Raíces Faculty Institute's 'embodied teaching and learning' training in support of Latinx students underway
A program designed for faculty to empower Latinx students through "embodied teaching and learning" is well underway, thanks to a $3 million Title V-HSI grant to benefit Hispanic Serving Institutions and many years of work to get the program off the ground by faculty and staff. The Raíces Faculty Institute will train faculty to provide wealth of opportunities for Latinx students including designing their own courses, providing peer mentors, workshops, etc. ... all building on indigenous knowledge and emphasing self empowerment.
Program director English Professor Melissa Menendez provided a summary of what the cohort of 26 faculty representing 15 departments has covered in its first few months.
September: On September 22-23, the Raíces Faculty Institute had its opening retreat facilitated by Meena Srinivasan, the Founding Executive Director of Transformative Educational Leadership. An outdoor classroom space was created on the Atkinson Gallery balcony among a few of the large art sculptures. Building upon previous faculty engagement around mindfulness, trauma informed approaches and culturally responsive practices, the group created a foundation for their yearlong exploration to gain a deeper understanding of what embodiment is, why it matters and how to cultivate it in ourselves and in our learning communities.
Day 1 centered around defining embodiment, transformative mindfulness, and Thich Nhat Hanh’s concept of Interbeing as ways to disrupt Western concepts of mind-body dualism that often lead to colonial practices within educational spaces.
Day 2 began with a talk by Dr. Melinda Gandara regarding the historical and contemporary traumas experienced by Latina/o/x within the U.S. to contextualize why embodiment teaching and learning matters specifically for this particular student population, and then Srinivasan encouraged individual and small group reflections regarding what we are being called to transform in our pedagogical and curriculum practices
October: The group then met for two workshops in October. The first was facilitated by Mariela Marín, who holds a MFT and is the Director of the Latinx Mental Health Concentration at Antioch University, to continue to discuss the importance of self-regulation in our roles as educators and how to recognize our own “traumas” and “triggers” in our course syllabi as a first step in Embodied Teaching and Learning practices. The second workshop was facilitated by Dr. Jorge Moreno, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Pomona College who incorporates Indigenous ideas, practices, and principles to make astronomy research and pedagogy more inclusive.
November: The group debriefed all they learned in small cohorts for November and will come together for a final semester meeting in mid-December. The group will reconvene at their Spring retreat which will be facilitated by Dr. Angel Acosta in January.
