Our Educational Design

Actualization of Transformation

This page gives an overview of our educational design and the elements that support it. Visit our Certificate page for a detailed overview of the program and our partnership with Ubiquity, and visit our Financial Information page to learn how TLF is making this program affordable to all students.

TLF answers the challenge to create a model that brings forth emergent transformation. Our initial iteration of The Transformative Dynamic Design specifies 5 Zones, which from our well-founded experience, provide rich learning transformation.

Zones of Transformative Learning:
Collectively envisioned, each Zone is a specific field in which transformation emerges. Specificity allows faculty and participants to play in the fields that they love with focus and intention. Through the use of Zones, each faculty embodies the courses they facilitate. Learning is not theoretical but engaged with our whole Being. Students grow through diverse approaches that bring forth transformation. New Zones emerge when relevant.

Courses are organized into the following Zones. Click each Zone for more details. 

  • These quotes from Marimba Ani describe the scope of this zone. Our intention is that we will embody and live these meaningful words.

    "To the African, the sacred and the profane are close and can be experienced as unity. All of this is because of the multi dimensional nature of the African universe. Phenomena and events are understood on many levels at once. The African universe is alive and rich. It is filled with myriad possibilities. It is a phenomenal universe."

    "Life, event and phenomena derive meaning, value or significance through relationship to an organic whole. The family or community is understood as just such a “whole.” And since nothing of significance is merely physical the community itself becomes a metaphysical reality."

    Marimba Ani in Let the Circle Be Unbroken

  • The wisdom of insight, thoughts, and feelings comes to life through the creativity of the expressive arts when explored and embodied in relationships. Playing in the expressive arts, poetry, visual arts, dance, music, theater arts, is natural and available to everyone and profoundly awakens wholeness.

    This zone brings forth direct expression of creativity known and shared free of critic and judgment, others telling us what to create, welcoming all interpretations and creative gestures

  • This quote from the Humanity Rising website describes the scope and intention of this zone. Our intention is that we will embody and live these beautiful and meaningful words from our Indigenous Elders.

    “Clarity will emerge regarding how modernity’s most pressing problems such as conflicts, social injustices, and climate change are eliminated or sharply diminished when Indigenous ways of knowing inform how to live our lives. They will help us understand that there is a consciousness to which modernity can shift, and the need and processes for embodying the ‘new’ consciousness.”

  • The answer to enduring social change is transformation--transformation of self and of the people and organization with whom they are engaging.

    The social justice activities support the goals of the activism while simultaneously calling forth ever-deepening transformation in all participants.

  • How can we as a species live love, trust, spirituality, safety, and social justice in each moment of our lives?

    Whole human development brings forth transformative mutually beneficial trusting relationships, in each of us, among friends, peers, and relationships, and in all learning environments.

    This zone emphasizes how we know ourselves and our world in the wholeness of our being.

All courses embrace emergent learning. As TLF is relationship-based education it is perfectly suited for emergent learning. Meaning and relevance for each participant in an emergent environment. Imbued with the core values of trust, embodiment, and self-reflection, transformation emerges as we grow together, exploring, dialoguing, and learning together.

This diagram illustrates the emergent interactions between all participants in TLF and the Zones of transformation.

Why we love this design:

  • Engages faculty and participants committed to transformation

  • Emerged through Collective Visioning

  • Brings focus and Intention to a specific field in which transformation emerges

  • Specificity allows faculty and participants to play in the Fields that they love