course »Restorative Practices: Understanding the Fundamental Role of Language in Establishing Connection for Child Welfare Professionals – ONLINE

Date: 4/9/2020, 9:30 am—12:30 pm
County: Solano County
CEUs: 3
Location: DISTANCE LEARNING
Sponsor: A Better Way, Inc.
Phone: 510-601-0203
NOTE: This class is being offered online via Zoom in response to COVID-19 and the current stay at home order.

What is the deepest function of language? ASL interpreters have noted that the primary times that a spoken language is more useful than a gestural language (e.g., American Sign Language) is around a corner and in the dark. Many indigenous cultures have entirely verb-based languages, thereby not reifying the world into things, but noting it as a world of relationships in flux. We propose that the universal language originates with the distinction between baseline and threat states. In the living world, nature has a language primarily spoken by the birds (and in particular the songbirds- where we live in Northern California there are 5 of primary interest). Bird language divides into 5 categories: baseline songs, companion calls, territorial aggression, adolescent begging, and alarms. In ecologies that are intact, all the animals know bird languages. Bear, deer, and other predators listen to bird languages. In most natural spaces, humans are the only ones who don’t speak bird language. This is because our zone of disturbance, entering nature, is generally much larger than our zone of awareness. Yet it doesn’t have to be this way, which nature connection expert Jon Young says is the fastest way to deep nature connection.