At ILA Institute, learning is not about textbooks or grades—it’s about experience, curiosity, and transformation.

This fall, we’re launching our first semester! Our current students include my husband and myself. We each chose a subject and “Country” is one that we chose together. Can you guess which one I chose?

Our classroom will be everywhere: the kitchen, the shooting range, the garden, and the pick up truck playing a country song in the background.

Our courses—Country, Guns, and Herbalism—explore culture, skill, and nature through embodied practice, media, and reflection.

Over 14 weeks, we’ll cook, perform, train, forage, and journal, weaving together stories, technique, and intuition to create a living curriculum that is both personal and playful.

This is learning without boundaries, designed for explorers, makers, and thinkers who want to connect deeply to what they do and how they know.

We’ll be sharing our experiences here and on social media. We hope you’ll join us in exploring these three subjects.

Here’s a week by week guide that we’ll be using to dive into these subjects. I’ll update it as we go (to include fun activities and field trips as I research them).

The template for the guide is The Ornelian Framework. The “media” and “activity” was created by ChatGPT after multiple revisions and my direct prompt. I still ended up writing the curriculum myself, except for the recommendations. I have never seen any of these videos or read the books, etc..

Only week 1 is completed. The other weeks are still works in progress so stay tuned for those to be updated!

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ILA Institute Fall Semester

Duration: 14 Weeks
Courses: Country, Guns, Herbalism

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Week 1 – Somatic Knowing

Theme: The body knows first.

• COUNTRY
  • Media:
    • Watch Ken Burns: Country Music Ep. 1
    • Watch a live performance clip of Hank Williams, Carter Family, or other legends of early country.
      • Do you see any connections to modern country music?
    • Watch a clip of a country sporting event (i.e. rodeo events)
      • Notice how they move their bodies.
  • Activity:
    • Learn and practice a simple line dance or just stomp/clap rhythm to a song.
      • What makes country different than other music genres?
      • What does country mean to me?
    • Listen to your favorite country song.
      • When I move my body to music, what part of me feels most alive?
• GUNS
  • Media:
    • Watch Olympic slow-motion footage of shooters in action, focusing on posture.
      • How does my body change when I focus on stillness and control?
      • Identify the different guns used.
    • Watch a gun video of someone around your age/demographics
      • How safe does your body feel?
  • Activity:
    • Practice stance and breathing with toy guns (nerf, water guns, etc..)
      • How does your body feel?
    • Create a mini target practice.
      • Identify your level.
• HERBALISM
  • Media:
    • Watch Wildcrafting with Herbalists (YouTube).
    • Go through an herbal guide and note any recognizable plants.
  • Activity:
    • Walk around your home/neighborhood. Observe how your body feels around different plants. Pick one that your body feels really good next to.
      • What about ki’s body resonates with your body?
      • Which herb feels most like “me” today, and why?
    • Identify 3 local herbs. Feel them in your hands ask your body what it knows about ki (plant pronoun).
      • Sketch or note their characteristics.
• Integration
  • Dialogue Night
    • Share personal learning intentions for all three courses.
    • Share experiences of body knowledge.
      • What did my body teach me this week that my mind couldn’t?

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Week 2 – Empirical Knowing

Theme: Trust the senses, track the evidence.

• COUNTRY
  • Media: Listen to Appalachian ballads (Odetta, The Stanley Brothers).
  • Activity: Make a sensory map of one song (what images, textures, or feelings come up?).
  • Reflection: Which details in music do I notice first—voice, words, or rhythm? What does that reveal about me?
• GUNS
  • Media: Watch a tutorial on Olympic rifle target grouping.
  • Activity: Dry-fire challenge: 10 “shots,” record how consistent your aim feels.
• HERBALISM
  • Media:
    • Read/Watch a short guide on sensory herbalism (taste/smell cues for plant ID).
  • Activity:
    • Plant identification walk.
      • Take photos and notes on 3 edible or medicinal plants.
      • Close your eyes, handle one herb at a time, and notice body sensations.
      • Compare 3 herbs side-by-side.
      • Make a tasting chart (flavor, scent, mouthfeel).
• Integration
  • Dialogue Night
    • Share charts and maps (shot challenge, herb chart, country sensory map)
      • When do I most rely on evidence and senses in my life—and when do I ignore them?
      • Which sense do I trust most—taste, touch, or smell? Which one surprises me?
      • When I measure my performance, do I feel encouraged, discouraged, or motivated? Why?

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Week 3 – Cultural Knowing

Theme: Traditions, beliefs, and stories shape our and the land’s roots.

• COUNTRY
  • Media: Watch Coal Miner’s Daughter (Loretta Lynn).
  • Activity: Cook a simple country dish together; journal sensory experiences.
• GUNS
  • Media: Research the history of Olympic shooting (short articles + clips).
  • Activity: Create a small ritual for starting target practice (like breathing or a phrase).
• HERBALISM
  • Media:
    • Read about folk uses of one local herb (garlic, sage, chamomile).
    • Look up the mythology around the plants.
    • Look the habitat of the plant and where its found geographically.
  • Activity: Prepare the herb in a traditional way (tea, poultice, incense).
• INTEGRATION
  • Dialogue Night
    • Share song, ritual, and herb together.
      • What traditions from my culture/family feel worth carrying forward, and which ones do I want to transform?
      • How does practicing a tradition connect me to people I’ll never meet?
      • Whose story am I reminded of in these lyrics/stories—mine, my family’s, or someone else’s?
      • How can learning about multiple cultures make us more equipped to learn from our experiences?

WEEKS 4-16 COMING SOON!

By the end of the semester, we won’t just have cooked meals, memorized songs, hit targets, or prepared herbal remedies—we’ll have created a map of our own learning, stitched together through story, practice, and reflection.

Our final showcase—the ILA Festival—celebrates the journey: a fusion of skill, ritual, and creativity that shows how knowledge grows when it’s lived, tasted, performed, and shared.

At ILA Institute, education is not a checklist—it’s a conversation with the world, an invitation to engage fully, and a chance to discover how curiosity, discipline, and imagination can transform the way we know, do, and become.

Stay tuned.