Processs Review
I'm going to be using the 3Ps; Personal, professional and project strategy for this process review and for all future project reviews in order to give a more holistic overview of my learning outcomes and process reflections.
Personal;
I felt that the project fulfilled my needs reasonably well on a personal level for several reasons:
- By generating much needed income to help me support my daughter financially
By helping me to build confidence and experience teaching theory classes which is something that I'm particularly focused on improving upon in order to achieve my goals of teaching PDCs in the not too distant future.
By fulfilling my need to be involved with dynamic and creative projects that are focused on sustainable development.
By inspiring and empowering others (course participants/community members) to actively engage in permaculture related projects in the future.
Inclement weather conditions proved challenging on occasions; Forcing us to rig up tarpaulins in order to finish the builds. Moments of rain induced melancholy on the part of a couple of participants called for an extra effort from Matt and I in order to buoy up morale.
The course was held at the end of monsoon season when there are fewer tourists visiting Thailand. Therefore we didn't get as many people signed up as we would have liked. This meant that we all had to work harder in order to complete the builds and Matt and I didn't make as much financially as we
would have liked from the course.
Professional;
I feel that running the course helped me to develop my skill professionally on a number of levels for the following reasons:
- Designing the workshop with Matt was a great experience which performed the function of improving and diversifying my design skills and creating a template which I'm sure will prove to be a valuable asset for future workshops and courses.
Before and after the workshop I spent time compiling, reviewing and tweaking my teaching notes for the theory classes. These notes will undoubtedly prove to be an invaluable resource for future courses.
The design and implementation phases of the building projects provided valuable experience, which I'll be able to refer back to on future projects.
Co-teaching the introduction to permaculture with matt was a great experience.
I taught classes on small-scale organic vegetable production, Food forests, Compost toilet theory, Berkley 18-day compost, Social permaculture, Design methodology; Input-output analysis and co taught Ethics and principles of Permaculture with Matt.
I was pleased with the way I taught the classes and the level of understanding that the participants developed. I Felt that of all the classes I taught the Input-output analysis was the one with the most room for improvement. I felt as though I could have been more clear and delivered it better in order to get the students to appreciate this method of design. I feel as though I didn't spend enough time going over my notes before the class and as a result didn't deliver it as well as I would have liked.
The class was by no means a disaster, I just felt as though I could have done better. From this evaluation I can take a valuable lesson to prepare better in future.
Project:
During project 2 we incorporated a number of different natural building and alternative construction techniques with an introduction to permaculture course. All these elements combined to fulfill my needs on a number of different levels;
- The building projects helped fulfill a need I have for combing functionality, creativity, sustainability and art.
- The buildings were much needed elements at the panya project and I know that they will be a valuable asset to the community now and in the future.
- During construction of the buildings/structures a sense of camaraderie and a common purpose of positive, holistic regeneration was achieved which was very encouraging and satisfying.
- All members managed to combine fun and hard work to produce a beautiful compost toilet and ferrocement tank. Some of the participants will be going out and doing directly related projects in their home countries.
Some aspects of the projects weren't always easy, for example as I mentioned earlier, it would have been great to have had a few more participants. As it was it meant that we all had to work harder than I would have liked; I'm used to working in the tropics but for some of the others I feel that they would have benefited by being able to take it a bit easier. The weather on occasions wasn't the best and we had to expend more energy motivating people.