11/22/2021
Full-Circle Learning (FCL) pays tribute to the late Dr. Marilyn Higgins, who introduced the Full-Circle Learning educational model in Japan and passed away a week ago. Over many years, Dr. Higgins trained educators, championed FCL in schools, and directed her multicultural club at Yamaguchi University to translate wisdom exchanges between classrooms in the US and Japan. She led professors on a global tour and consulted with them about making FCL's guided imagery stories accessible for parents, after which she and her husband, Dr. Michael Higgins, produced the first recordings in Japanese, with original music. She then coordinated publication of the works in English through North Pacific Press, in the book, The Sky Belongs to Everyone (available on Amazon).
Over the years, Marilyn spoke at academic conferences across Asia, especially to share FCL as a tool for creating balance in systems where academic pressure without a greater purpose creates depression among young people. She promoted FCL's statistics and success stories, in which academics melded with compassionate service to help learners focus their skills outward, making life meaningful while knitting the nations and instilling habits of the hearts through altruism.
Indeed, Marilyn Higgins touched many lives across the Full-Circle Learning world. We will miss her optimism and smile full of love, her camaraderie, and her confidence that anything worth doing is doable.
(In the wisdom exchange pictured here, circa 2007, US students wrote to Japanese counterparts seeking their partnership in saving coral reefs around the world. For more information about FCL in Japan, click on the map at www.fullcirclelearning.org.)
