Professional Development
All Natural Learning Relationships Professional Development courses are customized in accord with the needs of the participants. Here is a sample of programs that are either underway, already contracted, or recently completed.
Shining Light
Antioch University foundation course in Natural Learning Relationships and the Evolution of Consciousness in the Individualized MA (IMA) program in Social Sciences, Concentration in Transformative Learning
This course has really been a transformative experience and life changing. Natural Learning Relationships changes the way I look at everything. It is a real paradigm shifter.
Grace T., AU Master’s learner and mother
Faculty in the Transformative Learning Foundation in the certificate program and the professional development program. https://www.transformativelearningfoundation.org/
Social Justice and Children
Using Natural Learning Relationships for conflict resolution
Self Reflective Collectivism
Importance of Play through age 23
Teacher Training at Sarah College, Dharmsala India: Invited by the Tibetan Government in Exile to bring a “secular, compassionate and consciousness-based appreciation of child development to Tibetan education”. On invitation from the head of Sarah College and the Minister of Education, we did three eight-week seminars training teachers from diverse Tibetan communities.
International Council for Accreditation of Relationship Based Education (ICARE) uses Natural Learning Relationships for Professional Development for client schools which need support in relationship-based education and holistic practices. ICARE’s foundational philosophy and supporting documents derive much of their substance and language from Natural Learning Relationships. Visit ICARE’s site ->
It has been a great honor and a deep pleasure to work in a close consulting collaboration with Josette and Ba Luvmour to create the philosophical underpinnings of the ICARE approach to school accreditation. In every conversation with them, we’ve learned more about the history, theory, and practice of holistic education, about the profound effectiveness of Natural Learning Relationships, and about all sorts of practical matters related to evaluating schools and supporting relationship-based educational programs. Ba and Josette have served as the best of mentors to the ICARE team, advising, inspiring, and cheering us on toward each milestone in this enormously complex project. We couldn’t have done it without them.
- Teri Sperry, M.A., Ali Ronder, M.ED., and Nishi Andra, M.ED. Co-Founders of Enlight Ignite, LLC and the International Council for Accrediting Relationship-based Education (ICARE)
Salmonberry School program is representative of programs with Relationship Based Education schools. Staff seminars in Natural Learning Relationships child development include problem solving, curriculum refinement, and staff communication. Seminars with parents center on grade specific developmental understanding, Emotional Intelligence, better understanding school pedagogy, and staff responses to interpersonal challenges.
Raven Training is a Natural Learning Relationships inspired Rites of Passage program for children between 10 and 13. NLR developmental knowledge has guided the content of the program, as well as helping to train staff for this and other Rites of Passage programs.
Natural Learning Relationships Certification
Natural Learning Relationships Certification is our premier course. This Certificate Program is used by professionals for many purposes including:
Increase Professional Expertise
Incorporate into employee seminars
Consult organizations and schools
Coach individuals and families
In addition, many professionals engage this NLR Certificate program for enhanced self-awareness, greater competence, and access to wisdom.
Testimonial from Brandy McCray:
I came to NLR looking for support in my role as a parent and as a teacher. Almost 7 years later, I had the opportunity to complete a certification in NLR in order to further my work in the school district where I currently live, with other nonprofit partners, as well as with schools internationally. I’m driven in this work by a deep desire to understand the world from the perspective of children and to nurture relationships that honor and draw forth the potential for both the child and adult present. NLR isn’t just a set of tools to help adults work with children, it is a perspective shifter that lives with you and teaches you how to BE with children. The Luvmour’s have supported me every step of the way to help deepen this understanding. I recently returned from facilitating a 4 day NLR teacher seminar at an international school in Kenya. In a diverse room of 40 teachers from at least 10 countries and ages ranging from young adults to 30 years of experience, participants connected deeply with NLR and described it as, “accessible, stimulating, and mind-opening”. One teacher wrote to me after the seminar to say, "The whole experience was super enlightening. The way I deal with my students, my son, myself, and people in general has completely changed. Thank you!
~ Brandy McCray, Service Quality Manager at City Year, a nonprofit partner of AmeriCorps in Memphis, TN with an emphasis on teacher-student relationships and SEL.
Courses in Graduate School
Holistic Child Development Core course in the Fundamentals of Natural Learning Relationships
How Adult and Child Grow Together Everyone accepts that the adult influences the child, but few realize how much the child influences change in the parent. Learners in this course focus on how nurturing development in the child can lead to the emergence of new meaning, self-knowledge, and wisdom in the parent.
Mentoring Graduate Degree Thesis Variety of students supported to conceive and execute their chosen expression of competency to earn their degree.
Consciousness Evolution reveals the critical importance of the correlation between Natural Learning Relationships and Evolution of Consciousness. This course includes a survey of the field, including physical and cultural anthropology and brain research
Rites of Passage This course explores the purpose and meaning of rites of passage; the relevance of rites of passage for children, education, families, social justice, and community and social wellbeing; the nature of luminal experience, why it is important, and how to create it; and the relationship between rites of passage and child and adolescent development.
Emotional Intelligence This course accomplishes one of the most difficult tasks of being with children—recognition and nourishing the child’s awareness of, and relationship to, emotions. Well-being depends upon success in calling forth Emotional Intelligence.
Spirituality in the Developing Child centers on the spiritual capacities of each field of knowing in children’s development and how these capacities can be nourished by adults, and how children perceive love, truth, and the unknown.
Children and Social Justice Social justice provides the cornerstone of respect, integrity, connection, and relationship. Here we engage such fundamental capacities as developing rightful place in which everything and everyone belongs; grasping of the connection between boundaries and personal strength; emotional development—trust in self, people, nature, and their mutual, reciprocal relatedness; interpersonal relationships—ecology, justice, and fairness; teen development—self-directed choice essential to democracy; ideals and social mores; power, freedom/responsibility, and the right to choose; and the development of reason—meaning and social justice, interconnection and well-being, systems creation, discernment, and intentionality.
Natural Remedies to Restore Well-being Centers on how to respond to dysfunction by creating relationships, environments and, activities that call forth health and wholeness. By focusing on well-being rather than pathology many of the dysfunctions dissolve and children are left with confidence and a deeper sense of self.
Currently offered at the Graduate Institute for Transformative Learning, these courses have been presented at Portland State University, Antioch, and the National University for Natural Medicine.
These courses are used in Teacher Training seminars for all types of educators in on-line and in-person formats.
We created and directed three holistic schools as well as worked with scores of others. Programs have ranged from realigning interpersonal relationships among all stakeholders, to curriculum development, to defining school culture, to interacting with parents, to just about every aspect of organizational life.
Reflecting on the past weeks led to a wonderful sense of integration for me. I know this course has been beneficial to my understanding of children and sense of community, but I didn't realize how much my personal development has been affected. … My mind is eager to learn more and absorb all of it. … I am grateful for the expansion that occurs to my brain/heart/being …
Melissa R., AU Master’s learner in Foundation Course
Contact Us to find out how we might co-create a program that meets your unique needs.