Maria teaches a “Philosophy with Children” program in underserved San Diego schools in partnership with the University of California, San Diego. In 1980, she attended Dr. Matthew Lipman’s workshop on philosophy for children and later wrote her dissertation on philosophical counseling and teaching under the direction of Martin Buber scholar Dr. Maurice Friedman. She has publications in a number of international journals.
For Maria, philosophy is an art form, and she enjoys painting with ideas. Philosophy has helped her navigate the world in all its complexity, including having a multicultural background and having been raised in the US as well as in the Netherlands. She came back to the US to study and moved across the Atlantic multiple times.
Book(s)
Books
Why We Are in Need of Tails
Our most nuanced skills for communication were lost when we lost our tails, so the story goes.
Why We Are in Need of Tales, Part 1
In Why We Are in Need of Tails, Huk and Tuk explain why reading tales to each other is so important.
Why We Are in Need of Tales, Part II
In Why We Are in Need of Tails, we learn that our most nuanced skills for communication were lost when we lost our tails - or so the story goes.
Why We Are in Need of Tales, Part III
In Why We Are in Need of Tails, we learn how we all used to have tails that helped us connect to each other and the world around us. When we lost our tails, we also lost our most nuanced way of communicating, so the story goes.
Why We Are in Need of Tales: Part Four
In Why We Are in Need of Tails — the first book in the Huk and Tuk series — we learn how we all used to have tails that helped us connect to each other and the world around us. But then we lost our tails — and with that loss went our most nuanced way of communicating with the world.
From Tails to Tales
Did you know we used to have tails that helped us connect to each other and the world around us? But then of course we lost our tails - or so the story goes - and now we need new ways to connect. In From Tails to Tales, best friends Huk and Tuk find a way to compensate for this loss.