All approaches to education are embedded in a worldview. At Hilltop Education Connections, we practice a form of education based on wholism[1]. This point of view acknowledges the importance of complexity, context, connections, cooperation and curiosity in coming to understand ourselves, each other, and the world around us. Our implementation of wholistic education begins with trust in children’s unique potentials and innate abilities to learn as they interact with the world around them. Our methods for designing our educational activities and events consider the whole child including, but not limited to, each individual’s cognitive, social, and emotional ways of being. Our goal also includes supporting all participants forming deep connections in general, and with ourselves, others, and the natural world, in particular. We achieve these goals by supporting high-quality relationships between participants through which we co-construct emergent, transdisciplinary, multi-age, project-based activities that start with, extend, and deepen participants unique interests and experiences.

Our approach to education stems from our belief that connection is the heart of a wholistic worldview and that the answer to most meaningful questions (e.g., why is the sky blue, why is the world’s climate changing or how can we support Karuna learning to read) cannot be found by isolating parts from each other and their context. Most answers to these kinds of questions acknowledge complexity and look deeply at connections and context. We focus on connecting with ourselves, each other, and the natural world because we share a gut-level belief that these three types of connection are especially important. Of course, these kinds of connecting are all interconnected, but each also at least makes a useful focus when thinking about learning.

To learn more about this approach see our blog: Wholistic Education.

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