TEACHING & SPEAKING
I earn my living as a teacher but I also speak with people about different aspects of what I or they do in online and offline conversations, open dialogues, workshops as well as more formally in seminars and public talks. While I like to move accustomed ideas and positions, I engage with people where they are and try to spark new ideas by finding shared perspectives.
“It has been a pleasure getting to know Jeppe and experiencing him working with our students. His humble nature is wonderful to be around and he brings a strong presence and clear thinking which allows for the right kind of space to emerge where questions can be posed and held lightly. He truly brought us all with him into the place between stories and we stood there together, shoulder by shoulder.”
Jonatan Spejlborg Jensen, co-founder and headmaster at LungA School
As a teacher and speaker I seek to engage people in mutual reflection about the ideas and practices I explore, and to open up for new ways of seeing and interacting around a topic. At Ry Højskole I teach subjects with titles like The world around us, Seeing nature, State of the planet, Life journeying, Journalism & society and Philosophical conversation. And I speak about different issues concerning sustainability, cultural change and personal or collective social transformation:
» Knowing environmental change. Environmental crises is in the news on a daily basis but how bad is it really, how can we know that the earth is changing globally and what are the likely consequences for the way we live?
» Sustainability transitions and social change. We hear a lot about the need to become a sustainable but what does this mean for our everyday lives and how can we begin to embody the change we would like to see in the world?
» Re-imagining reality: reworking the frames of reference. Our notions of reality rest on a web of beliefs, metaphors and myths – what are they and how can new ways of seeing and being emerge from inquiring about them?
» Journeying: finding a compass for navigating uncertainty. The scale of contemporary social-ecological crises can be overwhelming and make life seem meaningless. How can we handle the uncertainty of the future and find meaning in an age of collapse?
» Stories for a new world. One way of describing the present is that we stand between two different stories: one of progress and modernity, and another which does not yet have a name. What are the elements of a post-industrial cosmology?
» Creative practice as a way of knowing. Creativity, as a way of experimenting with new ways of seeing and expressing what that is like, opens us up to new perspectives. How can creative practices support life transformations and changes in ways of being?
» Building a new time culture. The pace of life in modern, networked societies can lead to stress and dysfunction when efficiency is put above well-being – what are the perceptual and conceptual skills we need to lead healthy and flourishing lives today?
I explore these topics in different formats and settings: from shorter talks and presentations to longer seminars and courses. I run a week-long course on navigating uncertainty which explores how we can respond to the failure of the personal and cultural myths that guide our lives. I have taught in various settings including university lectures and seminars, public workshops, skill-shares, and online tuition. At the University of East Anglia I have led seminars on the Sustainable Consumption master’s module and been part of the Theoretical Theatre team using improv and role play as a teaching method. In connection with the time culture project I have run a seminar series, given trade school classes on temporal skills and co-hosted a discussion on what happens when we step out of progressive notions of time at Redrawing the Maps. At the Uncivilisation festival 2013 I co-facilitated an open dialogue on embodying and practicing our ‘own’ time. You can also find a recording of a talk I gave about ‘re-imagining reality’ at the Royal Geographical Society conference in 2014 here.
I believe in the equality of intelligence and have found that in learning it is more effective to follow your own guidance than trying to comply with external directions from a ‘teacher’. I find inspiration in Jacotot’s ‘universal method’ and the notion that “a teacher is someone who keeps a person on her own route, the one that she alone is following and keeps following”. In my view, the role of a teacher is to find the right way to encourage this – teaching is a wisdom-based practice which, with a formulation by Vance Peavey, introduces “better-than-ordinary ideas about how to live and how to solve problems of life”.
If you’d like to find out more about inviting me to speak with you or your community send me an email.
