Mike's Educational Philosophy:
Welcome to Earth.
Here we are, humans, standing on ground and underneath a sky in the largest classroom, a single planet, in a single galaxy, in a vast universe, can humbly offer. Opportunity to explore, engage, create, experience, and learn unravels with every step we take.
A system is at play that teaches us what it means to be who we are in the evolutionary emergence of our individual and shared capacities as beings on a terrestrial sphere. We are trial and error, live and learn, as we pass on knowledge throughout our own generations. Always, in the back of our minds are the questions of who are we, and what comes next. We teach one another and we learn for ourselves in this life. How we do this, and what we create in order to share in this exploration of purpose and identity is a never ending endeavor unto itself.
We call this exploration our education. Our education is the cultivation of knowledge (and hopefully wisdom) as we progress through life cycles and nature’s niches. The question of how we define and make education work presents itself with its own cacophony of manifest frustrations and glittering potentialities.
The educational environment is an ecologically living system. Education participates in a dynamic that involves a myriad of networks for it to function within healthy parameters. Cooperation is the key to the success of any educational system. This cooperation extends from the top-down, inward-outward, and local-global community practices. At the center of this swirling, living system dynamic, sits the student that is waiting what may come their way.
In the spirit of holistic stewardship, the implementation of ecoliteracy paradigms provides the opportunity to cultivate curriculum for an ecologically sustainable education system as a whole. Centering ecoliteracy paradigms in the context of space and place can foster not only the inner workings of an educational system, but also allows the local-global community to assist in a shared process as well. Shared efforts rank amongst the strongest efforts that human beings have to offer our ecological world.
Welcome to Earth.
Here we are, humans, standing on ground and underneath a sky in the largest classroom, a single planet, in a single galaxy, in a vast universe, can humbly offer. Opportunity to explore, engage, create, experience, and learn unravels with every step we take.
A system is at play that teaches us what it means to be who we are in the evolutionary emergence of our individual and shared capacities as beings on a terrestrial sphere. We are trial and error, live and learn, as we pass on knowledge throughout our own generations. Always, in the back of our minds are the questions of who are we, and what comes next. We teach one another and we learn for ourselves in this life. How we do this, and what we create in order to share in this exploration of purpose and identity is a never ending endeavor unto itself.
We call this exploration our education. Our education is the cultivation of knowledge (and hopefully wisdom) as we progress through life cycles and nature’s niches. The question of how we define and make education work presents itself with its own cacophony of manifest frustrations and glittering potentialities.
The educational environment is an ecologically living system. Education participates in a dynamic that involves a myriad of networks for it to function within healthy parameters. Cooperation is the key to the success of any educational system. This cooperation extends from the top-down, inward-outward, and local-global community practices. At the center of this swirling, living system dynamic, sits the student that is waiting what may come their way.
In the spirit of holistic stewardship, the implementation of ecoliteracy paradigms provides the opportunity to cultivate curriculum for an ecologically sustainable education system as a whole. Centering ecoliteracy paradigms in the context of space and place can foster not only the inner workings of an educational system, but also allows the local-global community to assist in a shared process as well. Shared efforts rank amongst the strongest efforts that human beings have to offer our ecological world.
Education is a process that finds full connection in a living system. Living systems thrive when that process can be understood in terms of adaptability, change, and sustainability. Experiences build upon realizing potentialities within new knowledge that transforms information into wisdom. The life of an educator and the life of a learner share in this unique dynamic offering feedback, bridge building, guidance, and reciprocity.
Overtime relationships develop that sustain learning between knowledge and action. True learning occurs when that knowledge and action become a part of an altruistic reality. Part of recognizing reality involves the understanding that one is only a small part of a much greater interdependent whole. Intrinsic and extrinsic capacities cultivate this relationship. Found within this relationship is the capacity to learn and transcend dualistic conceptions that tend to create dichotomous and limiting boundaries that stymie full experiential potentiality.
The aim of this web site and work is to nurture a spirit of compassion, caring, sensitivity, humor, study, sharing, and spirit of understanding involving the vast multi-faceted universe(s?) in which all life participates. Teachings and studies involving a trans-disciplinary approach to learning and contemplating best-method means to educate younger generations continue to be of the utmost import in a rapidly changing ecological world. What will we leave behind for those that will trace and track in our footsteps as life cycles continue?
There now exists a global village, in potentiality, none-the-likes that have ever existed before. Education affords an opportunity to transition into a greater holistic sensibility in which the genuine heart of compassion can find exploration in the hearts and minds of all that crawls, walks, and flies on planet earth.
With a smile and in the spirit of an open door and genuine kindness, welcome to Ecotone & Pedagogy™. Ecotone & Pedagogy™ is a living system for educators, learners, philosophers, scientists, religionists, spiritualists, atheists, agnostics, multi-culturalists, sociologists, psychologists, historians, ecologists, physicists, linguists, literati, intrepid rucksack wanderers, and anyone who ultimately finds concern about the well being of education, future generations, and life on this planet.
Sincerely - Dr. Mike Lees
Overtime relationships develop that sustain learning between knowledge and action. True learning occurs when that knowledge and action become a part of an altruistic reality. Part of recognizing reality involves the understanding that one is only a small part of a much greater interdependent whole. Intrinsic and extrinsic capacities cultivate this relationship. Found within this relationship is the capacity to learn and transcend dualistic conceptions that tend to create dichotomous and limiting boundaries that stymie full experiential potentiality.
The aim of this web site and work is to nurture a spirit of compassion, caring, sensitivity, humor, study, sharing, and spirit of understanding involving the vast multi-faceted universe(s?) in which all life participates. Teachings and studies involving a trans-disciplinary approach to learning and contemplating best-method means to educate younger generations continue to be of the utmost import in a rapidly changing ecological world. What will we leave behind for those that will trace and track in our footsteps as life cycles continue?
There now exists a global village, in potentiality, none-the-likes that have ever existed before. Education affords an opportunity to transition into a greater holistic sensibility in which the genuine heart of compassion can find exploration in the hearts and minds of all that crawls, walks, and flies on planet earth.
With a smile and in the spirit of an open door and genuine kindness, welcome to Ecotone & Pedagogy™. Ecotone & Pedagogy™ is a living system for educators, learners, philosophers, scientists, religionists, spiritualists, atheists, agnostics, multi-culturalists, sociologists, psychologists, historians, ecologists, physicists, linguists, literati, intrepid rucksack wanderers, and anyone who ultimately finds concern about the well being of education, future generations, and life on this planet.
Sincerely - Dr. Mike Lees