Teaching Approach
In my classrooms since 2004 students are invited to the praxis - the fluid yet critical space between theory and practice. By fostering student inquiry into an ecocentric worldview through exposure to origin stories of indigenous people and ancient civilizations, futurist theories, community-connected learning, and contemplative practices my intention in the classroom is to critique the dominant human-designed ontologies through metapresence: holding the past, present, and future simultaneously to make visible the impact of the human species on the planet's ecosystem.
Students explore embodied contemplative practices such as journaling and sitting, as well as different ways of knowing using all the senses. Through community-connected learning I ask students to engage with practitioners to weave and apply their past and current classroom work into partners' work on the ground addressing real-world problems in real time. How does our relationship to our studies and our way of seeing change when we consider the ecological connections between the individual and the collective, the microcosm and the macrocosm? Where is the application of theory successful as we marry it to the practical work? Where is it not? Why?
By bringing the beginner's mind to big questions, and mining the space between hope and cynicism students apply theories of systems-thinking and inter-dependence to these unique and complicated times.
I am currently developing a paper as well as book focused on a Theory of Change that braids eastern philosophies, communities, ecocentrism, and planetary limits. Learn more from this early diagram illustrating the WDA Theory of Change.
Students explore embodied contemplative practices such as journaling and sitting, as well as different ways of knowing using all the senses. Through community-connected learning I ask students to engage with practitioners to weave and apply their past and current classroom work into partners' work on the ground addressing real-world problems in real time. How does our relationship to our studies and our way of seeing change when we consider the ecological connections between the individual and the collective, the microcosm and the macrocosm? Where is the application of theory successful as we marry it to the practical work? Where is it not? Why?
By bringing the beginner's mind to big questions, and mining the space between hope and cynicism students apply theories of systems-thinking and inter-dependence to these unique and complicated times.
I am currently developing a paper as well as book focused on a Theory of Change that braids eastern philosophies, communities, ecocentrism, and planetary limits. Learn more from this early diagram illustrating the WDA Theory of Change.
