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What do you do on a farm

For the 500 million inhabitants of the European Union, which is made up of 23 countries, a lot of food is needed that would be hoped to be healthy, safe and nutritious. But these food characteristics can only be assured by farms.

Unfortunately, only 6% of European farmers are under the age of 35 and this can be a problem for the future production of better quality food. So a farm first of all produces quality food products. To achieve this, it must comply with legislation that is aimed at protecting the environment, so while it cultivates cereals or raises animals, at the same time it takes care of nature, helping to safeguard biodiversity. It is essential that all new generations become aware of how crucial the role of farms is for the healthy sustenance of all living beings. Talking about this theme, living experiences in the rural world, stimulating the curiosity of the little ones, means triggering a virtuous behavior aimed at the subsistence of our ecosystem. It is also with this aim that the farmers organize tastings of their honeys, cheeses, cereals, wines or meats, generating an induced tourism that is increasingly attentive to a behavior of respect and kindness towards the environment, animals and people. A child who was on an educational farm discovers the value of the time spent near his companions, near the animals, learns that the bunny has a different touch function than the cell phone, does not respond immediately to the same requests and requires the participation of your part emotional, it requires him to play his part in their relationship as well. He will have to be kind to him, thoughtful, patient to wait for the best time to approach him. This is why a multifunctional farm is the most suitable place for school-work alternation. Because our children need to experience slowness in relationships, in achieving goals and only working in contact with the rural world can give them the pace to realize this. Too often in offices or factories the worker is measured by what he makes in an hour, by what the profit is. But human beings are not made like that, they need to feel fulfilled to recognize a value in what they are doing, to be there or not to be there is a value for him. On the farm you do not need a mobile phone, you interact with the earth, with a horse or you repair a fence and do it together with other young people like you, talking in person, building a real relationship that will pay off immensely. On the farm, in addition to gaining experience in a reality that has immense margins for development (only 6% of European factors are young people under 35) and very strong implications on the life of living beings, you cultivate experiences that improve you as an individual and you feel the aspects grow that determine the true quality of your life. Those who choose to become a factor do so because they embrace a lifestyle that requires a lot of commitment but which can pay off with great satisfaction, especially with the awareness of being able to have a concrete impact on the future of the environment, biodiversity and healthy nutrition.

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What do bees do?

If I asked you which are the most important food producing animals, it is very likely that very few would think of bees, instead they are considered the third most economically important animal after cattle and pigs. They outnumber even chickens.

We are also used to thinking of them as a single insect but by now they must be considered a complex organism with well-defined roles and functions between workers, queen and drones that in balance with each other like a perfect machine, produce, reproduce and provide for their own maintenance. Their third place in the ranking might surprise us only if we did not consider that in addition to all the honey they produce in a year, they are crucial for the existence of many fruits, smoothies, jams, vegetables, soups and all kinds of derivatives. Bees, along with other insects, pollinate 70% of all plants in the world !! In Italy there are more than a million beehives and more than 65,000 beekeepers.

How is a hive made?

Inside the hive there are two levels: the “super” the upper one and the “nest” the lower one. In the first, bees store honey and it is the only one on which the beekeeper works. In the “nest, on the other hand, the larvae live, the queen who lays the eggs and through the grid that separates it from the upper level, the worker bees pass to deposit the stocks of honey for the winter. When humans collect honey, they do not disturb all the precious contents of the “nest”.

What does the beekeeper do?

The beekeeper is a very special breeder because he is one of the few who does not exploit or kill the animals he works with. On the contrary, it establishes a symbiotic relationship through which man interprets the signals of the environment to put the bee colonies in the best conditions to thrive and be able to produce their nectar.

The bee and the environment.

This ratio is fundamental in determining the type of honey, since there are as many different flavors and smells as there are blends and specialties of the flowers. The bee can fly up to 3 kilometers away from its hive although in most cases, as long as it finds enough flowers and nectar, it remains nearby. The bee can fly up to 3 kilometers away from its hive although in most cases, as long as it finds enough flowers and nectar, it remains nearby. By reversing the reasoning, we can think of bees as bio indicators of the health of the environment, because through the analysis of their production we are able to have a very clear idea of ​​the state of the surrounding places. The effectiveness and economic value of the work of removing the plant world that bees carry out with pollination for the 150 botanical species useful to humans are already known. Together with other insects, they also play a role with incalculable benefits in favor of another 350,000 botanical species thanks to which the planet’s biodiversity is ensured. Italy is the European country with the highest number of plant species, it is up to all of us to do everything to preserve this heritage. If it is true that man was primarily responsible for endangering bees, it is through man himself that they can be safeguarded and repopulated. It is necessary to build habitats protected from pesticides, control parasites with natural methods and use organic products. Buying local honey from organic farms is the most concrete gesture that each person can do to support the care and repopulation of this species.

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How to overcome the fear of speaking in English

Why are you afraid of making mistakes when speaking English? It is an innate feeling that is rooted in the corrections of our parents when we experienced the first words as a child. Will there have also been some very attentive teachers and point out mistakes, much less to gratify you? I hope not for you.

Read also 5 Golden Rules to learn English, in the paragraph “no fear” you will find other ideas. Then there is the fear of hanging in the middle of a sentence and not knowing how to express ideas and concepts. The brain always produces the same complexity of thoughts as when speaking in Italian, but in the case of the foreign language it has to pass them through a much narrower lexical funnel. How do you learn to overcome this fear? By treating English like a sport and not like mathematics or literature: practicing it concretely in the situation, stimulating your curiosity. It must become the tool to express ourselves and not a subject subject to votes. Why not use the green pen to mark things done right? Would you feel more stimulated by knowing how many things you do well or how many are wrong? Some of these ideas are the basis of the emotional educator method that you can find in all the experiences of the educational farm.

How do the ideas come?

How do the ideas come?

I mixed and tasted ingredients, I chose evocative names for them, I wrote the spells to recite. Time … tick tock, spent thinking and imagining where a child’s imagination can go, impossible to predict where.

Will these potions be truly magical? The children will wet the tablecloth, laugh at each other and try to hide the prank by keeping the secret, they will try to taste in secret, they will talk about it and remember every word. They will not see a video, they will not attend passive, they will be dirty and messy protagonists but perhaps also clean alchemists.
Grandfather Dominik and grandmother Elisa walked the paths and looked for the most leafy brooms, those that looked like dry little witches upside down with the skirt up and the slender gnarled body down. Collected and brought home, seated, they tied, cut, finished … et voilà, ready flying brooms. Time… tick tock, spent wondering if the children had loved them. Will they be able to fly? When a child climbs on it will have desired it, he will feel it wrinkled in his hands and turning around he will see it long and thick behind him. When he jumps, that moment will feel like he is really flying.
I walked in the woods to look for the most magical branches and think about how to cut them, then I took them home and smoothed them, slowly through the dust, so my magic wands were born. Will they cast spells? Maybe yes, I’m sure they have already given rise to the trepidation of waiting, the desire to brandish them, the indecision of which one to choose. And they are not available on a site, they are not for sale, you cannot order them yourself in front of a monitor. If you want to touch one, you have to be present with the others, you have to study English, you have to speak and wait. They seem ancient behaviors to me, the waiting that feeds the imagination from which ideas and fantasies derive.
The letters left, closed with sealing wax, with the name written one by one, they were not immediately available in a click, they were made to be desired, as a precious thing, like an appointment, they were not on demand. Like the bees, it takes months of continuous, tireless work to produce their precious and golden honey on the farm we can realize the importance of waiting. The amount of time also defines the value of a goal, of a result.
Ideas come “in” time, while “not” you are doing, when you are not connected, when the brain rearranges and finds similarities, asks questions and is less sure of something, the idea comes from indecision, from uncertainty, from diversity of the here and now. Behind every object we create there is always an idea. The objects we have prepared, do magic! They feed fantasies, extend the waiting time. The time, the time it took to make them, the time that passed until the day after tomorrow, the time we will spend together. Time is limited, there is a lot of it and no more and it is the way you decide to spend it that gives value to a project or to a person and few other things deserve my time, more than the imagination of children.

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Plan your course of study

If you haven’t done so yet, I recommend that you also read what mistakes you shouldn’t make when choosing a school. I am happy that you want to personally take care of planning your future, you are already starting on the right foot by doing it yourself without entrusting this important task to others.

Let’s say right away that I don’t mean success as making money. This guide is designed to bring you maximum choice and personal fulfillment, whether you intend to become a busy white-collar worker or want to lead a non-profit association.

For those born up to the 1950s, the world of work was a luminous monolith to climb starting from a piece of paper, taking over the family business, learning a trade or looking for a recommendation. Whatever the channel through which you had entered the job, it was forever and the career developed in a vertical ascent: employee, manager, sector manager; apprentice, worker, department head; trainee, lawyer, partner … Basically, the qualification you had achieved would have been enough to accompany you throughout your working life.
Subsequent generations, on the other hand, are making a career path more similar to a sinusoid that sometimes moves on parallel or horizontal planes, much less clear and sharp than the vertical ascent of the generations that preceded them. The 1960 graduate, with his diploma was able to continue to progress or remain in his own sector, because the skills required of him by the society in which he lived have slowly changed in the context of the notions learned or that he was able to learn while working.

Knowing how to type has been a required skill for at least seventy years, and when the internal combustion engine replaced horsepower, cart makers had time to start making cars. Those that have not evolved have had serious difficulties but the difference from today is that that evolution took decades to complete, today we are evolving at a pace that leaves no time to react. The PC on which I wrote my degree thesis has a memory that is less than a quarter of that of the average smartphone and is not remotely comparable to that of the computers that are in circulation today. The trend of technological evolution follows a hyperbolic curve whose only limit is the imagination. The ability to calculate and work is now supplanted by electronic circuits. The prerogative of man will remain the concepts of ethics and for some time still of artistic expression as well as some aspects of the relationship between doctor and patient. All these aspects, whose ability derives directly from the ability of an individual to relate sensations and experiences to then give rise to new singularities or new declinations of already existing situations. The differences that will still remain between a man and a machine will be the variety of sensations and experiences useful to give birth to original observations, the ability to change and adapt, rich personal baggage. Even the school is partly adapting to this perspective, let’s think about extra-curricular experiences that now add points to the total calculation of the final high school grade.

1) Given that with a single piece of paper we are able to guarantee only a part of our working life, the solution is to diversify. As when you invest money it is good to choose different sectors in order to minimize the risks of default, so in training your person, we must give space to all our inclinations. The better we are at doing many different things, the richer the heritage of our memories, the more books we have read or courses we have followed, experiences abroad, the more likely it is to have new points of view, original solutions.

“An expert is a person who knows more and more about less and less, until he knows everything about nothing”. Arthur Bloch. This paradox underlines the opposite of my theory and helps me to demonstrate it: directing all our energies in one direction makes us very good and very experienced but times are running out and that ability to make carts can quickly become obsolete.

Everyone in the world has made a new discovery, has contributed something unique and of himself to all pre-existing notions. In a race of life where lots of intelligent or studying people compete, I am sure that the one who can count on their extra baggage of passions added their unique touch will win. I’m sure the winning strategy is to live many different experiences, follow your passions and give free rein to your inclinations, all of them. Not only will we build ourselves as a unique and unrepeatable mix, but by trying them all we will give ourselves the opportunity to discover skills that we do not yet know. Let’s think of a primary school teacher who also knows how to paint, play, sing, act. Let’s think of a scientific researcher who finds the winning idea while participating in an endurance race on horseback or noticing a moss as he heads through the woods to his fishing camp. Let’s always remember Arthur Boch, the expert tends to “know everything about nothing”.
2) Even if you make no mistake in choosing your school, being the top of the class will be of little use. Do you think I’m crazy? Let’s reflect together. How many mediocre kids at school have been able to fulfill themselves much better than the top of the class? Having high grades is undoubtedly a sign of great intelligence but also of the ability to perform well within the school evaluation system, and therefore to have a well-organized study method to stay within the times of the tests. I mean that this skill, in different working conditions, could be less important than other skills that the school system is unable to bring out. With which grade of the school assessment document is the value assigned to leadership, empathy, listening skills, problem solving, the ability to work in a team, foresight or business intuition?
The top of the class is the top of that class, but in the whole school, in the city, in the nation and in the world, how does he position himself? Let us remember that there are parts of the world where education is the only tool a student has to climb the social ladder. Let me explain better, if at home you only have one meal a day or if they live in seven in two rooms and studying is the only means you have to hope for a better life, I am sure that there is someone out there who has a much stronger motivation than any of us. At the end of their studies, these two guys will compete together for the same job as researcher, doctor, programmer, analyst, engineer, or both will try to export the production of robotic components. Which of the two will be most hungry for that position?
Being the top of the class is a great thing but it must be accompanied by other skills, it is not a decisive point, nor a point of arrival, if anything it is an excellent starting point.
I hope I have given you some concepts to think about or that can be useful for planning the success of your life as a person, of which your career is only a part.

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How to maximize learning ability

You knew that you have three different channels through which your brain makes contact with the outside world. Imagine your brain as if it were our beloved smartphone but without the data connection, constantly looking for a free Wi-Fi! You are there?

Good. Can you feel the limitation of when you can’t access the internet? When the Wi-Fi symbol finally lights up, above the dot there are three arches from the largest to the smallest, these are like the three channels through which our brain receives information: the auditory, visual and kinesthetic canal. One of these is predominant but you know well that with a single notch you can’t go anywhere! To receive the maximum and thus obtain the maximum benefits from studying English, we must look for those points where our brain will have 3 notches! That is, where we can “see” the language, “hear” the language and practice it by linking body sensations such as touch, movement, balance, posture to its use. One notch … no good!
Let’s come to our College English class in England, we hear English from native speakers, we see it in the videos, we speak it and we listen to it again ourselves, we link to it all the perceptive memories of the smell of the canteen, the touch of the carpet under our feet, the colors of the sky outside the windows , the sound of the voice of the Director of Studies, the weight of the suitcase, the meetings at the airport, the waiting outside the exam door, the trips, the monuments, the English rain, the English sun… changeable and unpredictable weather.

In short, by amplifying, letting information enter through all three channels of perception, it is as if our mobile phone always had three powerful notches to take data from the network all around and since your brain also connects to the outside world like a wi- fi, give it 3 notches.

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How a child’s fantasy works

TIC-TAC… TIC-TAC… the days go by and the first day of the educational farm is approaching. What an emotion! How much magic is there in a child’s imagination? How much strength does his passion contain? How many times have they told us as children, maybe it’s better if you change your mind, no, don’t do this. But you can’t give up on your dream.

You can’t avoid what you always think about, from when you get up to when you fall asleep, even while others are talking to you. Being able to ignite a child’s interest is possible and when this happens it will never stop, it educates him to excite him to inspire him to a higher level. Have you ever thought about being an astronaut by putting a basket on your head? We do, we always do! When a child enters a restaurant, he looks for sugar sachets, toothpicks and wants to drink from goblet glasses. Go in search of fun, different and special items. For me it is wonderful to try to elevate myself to the majestic fantasy of a child to make me accept myself as an equal, admitted in the important circle of people who matter, who shave with foam or who stick the receipts of the fruit scales behind my back of the mother. It is an exciting process! And when a school year starts again and I think of the teachers returning to class, I wish them that the desk is not a barrier but a market stall on which to display all the merchandise to entice children to buy, the walls are not a fence but a container of ideas, the stairs lead not only to classes but to higher levels of values ​​and the chalks draw the horizons of the future. We are faced with those who are thirsty for attention who ask to be listened to and guided in a direction that they do not yet know and sometimes do not yet know they want. Let’s take them by the hand and fly with them.

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How the brain works on the farm

We are used to saying that time can run slow or fast, well known is the phrase that says that the length of a minute depends on which part of the bathroom door you are! In fact, few consider the effects that time can have on relationships and learning.

Every time we check an email or hear the beep of a text message or the phone rings, whatever cognitive process our brain is processing, it suffers an interruption, it is kidnapped by an overload of work. It is as if in preparing for a sports match, instead of giving continuity to training, we systematically interrupt ourselves. Or while we are cooking, the microwave and the oven play continuously and we risk burning the puree. On the farm this risk is not run, the devices are not used to be together with the animals, nor to run on the meadows or jump on the sand. When you pick herbs and vegetables from the garden, you can only hold the basket in your hands, let alone while kneading the flour with the eggs or sitting down to discuss the events of the day. Time takes on all its value, it is not he who guides us but we decide what to do. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin conducted a study of 630 Berliners and found that those who lived near the parks had a healthier brain structure, firmer memory and more fluid reasoning. At Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health have instead shown the lowest mortality (-12%) of people who live in contact with nature. It is estimated that over 70% of the world’s population will live in cities and this could certainly be a new factor of natural selection. The psychology department of the University of British Columbia Okanagan directed by researcher Holli-Anne Passmore, has conducted a series of studies which showed that contact with nature is a factor that directly increases the well-being of people and now those who follow the our posts know very well that learning in a condition of well-being is much easier and more effective. This concept emerged in particular during the last working meeting of the Cultivators of the Future held on 30 November 2018 in Spoleto where scholars, teachers and educators agreed that leaving the classroom and creating a bridge with the surrounding reality, makes us introduce elements breaking the habitual pattern and bringing up new areas of attention that teachers can take advantage of to transmit notions through new experiential activities. Our brain processes ideas while it is free from work: it is while we swim or run or take a walk that it rearranges memories. The neuronal connections then look for the connections between the acquired data and stimulated by an image or a sound that we had never noticed before, but that by walking slowly or looking at reality instead of a screen, we are finally able to see, a new idea is born. . It was right there in the middle of everyone’s path but only those who were able to pass slowly could notice it. Time on a farm … it is not he who commands, it is not the schedule of things to do that dictates the rhythm of the day. It is the farm that commands. It is useless for the man to make too detailed plans, because you never know how long it will take to collect the honey or if our Gwendolyn will call you because her milk is too much and she wants to be milked, or if she realizes that the hens is breaking. Time on the farm is our friend, it awaits us and gives us the opportunity to stop, to wait, to observe, to dream. Above all, in the evening it gives us the opportunity to sit down and talk and tell each other about all the unexpected and stimulating experiences that have distracted us from the pre-established plan.

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How to build a critical memory

When was Dante Alighieri born? What does “reliable” mean? Was Plato a Sophist? Who won the Champions League in 2015? How many times have you been faced with a question like this and did not remember the answer. Fortunately, in the palm of your hand, as long as the internet connection is good, you will immediately find the answer to any doubt.

By repeating this action continuously, several times a day every day, we automate a behavior of abdication of the storage function of our memory to an external device. Our brain no longer has to try to remember notions, because it learns to be able to use them at any time without making any effort. And it’s true, it doesn’t cost him much, just a few easy flicks of the thumb. Reasoning, the production of ideas, the ability to solve situations, derive from the ability to connect, to variety, to quantity of brain synapses. But if we keep the notions in our external palm memory, the synapse is not created, the reasoning analyzes fewer cases, the conclusion is obvious, the consideration is trivial, the choice is almost obligatory. Anyone of us will access the same answer given by the same search engine, will reach the same conclusion by abdicating our every possibility of individual thought. Think of a different situation, where instead the storage action is performed mechanically, after having had a real and fatigue experience as it could be an alternation between school and work on the farm (see how it works here). To find out what “reliable” means, I open a dictionary and search, I read the examples given, maybe my eye falls on the phonetics, maybe I am in a college or in an English camp (here I explain the importance of these experiences). To calculate the derivative, I go to my classmate’s house, he explains it to me, my mother prepares the donut for us, the flavor of which is linked to the memory of the procedure. I will have put pleasure and notion in the same drawer of my brain as you do with the Learnemotion. The formation of the concept goes back to being offline, that is, the result of an individual experience born in a social context, a sequence of behaviors that have had time to wait, do, repeat, wait again, return to the concept.

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What is EDUCAEMOTION

Where are your socks? To give this answer, your brain activates a series of neural connections that follow the path towards the drawer where the panties are also. Socks and underwear are always in the same drawer. Education is the drawer of the brain in which I would like to store my memories

of what you learn and fun. In the particular case of English, encounters in which the foreign language is used must be lived with friends, joyfully. Think about getting involved, coloring, using devices, sounds, eating good things and when you need to speak English or study it, you will feel a surge of well-being and that fear of making mistakes will be eclipsed by the light that comes from your drawer. Living an experience on an educational farm corresponds to experiencing all these sensations, which is why in my opinion it is the best place to set the Educaemotion. It is a bit as if our brain has a three notch reception and you are maximizing the learning capacity. When children do not have their personal phone, they see parents and grandparents with theirs in hand, their personal Social page, their personal Netflix profile, their Youtube channel. In a context that enhances individualism, the expectation of being at the center is built in young people. What appeal can a frontal lesson have in the middle of a class of 28 people? Educaemotion presupposes small groups of maximum 10 or 12 children, concrete involvement in activities, stimulating their attention and individuality in every way. When you manage to interest a boy in what he does, Continuing Education is born from Educaemotion: the desire or need to independently seek further insights or applications other than those known in the didactic meetings. The prodigy is to raise the number of hours dedicated to the use of English to power, which are no longer just the three hours a week spent with the teacher. They are replicated endlessly in a continuous repeated search for use in the most disparate fields. Language is transformed into a living instrument, it is no longer a matter. Educaemotion is an effective tool for enhancing the attention and motivation of each apprentice. This is what the master of masters Yoda would do (Can Master Yoda teach English? read this), to involve the part of the padawan that pushes him to listen and become an active part of the search for his own training. If you manage to install it well, it becomes like the renewable energy source of knowledge, igniting an innate force: a child’s imagination. In the older ones it is powerful and opens the mind to the development of a critical sense, in search of one’s own identity and point of view.

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