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Contemplative Institute for Teaching and Learning 2023: Regenerative Practice for Earth, Soul, and Syllabus
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Event
Title
Contemplative Institute for Teaching and Learning 2023: Regenerative Practice for Earth, Soul, and Syllabus
When
Mon., Jun 5 2023 - 12:00 PM to Fri., Jun 9 2023 - 2:00 PM
Where
Sevenoaks Retreat Center
See map: Google Maps
APPLY HERE by March, 17, 2023
How can nature-connection* enhance critical work of sustainability, climate justice, and professional resilience in higher education? How might your relationship with the earth inform your pedagogy and course design within your academic context? What are the practical steps for creating outdoor learning spaces and experiences that strengthen the bond between the human and more-than-human world?
How can nature-connection* enhance critical work of sustainability, climate justice, and professional resilience in higher education? How might your relationship with the earth inform your pedagogy and course design within your academic context? What are the practical steps for creating outdoor learning spaces and experiences that strengthen the bond between the human and more-than-human world?
The Contemplative Sciences Center, in partnership with the Center for Teaching Excellence, is now accepting applications for our five-day Contemplative Institute for Teaching and Learning: Regenerative Practice for Earth, Soul, and Syllabus. The Institute will be held June 5-9, 2023 at Sevenoaks Retreat Center, a serene sanctuary nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains in Madison County, Virginia, about 80 miles southwest of the Dulles airport. It is open to college instructors from all disciplines, career stages, and backgrounds.
Our calling for nature-connected experiences in the curriculum is an essential response to the interconnected environmental and mental health crises. This professional development retreat supports and creates community among faculty whose work intersects with environmental issues and/or who seek to integrate nature-connection practices in their teaching and personal lives. It offers an experiential, reflective, and equity-oriented framework to center nature-connection in support of academic learning objectives, the development of human consciousness, and student wellbeing. Institute facilitators bring a deep well of experiences including decades of college teaching, contemplative practice and pedagogy, trauma-therapy, nature play, environmental and social justice education, and embodied critical thinking.
Participants will experience, develop, and share concrete strategies for integrating nature-connection into the design or re-design of a course or assignment to support embodied critical thinking, foster creative expression, and deepen students’ appreciation for beyond-human environments and one another. In an intimate group of approximately twenty participants, we will explore how our pedagogy can support human and planetary flourishing, enhance our own wellbeing, and engage with pressing issues of our time.
Institute Goals
Within a supportive, playful and restorative setting, participating faculty will:
- Develop and refine a framework for nature-informed pedagogy
- Experience a variety of nature-connection processes and explore their potential for enhancing their academic endeavors in their respective fields
- Consider the importance of social and geographic location in course design
- Reflect on relationships among nature-connection and select indigenous and critical education theories and practices
- Cultivate a strong collegial network for collective inquiry, support and encouragement
- Experience wonder, play, and joy in service of instructional and personal renewal
Outcomes
- Values & Vision Statement
- Enhanced framework for nature-connected pedagogy
- Community of scholar-practitioners committed to rigorous inquiry into, curiosity about, and love for the practice of nature-connected, contemplative pedagogy
*We use the term “nature-connection” as an imperfect shorthand, acknowledging that the notion of humans standing somehow “outside” of and separate from nature is itself a symptom of a limited consciousness, a forgetting of our interconnection with all things.
Registration fee: $250
Private Accommodations: ~$800
Shared Accommodations: ~$700
Total participation cost: ~$950-$1050
Apply here, by 3/17/23.
Contact Karolyn Kinane kk7av@virginia.edu with questions.
Facilitators
Karolyn Kinane: Contemplative Sciences Center
Dorothe Bach: Center for Teaching Excellence
Carolyn Schuyler, Founder, Wildrock
