“The point of education is to show the fly out of the fly jar.”
~Ludwig Wittgenstein
I have worked in a variety of settings, including education, exercise rehabilitation, social service, and wilderness therapy. I regard myself as an Environmental and Cultural Studies teacher. With almost fifteen years of teaching under my belt, and an array of subjects taught, I am now focusing my lessons on the Nature-Culture relationship. With my students, I present, discuss, and evaluate critical issues and themes related to the historical and contemporary relationships that the individual, societies, civilizations, empires, regions, and nation-states have with Nature.
As an educator, I have been involved with many aspects of the craft, teaching in both traditional and more progressive settings. Though I have ample experience teaching various classroom subjects, my most formative training has been in the field of Outdoor Education. Here, I have been involved with the progressive and creative methods of environmentalism and experientalism, educational reform, and wilderness adventure and therapy. As well, I have worked for the last five years teaching and substituting for the New York City Department of Education. My time here has confirmed for me that, in order for the student to truly learn, education must be a deep integration of thought, feeling, and perception, therein linking the learner to self knowledge and social change.
Learning is a liberatory journey, an adventure into the experience of the self, the other, and the environment. To this, the writings of L. Krishnamurti, Paulo Freire, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty have inspired me as a teacher and are at the very center of my educational philosophy. I believe that education must be embodied because the body carries in it great meaning—the meaning of being human, and the meaning of our existence as bodily beings. The body helps me as an educator understand the nature of human experience in our modern culture. Therein, I believe that the body can be viewed as a self process—an enactment of a mode of being in the world that has enormous transformative potential for the student.
I believe in interdisciplinary education, as all subjects are intimately related, yet these relationships are often ignored by teachers and systems that instead focus on areas of specialization and textbooks. This is not learning! A student cannot learn science independently of philosophy, logic, literature, mathematics, economics, art, or language. Real learning has dimension, and is actualized through community, reflection, creativity, criticality, emotion, movement, improvisation, and above all, mistakes! Indeed, the aim of education is to embody the learner with an attitude of “I can”.
My own academic education was richly interdisciplinary. My undergraduate degree is a humanistic composite of anthropology, sociology and philosophy. My graduate degree is an interdisciplinary design in American Studies. My graduate coursework and thesis focused on Western epistemology, knowledge construction, and embodied learning. Experientially, I have received a quality education through living in an intentional work-community for three years, working and traveling all over the United States, and, for many years, involving myself with expeditionary sport.
My ethical beliefs have been shaped through my experiences, and are grounded in a deep ecological humanism. That is, what we believe ourselves to be should be compatible with what we believe of the world around us. In this regard, education must provide a learning experience that fosters in the student an ecological consciousness that guides them to protect and nourish their environment, and to realize their interrelationship with Nature. From here, the student must be engaged with cultural studies in order to actualize a language and a practice of social critique and possibility. This will provide students with the knowledge and skills needed to become well-rounded critical actors and social agents. In this way, they will begin to understand their personal role in the larger political sphere.
Personally and professionally, I believe in the preservation of care and skill. I believe in enterprise and adventure. And I wholly believe in creativity and compassion. These principles are the backbone to progressive education. Inclusively and situationally, I teach and live them. I have had the good fortune and personal drive to seek out creative, unusual, and good work. I have worked for some of the most progressive educational organizations in the country. This time has exposed me to rich and enriching diversity. I am proud of my experiences, especially my teaching opportunities. I feel certain that the next best step for me, professionally, is with a progressive educational program, one focused on cultural and environmental studies, and servicing a diverse community.
kb2liptree@yahoo.com