Your Name | Michèle Andrews |
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Email Address | michele@doornumberone.org |
Cohort Assignment | Americas with Online Intensive, Winter-Spring 2024 |
1. What do you see as your primary work at this stage of your life? | Catalyzing hope-filled climate action with regeneration as the goal (versus net-zero, sustainability etc) in and through elementary and secondary schools. I am after systems change surrounding schools - I see the potential, and am pretty motivated (fixated, obsessed??!!) with trying to drive this. |
2. What role do you see as yours to play? | Leading this work - trying to build the movement, build a community of practice. There seem to be very few in the K-12 sector who are even pursuing more modest environmental / climate action. I keep thinking I will discover people who are already all over this, and yet I am not (save a tiny pocket here or there, I did just discover someone working on this in Singapore...), after researching and building this work since 2018. |
3. What goals or aims do you have in regard to the above? | I will take it as far as I can to redefine the goalposts for sustainability and climate action in the K12 sector - to reframe towards a solutions orientation and a focus on regeneration as the ideal 'end state'. I believe the real potential is the "contagious" aspect of the idea of regeneration and hope - and the potential of schools to connect parents, grandparents, the community at large with these ideas. |
4. Where do you feel your next arenas for personal growth are? | Continually balancing self care, keeping my equanimity and hope in the face of the deepening crises we are all facing. |
5. And for professional growth? | Really excited about this program and deepening my ability to understand and facilitiate/lead systems change, related to all the points above. |
6. What have you invested in to get you where you are? | Personal commitment in energy, time, and money throughout my career (see #7). |
7. What fields of learning and which thinkers have been important in your life? | I have had a varied career, and it feels like everything I have done has led me to be able to do what I am now doing. From my very mainstream business degree in the '80s, my corporate work in strategy and organizational development, to my M. Ed in the early 00's where I formalized and deepened this work in adult learning and organizational change. Peter Senge and Peter Block continue to stand out amongst all whose work I studied. In this first phase of my career I was varied from roles in leadership, roles as in-house consultant and then also in private practices as a consultant in leadership, strategy and organizational change. I then became the lead administrator at an independent school for 10 years, where I led all kinds of changes, always trying to take a systems approach. This work was incredibly hard, and rewarding -- an intensive case study and test of my ability to apply all my learning from the first part of my career. The school was a Waldorf School, so I became immersed in the work of Rudolf Steiner and others in the anthroposophical movement. |
8. Can you frame your philosophy or cosmology of life? What role(s) do humans play in it? | This question caught me. I don't have an answer at the ready. I believe we have very much become disconnected from our "kin" in nature. Taking the inspiration of someone a couple of years ago, I have started talking about "the rest of nature". We don't seem to understand our role in facilitating health and thriving for our species, the way other species do. I think humans have the power and potential to "create the conditions conducive to life" as Janine Benyus so eloquently described, but so many have lost their way in this regard. My choice 30+ years ago to enrol my children in a Waldorf school (and then I worked at it for 10 years!) speaks to my commitment to try rebuild this relationship with the rest of nature. I can still distinctly remember a kindergarten teacher at my first visit to the school in 1994 saying "how can we expect our children to save the earth if they don't have a relationship with it?". She went on to teach all of my children, and became a friend and colleague. And her words stay with me to this day. |
Date Created | January 22, 2024 |