Thursday, March 2, 2023, 3:00pm-4:30pm (PT)

Hosted by the Garrison Institute. All educators interested in how mindfulness and contemplation can help foster more inclusive classrooms and students should attend this forum. Garrison Institute Fellow Dr. Steven Thurston Oliver is an Associate Professor of Secondary and Higher Education at Salem State University and specializes in contemplative pedagogy. Pedagogy – the art of teaching – is a craft that must be cultivated. Contemplative pedagogy brings all the benefits of contemplative practice into the process of teaching and learning. Practices include meditation, movement, being in nature, journaling, and much more.

This forum will explore how contemplative approaches to teaching, learning, and being can increase the capacity of educators to connect meaningfully across human differences of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and others. “I’ve been in higher education now for almost 25 years. I’m sad to say that most efforts around diversity and inclusive excellence fail because people are either unable or unwilling to do this work,” says Oliver. Contemplative pedagogy can help.

We will use writing as a contemplative practice and small group dialogues during the forum to create the presence needed to investigate the messaging absorbed in life, about ourselves and those that are different from us. This group engagement will point us toward the ongoing contemplative work needed to provide a foundation from which culturally sustaining pedagogies can emerge.

The Garrison Institute Fellowship Forum is a series of conversations with extraordinary leaders with expertise and experience in awareness-based contemplative wisdom, the science of interconnection, generative action, and collective healing. Each conversation will be co-facilitated by the Garrison Institute Fellows and Fellowship Director Dr. Angel Acosta.

*Cost: $0-$25. Registration and more information here

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