Two of my pedagogical ancestors are Paolo Freire and bell hooks, both of who showed me the way out of the banking model of education that I had come through. hooks especially challenges me to bring love to learning experiences I create and join in, and Pema Ch\u00f6dr\u00f6n (among others) reminds me to stay present and that life is a practice. I only remember one course from college; the philosophy professor who guided us in that class was so passionate and inspired us through dialogic activities toward community-constructed learning. I also think of my second grade teacher as an ancestor; when I moved away just a few weeks before the school year ended, she gave me a big stack of books, a loving, kind gesture I carry with me still. And finally my mother, while not a teacher, left her country to come to the U.S. because she was denied an education beyond the age of 16. She passed on her curiosity and love of learning to all her children and grandchildren.<\/p>\n
While I’ve strived to bring joy, love, and kindness to learning experiences throughout my time as an educator, more recently I’ve been thinking about how very crucial these are at this particular moment, as they have been at other times of struggle in U.S. history. For those of you who have taken our seminars in the past, you may (or may not!) recognize joy in the cute animal photos shared (evidence-based focus enhancer<\/a>!) or the embedded links in our emails. Love and kindness are a practice that I sometimes fall short of, especially when feeling particularly beleaguered by bureaucracy. I practice (over and over again) love through unconditional positive regard, loving the learner in front of me regardless of their actions and behavior. And this I learned from another ancestor, Alfie Kohn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two of my pedagogical ancestors are Paolo Freire and bell hooks, both of who showed me the way out of the banking model of education that I had come through. hooks especially challenges me to bring love to learning experiences I create and join in, and Pema Ch\u00f6dr\u00f6n (among others) reminds me to stay present… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":1774,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/oe-seminars-su2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/oe-seminars-su2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/oe-seminars-su2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/oe-seminars-su2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/oe-seminars-su2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1788"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/oe-seminars-su2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2575,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/oe-seminars-su2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1788\/revisions\/2575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/oe-seminars-su2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/oe-seminars-su2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/oe-seminars-su2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/oe-seminars-su2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}