our growing community.”
I really like “stubborn, defiant joy” because it does not deny the seriousness of the crisis. It feels more like refusing to let the crisis take away all the reasons for doing the work.
Meryl also said:
“This is the CPD of the future. We are already living it.”
By that point in the weekend, I understood what she meant. Not because GroundEd had solved CPD, but because it had shown one possible version of professional learning that was place-based, embodied, intellectually serious, creative, communal, practical and emotionally sustaining.
Towards the end she acknowledged the non-human life of the site too: the birds, mammals, insects, amphibians, plants and fungi. They were there before us, and they would probably appreciate the quiet when we left. I was glad she said that, because it would have been odd to have a weekend about ecological education and not acknowledge the beings whose home we had been occupying.
Her final words included this:
“Know you are loved. Know there are people there for you. And know that there are an incredible number of reasons why we need to keep going.”
That was a good place to land.
What I took away
I left GroundEd tired, because of course I did. It had been a full weekend, I had been recording, listening, thinking, chatting, sleeping in the car, and mentally editing audio while also trying to be present.
But I left thinking that regenerative education cannot only be about what young people learn. It has to be about the conditions in which learning happens. That includes children and young people, but it also includes teachers, educators and everyone else trying to support them.
If we want young people to learn through place, bodies, senses, questions and relationships, then educators need professional learning that respects those things as well.
If we want climate education to be honest without becoming hopeless, then adults need spaces where honesty and hope can sit together.
If we want schools to take action, then we need structures where the work is shared rather than carried by one exhausted person.
GroundEd is not a model that can simply be copied and pasted anywhere. Not every CPD event can or should happen on a smallholding in Northumberland with compost loos, drums and people lying on the floor imagining butterflies. But I do think it raises a question worth sitting with:
What would it look like if CPD helped people breathe?
By that I do not mean CPD that avoids difficulty. GroundEd did not avoid difficulty. It named climate anxiety, burnout, ecological crisis, curriculum constraints, power, justice and the broken bits of the education system. But it held those things alongside food, music, laughter, making, imagination, community and care.
And in the current age of climate, ecological and well-being crisis, that feels more important than ever.
For me, GroundEd was a reminder that education is not just the transfer of knowledge, and CPD is not just the transfer of strategies. It is also about relationship, courage, confidence, permission, and knowing that there are other people trying to do the same work.
After the last few years in education, that is not a small thing.
