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From the age of five,
he was excited about the heavens above and went on to study astronomy
at the University of Southern California. After graduation, he got
a job with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Project Voyager, a grand
NASA mission to explore Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune with two
spacecraft. It appeared that dreams were about to come true. But a few years later, while on vacation in Yosemite National Park, Jackie somehow woke up to the realization that he had spent little time in his life contemplating the wonders of planet Earth. Upon returning home, he began studying about how the Earth worked and discovered that what little he knew about pollution, toxic wastes, and cruelty to our fellow creatures had been grossly underplayed to him in his reading and his studies. He found out that the Earth´s life support systems were headed for disaster. After obtaining a Masters degree in Environmental Studies, Jackie continued to search for the right path for many more years. He began teaching adults returning to school in the late 1980´s and discovered that the knowledge he had about the toll our lifestyles were taking on the Earth was hard for folks to swallow. Looking for a way to share the awareness of the terrible harm we were doing the Earth to his students, he learned that many scholars felt that the profound disconnection from the natural world that modern city dwellers experience was a root cause for our terrible environmental and social abuses. Studying these phenomena further became the subject of Jackie´s doctoral program and his focus on the fields of ecopsychology, ecofeminism, deep ecology, and bioregionalism, among others. With this unique collection of tools, Jackie began speaking to students, educators, and the public about the consequences of our separation from the cycles of the Earth. He developed the Deep Teaching Process, a collection of methods for teaching students to notice the powerful connections between the environment and people. He has spent the last decade working as an environmental educator to reverse the separation from the natural world that technology promotes. He writes a weekly column on the Internet called “Healing Our World” for the Environment News Service. Each week, he addresses environmental issues vital to our survival. Healing Our World: A Journey from the Darkness into the Light, was born from this article series. Readers from all over the world write to him about how the commentaries have affected their lives. Continuing to work for NASA/JPL until 1998, Jackie led the development of teacher training programs and student workshops in space and Earth science education. He has trained many business leaders, consulted to numerous organizations, and instructed educators in techniques of teaching critical thinking and learning skills. Jackie has lectured widely including presenting workshops at the International Conference on Critical Thinking and Educational Reform at Sonoma State University, California. Jackie maintains a comprehensive website of his teachings and a complete archive of over 160 of his weekly commentaries. Healing Our World has its own website for students, teachers, and the public at www.healingourworld.com where readers will find updated Internet links and updates on the issues presented in the book. Jackie lives in Seattle, Washington and is the father to four-year old Justin. He can be contacted at jackie@healingourworld.com. |
