How do you lead with courage and love for every child when the culture around you is demanding you do the opposite?

Jennifer D. Klein is an educator, author, and global learning advocate with over 30 years in student-centered, project-based education. A product of the very pedagogies she champions, Jennifer has taught and led in diverse contexts—from all-girls education in the U.S. to heading an innovative school in Colombia. She has worked with educators in over 20 countries, helping them design equitable, inquiry-driven learning that amplifies student voice, embraces cultural inclusion, and transforms school culture.

The author of The Global Education Guidebook, The Landscape Model of Learning, and the forthcoming Taming the Turbulence in Educational Leadership, Jennifer blends classroom experience, leadership insight, and a passion for equity to inspire meaningful change. She partners with schools to tackle equity, engage in brave conversations, and empower young people as agents of change in their communities and beyond. Based in Denver, she continues to connect educators worldwide through workshops, coaching, and keynote talks.

We discuss:

🥥 Having a North Star and knowing what we are willing to to stand up for, in the face of risk;

🥥 How no one can give you the gift of liberation, we have to strive for it (Freire). This is true in leadership of all sorts;

🥥 Students as protagonists of their own stories and these of others.

You can purchase Jennifer's book here: https://www.principledlearning.org/taming-the-turbulence-in-educational-leadership.

Check out Coconut Thinking on www.coconut-thinking. com.

How might our relationships other-than-human animals help us consider sustainability and regenerative education in more life-centered ways?

In this episode, I speak with Charlotte Hankin. Charlotte is an educator, sustainability consultant, and PhD researcher in the Department of Education at the University of Bath. Her doctoral work explores how relationships between children and animals in international schools can help shift education away from human-exceptionalism toward more regenerative, relational ways of learning. Guided by posthumanist and feminist materialist theory, Charlotte uses arts-based, post-qualitative methods, including poetry, photography, sound, and craft, to attend to spontaneous, everyday encounters between human and other-than-human beings. These ‘multispecies moments’ offer insight into power, care, and co-existence, inviting schools to reimagine pedagogy as something co-created in the spaces between species. And, of course, Charlotte is the co-founder of Coconut Thinking. We discuss:

🥥 How schools often portray animals in ways that separate us from the natural world and contribute to extractive practices;

🥥 How school curricula might embrace an ethic of care, beyond what serves humans;

🥥 The importance of cultivating relationality in schools over content mastery.

Check us out, www.coconut-thinking.com

How can learning&doing help us become good participants in the web of life?

In this special episode, I speak about how systems change won’t happen if we replace names and labels but continue to do the same old thing. I propose that we move beyond assessing learning, competencies, soft skills for their own sake. Rather, what if we collected the voices of the community (human and other-than-human) and had that be the measure of quality of learning? Emphasis placed on testimonials of how the learning and specifically the application of the learning contributed to a more positive world. And if we really want to go nuts, we can answer the question at the top of these show notes.

This takes us beyond the individualization of student achievement because it becomes about how we use our learning for good. It de-centers the student and centers life.

This episode is inspired by a post I put up a couple weeks ago, that you can find below. Please listen to this one-take, uncut episode, with a guest appearance by Clementine the cat.

To access the post, click here.

How might we participate as Earthlings, part of a living planet, in kinship with the more-than-human?

Dan Burgess is a regenerative practitioner, creative strategist, and facilitator working at the intersection of ecology, culture, and transformation. With roots in the worlds of storytelling, activism, and systems innovation, Dan helps individuals and organizations reimagine their roles in a world undergoing profound change. He draws on years of experience in creative industries, participatory leadership, and place-based learning to design processes that foster deep connection, agency, and collective renewal. Dan is known for his work in cultivating regenerative mindsets and practices that align human activity with the rhythms and needs of the living world. He is the founder and host of Spaceship Earth, a podcast and platform for exploring how we might live with greater imagination and responsibility as crew members of a planet in crisis. At heart, Dan is a bridge-builder—linking the inner and outer, the personal and systemic, the practical and the poetic in service of a thriving future. We discuss:

🥥 The balance between trying to get more people on board with our transformative ideas and the need to put energy into how we are creating space in ourselves to create space;

🥥 How the culture of modernity is a passenger story, where few of us are benefiting from modernity, within humans and as humans;

🥥 How ideas are processes that move and drift through interactions with others and their ideas, a sort of confluence that is never isolated.

Check us out: www.coconut-thinking.com

Check out the Spaceship Earth podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-spaceship-earth-podcast/id1338946235

What does it mean to nurture good relationships through education in these times we live in?

In this episode, I speak with the authors of the soon-to-be-published book, The Art of Regenerative Educatorship.

Bas is an associate professor in regenerative leadership at the Mission Zero Centre of Expertise at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, where he also serves on the management team of the Master’s in Sustainability Transitions. He lives in Dordrecht with his partner, writes novels, and is an avid gamer.

Mieke is an associate professor in Regenerative Education and Development at the University of Amsterdam, where she works within the international development studies programme and the Governance and Inclusive Development research group. She lives in Amsterdam with her partner and twins and is a committed Reiki practitioner and yoga teacher, engaged with the Reiki Regenerative Resource Development Community in The Hague.

Koen works as a regenerative educator at the University of Amsterdam. He teaches change-making within the Computational Social Sciences programme and supports interdisciplinary educators. He lives in Utrecht with his partner and dog, and draws deep inspiration from his intercultural connection with Turkey.

We discuss:

🥥 How regeneration invites us to become grounded in the project, connected with love to all life, to be present with all life in place, to have the courage to keep working, no matter the outcomes.

🥥 How we are complicit in the system, but we can be constructive disruptors and have the will to remain in the system in spite of its damaging effects.

🥥 How the process of writing the book was emergent and invited the reader as part of the process, opening up spaces for contextualized meaning-making.

Check us out: www.coconut-thinking.com

We honor Nyepi with this special episode, in which Charlotte Hankin interviews Benjamin Freud. Nyepi is the Balinese Day of Silence, and is a Hindu New Year celebration marked by 24 hours of complete stillness. No travel, no lights, no work, and no noise. It is a time for self-reflection and spiritual renewal.

We recorded this episode a few days after Nyepi and after that time of pause and gather. We discuss:

🥥 Regenerative education and how nothing goes beyond Nature’s paradigm (referencing Denise DeLuca);

🥥 How education is part of a larger system that replicates itself, meaning education won’t change without deeper systemic transformation;

🥥 How sometimes it’s either/or, both/and, and even or/either.

Join us for this special episode and check us out: www.coconut-thinking.com

How might we shift our educational practices to deepen students’ ecological awareness, nurturing a culture of care and reciprocity with Earth’s living systems?

In this episode, I speak with Katharine Burke. Katharine has been an educator for over 30 years, passionately advocating for ecological literacy, permaculture, and regenerative education. She currently teaches Geography and Social Studies at the secondary level, focusing her work on transformative ecological education projects. Katharine’s master’s thesis, “Restorying our Connection to the Natural World,” led to practical school initiatives including gardening programs, composting and seed studies, survival excursions, immersive nature camps, and integrating systems thinking across literature, geography, economics, and social studies. She authored EARTHWARDS, a practical guide reflecting educators’ real-world experiences. Katharine also founded The Small Earth Institute to offer deep ecology and regenerative design training for teachers. We discuss:

🥥 How sometimes change starts with having the space to talk about what uncomfortable, challenging, or simply not spoken;

🥥 How building a value system requires building it with others,

🥥 How transformative education is about shifting perceptions, identities, and values, which, when coupled with ecological education, bring us to understand we participate in the web of life.

Check us out, www.coconut-thinking.com

Do we have what it takes to change our ways to ones that work with, rather than against, life?

In this episode, I speak with Giles Hutchins. Giles is a leading voice in regenerative leadership and business transformation. With 30 years of experience—including roles as Head of Transformation at KPMG and Global Sustainability Director at Atos—he now focuses on guiding leaders and organizations toward more resilient, nature-inspired ways of working. He’s the author of books like The Illusion of Separation and Leading by Nature, and his new book is called Nature Works: Activating Regenerative Leadership Consciousness. Giles's work explores how businesses can move beyond outdated models to embrace a regenerative future. We discuss:

🥥 What it takes to lead in a world of complexity and change;

🥥 How the current mechanistic paradigm can at best help us cope with what is coming, what has already happened, and maybe not even help us cope for much longer;

🥥 How dynergy is a tension and conflict holds creative energy, which allows for emergence to come through;

🥥 Nature as natura naturans, the enabling process of becoming, not Nature as "out there."

Check us out www.coconut-thinking.com