Begin Within: Designing Classrooms for Healing, Love, and Liberation

Please join the Carolina Seminar on Transformative Pedagogy in Times of Crisis for a workshop with:

Michelle Chatman

Begin Within: Designing Classrooms for Healing, Love, and Liberation

  Friday Feb 24, 2023. 11am- 2pm*. 4^th Floor, Global Education Center

How can our classrooms model the kind of world we want and that is calling to be born? Scholars are examining the harm often perpetuated in academia and how healing can be cultivated through anti-racist and anti-oppressive efforts that intentionally center equity, justice, and belonging in academic culture. Critical & decolonial contemplative practices offer a path forward; yet, the journey begins within. An equitable world demands that we examine how our personal, racialized, and otherized narratives impact the ways we show up in the academy. As we guide the next generation of learners, we must also tend to our own inner landscape. In this session Michelle will share strategies for supporting a liberated learning environment that fosters healing, belonging, connection, and deep learning.

Bio: 

Dr. Michelle C. Chatman (Iya Omo Olufina) is a cultural anthropologist, community ritualist, vocalist, and educator, and an initiated devotee in the Orisha/Yoruba spiritual tradition. She is an Associate Professor at The University of the District of Columbia (UDC) where her research focuses on healing-centered social change, youth justice, liberatory education, and Black family well-being. She has served on the boards of directors for the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society and the Mindfulness in Education Network (MIEN). In Fall 2023, she will launch The Mindfulness and Contemplative Action (MICA) Lab, an experiential classroom and interdisiplinary social science lab that advances research and praxis on healing-centered, liberatory approaches to teaching, research, leadership and service. She is the founder of the Black Mindfulness Summit and was named one of the 10 Powerful Women in the Mindfulness Movement 2022 by Mindful.org

Lunch provided*

Please RSVP if you plan to attend as spots are limited.

(If you are a maybe or can only come for part, please let us know.)

Please email osterwei@email.unc.edu with any questions

Co-sponsored by Carolina Seminars, the Curriculum in Global Studies; IAAR-SLATE and the Department of Anthropology’s Race, Difference and Power Concentration.