Authentic guidance for those who raise, educate, and cherish children
Lifeless education extinguishes and numbs every trace of childhood, while living education keeps its flame alive and tended, making sure it burns bright.
A living education, for children who remain so. Making room for what is alive, in the child as in the educator.
BEGIN LIVING EDUCATION COACHING
A structured coaching journey (for adults aged 18 and over, via Zoom), one 2 hours session per week, over 3 OR 6 months.
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Living Education Coaching Mission
I believe you don’t become an educator by following a manual, but by becoming yourself again, man or woman, before guiding a child. I believe school is rarely the path, and that sometimes true education begins when you dare to desert it. I am convinced that deep sleep learned as a child is worth more than many diplomas, that clear thinking at a young age replaces more than a decade lost to constantly limiting it, that a screen turned off can light up an entire life, that learning to live serenely as a young child will steer you away from those easy, chemical solutions that put the mind to sleep for the rest of your life. I am not here to reassure you. I am here to bring you back to the essential, and if needed, to walk alongside you as you go back, to eventually help you be reborn as an educator, to become a beacon for children so you can bring them the best they deserve and so cruelly lack in their lives right now.
My mission is to lead educators, and even more so parent-educators, back to themselves before guiding them toward their children. I believe in an education that comes from the root rather than from the extinguishing intentions of the school world, one that prefers truth to comfort, and the whisper to constant noise. I am not here to add one more method to your list, I am here to help you free yourself from it, to rediscover what, within you, already knows how to love and guide a child.
I don’t believe in perfect educators, I believe in true ones. Those who agree to deconstruct themselves in order to rebuild better, to leave the systems that suffocate in order to rediscover what, in themselves and in their children, is simply asking to breathe. My mission is not to give you ready-made answers, but to bring you back to the only question that truly matters: who am I for this child, and who do I still have to become for them.
I have observed that childhood is being torn away from children at younger and younger ages, through daycares and nurseries, and through adults with sterile minds, overflowing with indifference, who do not deserve the privilege of being in children’s presence, haunting schools that could offer infinitely more. I personally deserted this system that cools souls before they have even had the time to shine.My mission is to give back childhood to those being rushed to grow up too fast, to give adults back the courage to be a bulwark rather than an accomplice to this tearing away, to walk alongside educators who also refuse to let what, in the child, only asks to remain alive fade away, and to remind that children still often know what we, as adults, have forgotten. My mission is to give children back the time to be children, and educators the humility to learn from them, rather than only teaching them.
A few areas to explore
On a broader level, this component starts from the idea that an educator cannot pass on a solid education to their child if they have never settled their own relationship with their masculinity or femininity; it is foundational work, even before addressing education itself.
This component starts from the idea that an educator does not leave the school system on a whim, they leave it because they have come to see that school, as it exists, extinguishes in their child what it claims to ignite. It is not an escape, it is a clear-eyed lucidity fully embraced. The dialogue can focus on how to leave the morbid school system and the roots behind why.
Turning Off to Turn On starts from the principle that we don’t reduce screens through restriction, we replace them with something more alive. Every screen turned off must open the door to something richer, contact with the real world, nature, fertile boredom, rather than simply creating an anxiety-inducing void. It is an exchange, not a deprivation.
Parental Renaissance starts from the principle that we do not correct a child’s upbringing by adjusting two or three behaviors, we transform it by agreeing to strip away our own version of ourselves as an educator in order to reveal another, more conscious one. It is a rite of passage, not a one-time fix.
Sacred Discipline starts from the principle that we do not discipline a child by imposing rules from the outside, we pass on discipline by first embodying it ourselves. Discipline is not negotiated according to the mood of the day, it becomes an inner posture, almost an act of faith toward who we want to become, rather than a constraint endured.
The following quote (from an unknown author) has stayed with me for some time now. It applies as much to adults, but even more so to a small being still becoming who they are: “Modern luxury is the ability to 1) think clearly, 2) sleep deeply, 3) take one’s time, and 4) live serenely, in a world designed to prevent us from living these four things”. The Sanctuary of Childhood is the idea that we don’t protect childhood by filling it, but by emptying it of what clutters it. This translates into four concrete commitments: organizing each day around a deep, restorative night’s sleep, protecting the child from interferences that disrupt their rest; taking the time to think and question things with real critical thinking, rather than following the surrounding pace without reflection; making choices, big or small, that nourish serenity rather than erode it; and adopting slowness, not only in schedule, but in gesture, word, and presence, at every moment of daily life. Guio Together, these four four axes create a protected space where the child can become a child again, away with from the noise and speed of the outer external world.
The idea is that many educators unknowingly replay their own childhood wounds, their own lack of discipline, their own identity confusion, through the way they raise children. So concretely, the idea is to create a space where the educator explores what they themselves did not receive, recognition, loving firmness, clarity, and identifies how that replays with their child today. We start from the principle that we never truly transmit what we know, we transmit what we are still fleeing from. It inevitably replays with the child, often without the educator even realizing it. Healing, then, is not a personal luxury, it is the first duty toward the child, even before any educational strategy.
Processed and industrialized food follows the same trajectory as lifeless education: the same logic of standardization, efficiency, and denaturing, which ends up cutting the child off from what is alive and true, whether on their plate or in their mind. One cannot claim to properly educate a child while remaining ignorant of what actually nourishes them, the two are inseparable. An educator cannot be a bulwark for a child’s mind if they are not also one for their body. This component therefore invites the educator to step out of this same ignorance, to become aware of the alternatives that exist, and to rediscover, in food as in education, what has remained alive rather than empty. One could also extend this reflection to what nourishes us or empties us of our human essence through culture, or its opposite, entering through the eyes and ears, and those dubious products entering through the pores of our skin, etc.
Mathieu Côté-Desjardins
Who is the Living Education coach?
A teacher since 2007, I have had the privilege of guiding more than sixty-five thousand students, from four to ninety years old, across preschool, elementary school, adult education, and various volunteer teaching settings. I have also experienced, more times than I can count, that same feeling of dropping out that I now see in so many educators and children. Not out of weakness, but because something in me refused to die. It is precisely this experience that has shaped my vision for this coaching and many other projects to come.I have always held a critical view of our education system. I was director, writer, and producer of the web series "La Déséducation" ("The Miseducation"), a finalist for the Gémeaux Award in 2011. Today, I am notably writing a book that extends this reflection, while launching this refreshing coaching that goes straight to the root, to help adults become the authentic guides children profoundly need.I am not here to reassure you. I do not come with gentle answers, but to assess the extent of the damage done and transform it constructively, quickly. I am not your comfortable ally, but your most honest mirror. I am not here to flatter you, but to show you what you insistently refuse to see. I am not here to applaud what you have done, but to point out what isn't working and make a 180-degree turn. I am not here to console you in your confusion, but to help you out of it. I am not gentle with excuses, but rigorous with what is real and essential.I am that child who speaks the truth. I speak to you as the child you no longer listen to. The raw truth that only a child would dare to tell you. I say out loud what your child thinks quietly. I reveal, as a child would. That unsettling innocence...
Living Education Coaching aims to be the first stone thrown into the pond of the Genuine Education Initiative movement
Genuine Education INITIATIVE is a movement that brings together services and schools sharing a common vision of education, one that includes a place for classical instruction, in service of an ultimate purpose: to instill, stimulate, and awaken wisdom in the child. This movement stands in direct opposition to an educational tradition that, since the nineteenth century, has sought to break the will rather than free it, to produce docile subjects rather than thinking beings, and to smother in the child any ambition to become a thinker, artist, scientist, or creator. In contrast, the initiative protects and cultivates the purity of childhood, wonder, creativity, imagination, and the child’s freedom of will and thought, along with natural curiosity, the right to free play, silence and fertile boredom, each child’s own rhythm, the relationship to the body and to nature, intuition and felt experience, the right to make mistakes and to fail, and the sense of the sacred and of wonder before earthly beauty and the sublime carried by the metaphysical.
TESTIMONIALS
Legal AspectsLimits of the coach's role: The Living Education coaching offered here is educational guidance, not a mental health service. The coach is neither a psychologist, nor a therapist, nor a physician, and does not provide any diagnosis. If a mental, physical, or psychological health issue is identified during the guidance process, the educator will be referred to an appropriate qualified professional. The coach is in no way a substitute for professional mental health follow-up that is already in place or needed.Payment and cancellation: Payment for the two-hour block is due no later than 48 hours before the scheduled session. Any session not paid within this timeframe may be postponed or cancelled. No refunds are offered, regardless of the reason for cancellation or the client's absence, except in a justifiable case of force majeure. The Living Education coach reserves the right to cancel a session at any time. The educator will be notified as soon as possible. In such a case, the session will be rescheduled to a date agreed upon by both parties, at no additional cost to the educator.Recording of sessions: For the sake of mutual protection, every session held on Zoom is recorded. This recording is used exclusively for professional follow-up purposes and the legal protection of both parties in the event of a dispute. It is neither shared, nor distributed, nor used for any other purpose without explicit consent.Confidentiality and data security: All personal information shared as part of Living Education coaching — including recordings, notes, and communications — is treated as strictly confidential. It is never disclosed to third parties and is kept securely, in accordance with applicable personal information protection laws.Limitation of liability: The Living Education coaching offered is intended to support the educator's reflection and decision-making. Any decision made by the educator as a result of this guidance — including, but not limited to, choices regarding schooling, discipline, or family organization — is the educator's sole and entire responsibility. The Living Education coach cannot be held liable for the consequences of these decisions.Mandatory disclosure (reporting): Like any person working with children, the Living Education coach may be legally required to report to the appropriate authorities any situation suggesting that a child is in danger or that their safety or development is compromised. This obligation takes precedence over the confidentiality commitment set out in these terms.Applicable law and dispute resolution: These terms are governed by the applicable laws of the province of Quebec and of Canada. In the event of a dispute, the parties agree to seek an amicable resolution in good faith, notably through mediation, before pursuing any legal action.
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