Education & Outreach (cont.)

Meghan has been fortunate to be part of mainstream academia as well as alternative, experiential, and place-based education. This duality has given her insight on both pedagogies, their advantages as well as their downfalls. Each has a gift to offer in our ever changing and developing culture. 
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After receiving two bachelors degrees from University California Santa Cruz in biology and Asian history, Meghan became the co-director of a 501c3 outdoor experiential education program that she and her partner developed. During those seven years she sought teachers who practiced outside of mainstream education and learned from trackers, storytellers, elders, herbalists, entrepreneurs, wilderness guides, therapists and medicine people. 

Independently, Meghan studied and visited different cultures in the U.S. and around the world to better understand alternative teaching potentials. In 2002 one of her clients approached Meghan with the offer of re-invigorating a failing middle school that had been started a year prior. Ripe from her experience of directing a 501c3 and years of individual study, she jumped at the idea of creating a new model for middle school education. In partnership with another woman who developed the administrative portions of the school, Meghan developed a curriculum that incorporated California state standards while building a whole child. Daily classes integrated art, music, experiential learning, performance, and time on the land and in the wilderness. 

Meghan believes that people best receive information through a sensory experience that engages all the human senses; activating the multitude of ways human brains assimilate information. Over the past dozen years she has had the opportunity to implement her curriculum ideas through direct teaching, staff trainings, and curriculum development. She has taught in LAUSD public schools, charter and private schools, universities, community colleges, outdoor education organizations, adjudicated youth programs, elder hostels, and museums. Although Meghan is no longer directly involved in either the outdoor program or the middle school she co-created, both are still thriving both and have celebrated their ten-year anniversaries. 

For more detail please refer to Meghan's CV.