Documentary on Education : 1001 Dreams for our Teens.
School Year 2016/2017. Instead of attending both their final year of high school, and seventh grade, Laurena and Florane are leaving France from October 2016 until March 2017 to go studying abroad. They will observe and learn how to study differently, how to develop their potential, how to be themselves… Here they are on an exploratory mission of a conscious revolution in committed education present on other continents for more than 20 years. Then, once back to France, Laurena and Florane will explore new educating systems.
« I H A V E A D R E A M … »
As Martin Luther King said « I have a dream »:
The dream of world where everyone could grow up happy, in an atmosphere of joy and confidence…
A world where everyone would be accepted with their uniqueness and blossom with all their talents.
A more altruistic and cooperative world that would respect the living, nature and the being.
Convinced that a change in education is urgent for this new world to emerge, we have decided – Florane (12 years old), Laurena (16 years old) and I, their mother- to take this big step by leaving to explore a new world of educational possibilities existing throughout the world. We will be creating a documentary with all of our discoveries that we will share with you. In order to have complete freedom of tone and action, we would like this film to be independent, and we are inviting you to participate in the Green Teens adventure. Are you ready to join us?
« Nothing great is achieved without inflated expectations » – Jules Verne
They are going to Chili, California, Indonesia and India….
To discover educative structures turned towards benevolence, the relationship to others, the link to nature, and the active listening and exchange with children and teenagers. These structures are surrounded by nature, in order to feel connected to it and connected to their bodies. The teachers are giving both emotional and relational intelligence tools. Here, the students are inspired to become the actor of their own education, author of their lives and citizens of the world. Here is the essential question: Taking the french baccalaureate exams without attending « regular » classes, how does that work? Is it even possible? How to get yourself ready while meeting those who learn in a really different manner?
Green School, Bali
T H E L E A R N I N G P L A C E S O F T H E 2 1 S T C E N T U R Y
– Fundacion Origen and la Escuela Agroecologica in Santiago de Chile( an agro-ecological high school, existing for 20 years) where teenagers learn how to take care of animals, cultivate the land, meditate and learn how to develop a compassionate relationship towards others.
– Tara School, near San Francisco (grammar-school, existing for 27 years) where children learn how to get in touch with their interior resources, nourishing their thoughts and positive emotions, experimenting benevolence to themselves and others on a daily basis.
– Green School of Bali(grammar school, middle school and high school, existing for 10 years) where children and teenagers receive an education linked to the Earth, and where they grow both conscious and happy about their choices.
– Valley School, in the Bangalore region, India (grammar school, middle school and high school, existing for 30 years) where children and teenagers evolve in mixed-age classes, rhythmed by nature and in a context where the practice of arts has all its importance.
These four places share a common vision: respecting the land, taking care of life, cultivating kindness and caring from the heart.
And, in France, which pioneer structure – attentive to teenagers – is opening its doors at the end of our international trip? For two years now, new types of schools are emerging all across the country.. They are called « democratic schools ». We are going to follow their evolution…
N O T E OF I N T E N T I O N
Laurena and Florane are leaving to meet young people of their age throughout the world:
How do these teenagers grow in these atypical structures? How do they commit themselves afterwards? How do these structures actually work? Who are the great founders of these inspiring schools? How can we inspire ourselves from these places back in France? And, what kind of message do we hand down to the young to connect themselves with nature?
While being away, Laurena will be keeping in touch with her friends back in France, who are getting ready for the French Baccalaureate, in the French manner. Altogether, they will exchange on what they learn, how things are going for all of them.
We will be following our two explorers through their teenage life, and close attention will be kept to their emotions. All along their experience, Laurena and Florane will be using a blog. This blog will be like “a diary”: it will be illustrated with pictures, drawings, comments and maxims, it will playful and lively!
The film will be composed of short scenes showing our two explorers, young teenagers drawing, writing, playing an instrument, creating a tool, or giving a gift… We will create a puzzle of scenes from everyday life. We want to show their happiness, their talents and their thirst of learning.
The film will be rhythmed by moments of actions, and moments of experience. We want it to be like a research laboratory, and OUR RESEARCHERS ARE TEENAGERS!!
This documentary is about showing that other educational alternatives and systems are possible. That we can learn in a different manner, not sitting in class, but sitting on the grass, surrounded by trees. It is about showing that natural cycles, curiosity, experience, and being in touch with who we are is a great experience for the young.
Green Teens will offer different point of views and testimonies from all around the world. We want this documentary to be joyful, serene, enthusiast and contemplative.
There will be premieres in different cities in France, Switzerland, Belgium during which there will be given some time to exchange on the different possibilities of education our teenagers actually have.
T H E Y A R E S U P P O R T I N G G R E E N T E E N S
– Gunter Pauli, Fondateur de ZERI et du concept de la Blue Economy.
The young have dreams. They think they are reality. Parents think that these dreams are a fantasy. The young know that today’s world is not an image of their dreams: wars, pollution and intolerance. The day has come that our young generation is now ready to embrace their freedom, to imagine their own future, surpassing the dreams and the realities of their parents. It’s the reason why I hold Marine’s initiative GREEN TEENS close to heart, because she’s creating a documentary for students all over the world to inspire us with their clear vision, enthusiasm, and positiveness about their future.
– Anne Ghesquière, Founder of the French magazine FémininBio and Edition Director at Editions Eyrolles
I am supporting Green Teens project because education needs a fresh start to prepare the young to the challenges of their time. I am confident in Marine Locatelli’s abilities to see through this ambitious project and this passionating experience with her daughters and the young from all around the world.
Good luck to the Green Teens. Open wide your wings because you future awaits.
– Antonella Verdini, Doctor in the sciences of education, co-founder of Le Printemps de l’Education
This project, I find it fabulous, but be careful..there’s a big risk: that both Laurena and Florane won’t come back to France and decide to continue their globe-trotter trip! Because once you have met other peoples and ways of life, your way of thinking, your life vision does not remain the same!
It is a wonderful story to do this at 16 or 17 years old, even better during the French Baccalaureate year. There are chances that this exam, often dreaded by students, will become a memorable moment, a sort of initiation.
The green landscapes that will be shown under their eyes, the languages with different sonorities, the smiles of the young Indians, Balinese, Chileans and Americans, their existence, so different from ours are going to take the form of fantastic images in their respective memories..
There will be chances that they will doubt, at some point in their lives « was it a dream? did I really live this? »
Thankfully, this film is here to show that the dream is real. To tell us that the solutions to educate ourselves differently, by the contact of the living, the practice of benevolence, and sharing the love of life at school exists today. Not only in the U.S.A, in India or in Bali, but even closer to our homes: they are creating themselves, fresh , beautiful and new to tell us that, yes, another world is already there.
– Olivier Raurich, Author and lecturer in Physical Science at university
Finding serenity and joy within ourselves, the commitment and the responsibility of the world.. It’s the essential! And for that to happen, it’s above all a question of education.
Green Teens Project falls within a dynamic approach promoting an education of serenity, benevolence, the most capable of giving a breath of hope and revival that the young don’t have, as victims of social and educational structures that are oppressive.
Support this project, and follow it, it will give us a momentum of inspiration that we all need for our lives to become a dance at all instants…
Stéphanie Dussurgey (Paris)
President of the Green Teens Cooperation
Teacher in earth and life sciences
I have been teaching with joy earth and life sciences in middle school and high school for 18 years. Being an awakener of life, to understand it better, respect it and protecting it: here is truly what is animating me.
Can we really feel life while sitting in class? How can we learn how to truly know it from the inside? With all our senses awakened? To the point of being overwhelmed? Overwhelmed by its mystery, by its fragility, its force? Are we really the « existence professors » as would say Jean Onimus?
It appears to me that in class, sadly, we are just touching on it. So, let’s explode the walls of the earth and life sciences classes: let’s go on an adventure, in contact with life, let’s go discover all the diversity and the treasures of nature, with « real things » moving, breathing, and living!! We should give to the young the true desire of being curious so they can open up to their environment, go on an exploration to discover this immense world in order to understand it, so they can become ambassadors full of respect and benevolence to respect it better and also respect one another.
Let Green Teens give the young all the strength and the faith in projects that elevate their hearts and their souls towards mindfulness and humanity. Let’s take action, engaging ourselves altogether for a more fraternal and human world. Go ahead, dear young, to whom I dedicate all the sense of my vocation.
Hélène Begnis, physical science teacher (Ottawa)
I am a mother of 3 children aged 13, 10 and 3 years old. I have been teaching Physical Science in middle school for more than 15 years. I am also currently studying neurosciences; it gives me many tools in the understanding of the teenager’s brain. It has changed my way of teaching, and also the relationship I have with my students.
I am really paying close attention to their well-being, and the necessity to work with them in confidence. The results of my readings and my reflexions has allowed me, with the confidence of my direction, to put into place a project of experimental classes in the middle school where I teach for the improvement of well-being in class, and the knowing our ourselves, and also the management of emotions.
What fills me with enthusiasm in Green Teens is this energy to go and look for solutions throughout the world, it’s the booming message of hope for children and teenagers of today. It is possible to learn otherwise, it exists elsewhere. It is also possible to learn other things.
I am supporting Green Teens because I think that it is necessary to be conscious of the importance to become an actor of our own education. The essential is currently missing in our educational programs: give the possibility to a teenager to understand how their brain works, giving them tools (such as yoga, meditation, sophrology,..) to manage their emotions and their stress at school but also to help them improve their attention in class and their memorization to facilitate learning… In short, tools to improve their well-being in their relationships with their relatives and tools to learn how to learn coming from neurosciences.
Pascale Brun, mathematics teacher (Condrieu)
Professor of mathematics in middle school for more than 20 years, I am also a mother of two young men of 22 and 24 years old. It is through them that I realized that school needed change. As I was teaching, I had the feeling to see children coming from elementary school loosing their enthusiasm, their spontaneousness and their joy of learning. I was also witnessing more and more violence around me. I had the feeling that I was just passing on maths but not the essential. I was also seeing my joy of teaching fading away.
What animates me is to accompany teenagers to grow on all aspects of their lives, to know themselves as humans before students, listening to themselves, being more conscious of what they are experimenting, and also to help them discover that they have more power than they think on what they’re living, that they are greater than what middle school shows them. It is accompanying them to become more responsible and actors of their lives, and kind towards themselves and others.
Throughout the years, I’ve put into place different projects: classes with environmental projects, a workshop called « Acting Differently » to learn how to know themselves better, recognize their emotions and communicate otherwise, a series of workshops for dyslexics, these different children who need to build their confidence in their gifts, and workshops around meditation and mindfulness.
It seems to me that this Green Teens project answers exactly my quest for teenagers and I feel, deep inside of me, that it can have an impact on today’s school, and maybe it will allow, for example, the emergence of other ways of Being Teachers and Being Students.
W H O A R E O U R P A R T N E R S ?
GREEN TEENS, it is with you that we can produce this entirely independent documentary.
The total film budget is of 175 000 euros. We were lucky to obtain different sources of funding from wonderful partners who committed themselves by our side because the stakes of our teenagers education is of the utmost importance.
To this day, we still have to find 100 000 euros to fund the film (through Ulule and by looking for sponsorships and partnerships). With you, on Ulule, we would like to reach an objective of 70 000 euros. In order to secure the budget, we have indicated an objective of 35 000 euros (indeed, if we do not reach the objective we mentioned earlier, we will not perceive your generous donations).
Thank you for joining us now, for participating in this adventure of education, and to talk about it around you with the same enthusiasm as ours.
Marine Locatelli
Youth author and scriptwriter for almost 25 years (Kirikou et les Bêtes Sauvages with Michel Ocelot, T’choupi, Les P’tites Poules, Papyrus, Boule et Bill, Cédric…). She grew up with classical, modern and contemporary dancing, followed by communication studies at l’Institut Universitaire Technologique of Grenoble and l’Ecole des Gobelins in Paris, in the scenario section. She practices mindful meditation and yoga.
Facing the observation of an educational system overwhelmed by the challenges of its time, competitiveness that discourages or even excludes many young people, she has decided to act as an engaged mother and to do her part passing on to children, teenagers, parents and teachers benevolent practices of meditation and tools of emotional and interpersonal intelligence, positive psychology, yoga, creativity and..fantasy!
She has co-founded happyattention.org (http://happyattention.org/) in 2013 to develop programs of mindfulness in schools. The same year, she joined the Printemps de l’Education movement and participated in numerous events around education. She also published books around benevolent education and mindfulness.
Testimonies of children at the Emile Zola school of Lorgues:
Biography
To be published, a new book of meditation activities to practice in the family circle the 7th of July 2016, Publisher Nathan.
« Heureux et détendu », with the benevolent heroes Shamata and Soham, for the whole family, Publisher Nathan 2015.
« Mon cahier recréait Méditation », from 6 years old, Publisher Eyrolles 2015.
Céline Moulys
Céline Moulys is an author and director of documentary films since 1997.
Her studies, scientific and technical in audiovisual arts along with a degree in information has allowed her to acquire the techniques and know-how of writing, shooting, editing, and production.
From her documentary experiences, she has developed a liberty of tone and an engagement that has lead her to independence.
Céline Moulys loves people, their originality, she loves learning from other cultures and she became attached to a particular Himalayan region: the Ladakh, where she immersed herself for several months since 1999. Her commitment became diverse all along her experiences, never anecdotal, on the field: pieces of advice to travelers, cultural mediation, projects linked to the development of a responsible and sustainable tourism, to the environment…
From informational films to documentary films, from trips to encounters, she has chosen to expand her knowledge with a degree in ethnography.
Her topics of predilection are the knowledge others, with portraits (« Föllmi’s Destiny », « Bretons du Tour du Monde »), immersed investigations (« Tibet, l’autre versant », « développement au Ladakh : l’envers du décors »), but also education, transmission, the « being » « Une troisième à Malakoff », « les tréteaux blancs », « Défis jeunes », « Enfants du Zanskar, l’exil ou le Royaume »)…
http://www.follmisdestiny.info/la-realisatrice-2/