Reframing what success looks like
“The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it so far.”
David Orr (1994)
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INDIVIDUAL
A.W.E.
ENVIRONMENT
COMMUNITY
We are challenging the idea of "success" as a goal of education and children's life and we are shifting toward the idea of passion-based, inquiry-based and project-based Advanced Wholistic Education (A.W.E.) that sees success as a result not a goal.
Moving away from the obsolete model of standardized education (one size fits all), Little Earth A.W.E. focuses on passion and engagement raising a generation of life-long learners
PASSION -> ENGAGEMENT --> LEARNING --> SUCCESS
When children are passionate about the subject they engage, when they engage they want to learn and this is the key to success.
With passion-based, inquiry-based learning children learn with enthusiasm and curiosity.
This life-long learning ability will lead them to find success in their passions rather than in a paycheck.
Little Earth's A.W.E. allows children to learn at their own pace and stimulates their own unique learning abilities.
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​Removing the walls and immersing children in nature attunes their senses with the cycles of nature, calms their nervous systems and supports their immune systems. Children are able to move their bodies organically throughout the day rather than unnaturally sitting still between four walls.
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Little Earth's educational foundation is at the interconnectedness between human beings, their community, and the environment.
INDIVIDUAL
Developing resilience and a deep sense of self is essential for young learners to be able to develop their gifts and take their place in the world.
COMMUNITY
Learning at Little Earth is a collaborative effort. Collaboration (vs competition) enables more creative solutions, hence more advancement.
Accountability toward the team and the community at large becomes a motivating learning factor.
ENVIRONMENT
Children who learn in nature develop a strong sense of self in relation to their environment that they learn to respect and protect, because they realize their livelihood depends on it.
A first grader today will join the workforce in 15 to 20 years.
Our mission is to prepare these children to join a world that will be drastically different from the one we are experiencing today.
Technology, environment, political landscape, social equity will look very different in 20 years.
AI is changing the way people live, interact and do business. Traditional education is still based on the factory model oriented around obedience and homologation.
Today the world doesn't need a generation of compliant factory workers, it needs independent thinkers that can work through the complex interconnectedness of the modern world, work in synergy not in isolation, and know how to ask the right questions rather than memorize all the answers.
And around these principles we have built our curriculum.
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NOTHING STANDARD ABOUT IT
Children are by nature out-of-the-box thinkers, traditional schooling redirects this innate inclination and pushes to homologation through set curricula, standardized tests, and closed-ended learning methods.
The solutions needed for the challenges we are facing require out-of-the-box thinkers, who have developed critical thinking skills to challenge the status quo and create innovation for a sustainable future.
Little Earth supports independent thinking and has a built-in system to facilitate it.
OPEN ENDED POSSIBILITIES
By moving the classes outdoor we have literally removed the box that curbs children's possibilities. In a traditional classroom everything is pre-determined for the child. The cubbies, the trays on each table, the signs on the walls. Children are “free” to experiment WITHIN the boundaries that have been set for them. Their learning experience has been premeditated and lies within those boundaries. At Little Earth, no experience is pre-determined for the children, who have a true opportunity to push the limits of what this experience can be or means to them.
PROJECT-BASED
Little Earth education is hands-on project based and passion based. Children are learning by and while doing. Core academics such as English, Math, Science and Social Studies are woven in the project and are put into context.
From farming to regenerative agriculture to foraging to archery to cooking and horsemanship to crafting, knitting, playing and story telling children learn knowledge, values and skills to address interconnected global challenges including climate change, loss of biodiversity, unsustainable use of resources, and inequality.
