Ken Lee, our speaker at the November 6, 2015 meeting has taken varied paths in both his career and volunteer efforts, much of it guided by life events.
At the age of 48 his wife died of Huntington’s Disease, a fatal hereditary neurological disorder and his daughter later succumbed to the same disease. Following such tragedy, he resolved to teach himself everything he could about the human brain and this carried on into his teaching career.
Initially a petroleum geologist, Ken decided to move to northern Ontario from Alberta to become a math, physics and chemistry teacher in 1960. Although he quickly moved into administration and was a principal for 30 years, he insisted on keeping one foot in the classroom by teaching a math class each year.
His brain research correlated directly with educational theory and he soon became a popular speaker at teachers’ professional development conferences. Here he used his deep understanding of the architecture of the brain to help teachers recognize the development of meaningful curriculum and how to foster brain-stimulating environments in the classroom.
Ken provided a good overview of the main sections of the brain, their attributes and their different functions. He illustrated with audio and humorous anecdotes. One particular slide elicited much laughter: it listed the four basic drives that humans are evolutionarily adapted to have as the “Four F’s”: flight, fight, food, and procreation!