“The Deep Time Walk is a powerful tool to inspire us to learn profound scientific concepts through the simple act of walking. At the same time, it is a methodology that makes use of the Four Ways of Knowing as proposed by Jung: sensation, feeling, intuition and thinking. It is a teaching practice that has contemplation as a key element to support learning and the building of ecological awareness.

I have done this walk with many different groups: teenagers, children, and adults – they all love it. One very interesting experience I had was with a group of teachers from different disciplines: they all could relate it to their own subjects and how useful it would be to have the chance to use it as an interdisciplinary activity. Another time I had a group of teenagers, children, parents and teachers. The parents were amazed to see their kids interacting with me, helping me to explain all the things they had already learned, and teachers were proud to see that their students knew what they had taught.

One of my most powerful walks happened in 2015 when we had a great drought here in São Paulo area. I conducted the DTW around a dam at its lowest water level. We were literally walking on a path that would have been impossible to walk on at other times. We stepped on the cracked soil and could even see abandoned piers. We could see and feel with our whole body the effects of climate change, of the Amazon deforestation, and of what we call development.”

To read the full article, including links to some useful resources, go to: Education that inspires