“It is in our willingness to make mistakes that real teaching happens; then the ACTIVITY of learning becomes the highest goal. If instead we model only completion, learning becomes shameful to those whose entire make-up revolves around learning: the children.” – Beth Sutton

Professional Course Level I

Along with completion of the Foundation Courses, all non-Enki hosted prerequistes must be completed to enroll in this program, regardless of other prior experience. As described earlier, this includes a course in Reflex Integration, Brain Gym 101, and a Mindfulness Meditation Intensive.

Summer Arts Intensive

After a year of live-online courses, we come together again in person for a week, to explore teaching through the arts. This course takes the work we began in the Foundations Courses to the next level. Our focus is on our own embodiment through direct work with movement, speech and storytelling, painting and drawing, and crafts. During this time we are deepening our direct experience of the principles we have explored all year, but we do so soley through activity – this is an Arts Intensive designed to help participants embody what they have studied for their own growth and so they can better bring the work to the children.

Making it Our Own: Developing Curriculum, K-8

This course focuses on learning to research and prepare developmentally appropriate, integrated curriculum. It is the beginning of taking the experience and information gained in the Foundation Course and using it to develop the skills to teach all subject areas in an integrated manner. This process will help participants build the muscle needed to create their own curricula. While we provide curricula for all grades, for two reasons, it is important that the teachers all know how to do this. First of all, a deep understanding of developing curricula gives the teachers more room to be creative and independent in the moment-to-moment life of the classroom. Second, we want teachers to be able to follow their own inspiration and not be boxed n by what we can provide; this course gives them the tools and the confidence to do so.

Although participants will be preparing curriculum appropriate to the Enki approach, this ability to create curriculum can be applied to whatever method they choose to work with. 

Regardless of the grade on which they focus, participants will begin by observing children in several different classroom settings. Having working with writing for Grades K-2 in the ChildSPeak course, now each student will take on a particular grade, 3 to 8, and will research and develop curriculum covering all academic areas through work with storytelling, music, movement, arts, projects, manipulatives, concepts, and skills. This is an in-depth course; participants are expected to do extensive independent work and to attend monthly telephone work meetings. This work will be presented, critiqued and built on during the summer Runway Course, in person. 

The Runway

The only way we can learn to teach is by doing it. In this course each participant will be responsible for leading the group through a day, teaching the curriculum they have prepared. They will be responsible for all transitions to other classes and activities, leading meditation and voice exercises, time keeping and facilitation of discussions throughout the day. Each participant will receive group feedback on both the content of their work and their ability to lead the group. Learning to hear feedback, to listen for underlying issues, and then to respond to it creatively is critical to teaching. Without this skill and willingness, both teachers and students become prisoners to the curriculum and to their own patterns and expectations. 

Students will learn to read feedback given indirectly through body language, in addition to receiving clearly articulated direct feedback. This is one of the few opportunities they will have to work with teaching feedback in a safe environment – one in which all involved are in the same boat. This is relatively gentle preparation for the indirect, action-packed feedback the children continually offer. 

This course incorporate all the disciplines introduced during the Foundation Course. Working with the curriculum they have prepared, participants will lead one another in music, circle activities, painting, storytelling, skill building and analytic discussion. After the participants have lead their teaching blocks the instructors will relate this work to a wider context through an overview of curriculum for each grade. Finally, instructors will help participants examine the internal issues raised by this teaching experience. 

Square One

All approaches to education, however diverse or contradictory, have grown from a deep seed of caring and inspiration and have some contribution to make to our understanding. In Enki Education we strive to perceive and learn from the essential insights underlying each. We also find that a willingness to explore that which is different often helps us to better understand and clarify our own insights.

By the end of the teacher-training program, participants will have branched out in many different  directions, and will be preparing to go forward on their separate ways. It is time for them to go  back to square one and examine the Enki approach through a new lens, in turn, shedding light on the basic beliefs they will take with them into their teaching careers. 

This workshop will begin with both conceptual and experiential presentations by participants on a variety of different curricula and methodology they have researched. With this foundation, students look at Enki through the eyes of different Child Development or Educational theorists, asking how each person would feel about the Enki approach. What issues would this person have? What resonance?

Sticking tightly to this third party’s outlook and imagined perception of Enki opens the doors to the students’ own questions and issues. Then, with these doors open, through meditation, movement work, and discussion, we will explore the participants’ own reactions to what she/he has observed and studied in relation to Enki.

This work will help to further uncover the unconscious biases and perspectives that these reactions express, and set the student off to teach with a fresh outlook on Enki and on all education.

Process Calls: a mid month meeting 1.5 hrs throughout this period this is a chance to focus on the students’ experience of exploring Enki and how it is impacting their lives; attendance is a requirement.

Professional Course Level II

Internship

Participants in the Certificate program will complete a full internship. Exact structure for this will be worked out with each teacher, but it will include two visits from Enki faculty of two days each, and ongoing check-ins throughout the interning period.

This internship must be in a school or program in which the principles and approach taught in the Enki training can be used, but it need not be a full Enki school. As well, for those interning in the grades, two weeks must be spent with a nursery or kindergarten class using the Enki approach or a similar method that has been approved. For those working in nursery or kindergarten, two weeks must be spent in a grade school classroom (1-8), using this approach.

Those participants who feel they can apply the Enki principles and approach in their current work situation can apply to the Enki directors for approval for interning in this classroom.