The 18th Summer Session on Contemplative Practices in Education:
Introducing Earth-Care Practices in Education
VIRTUAL - all live broadcasts
Monday, August 1 - Wednesday, August 3, 2022
$300. ACMHE members receive a $50 discount: join or renew here
Financial aid is available via access grants
The 18th Summer Session offers a rich offering of plenary presentations, practical sessions, discussion, and small-group work. Participants will have ample opportunities for contemplation, self-reflection, and connection. Some of the questions and topics we will explore include:
- What are Earth-based practices?
- Why are they important now?
- How do we bring them into education?
- What paths might lead us from human-centric to Earth-centric practices?
- How do we cultivate wellness in learning environments, holding space for our powerful emotions?
The annual Summer Session offers a unique combination of experiential learning, community building, and time for practice. Past attendees have referred to it as their “yearly tune-up”: a chance for personal reflection, self-care, and pedagogical development. We welcome newcomers to contemplative pedagogy! The Summer Session offers a foundation for understanding, experiencing, and developing contemplative approaches and ways to integrate them into the classroom.
The Summer Session is facilitated by a multidisciplinary team of educators with extensive experience across many aspects of higher education. They will provide guidance as you explore how to effectively and responsibly integrate contemplative practices into your educational environments.
Meet the 2022 Summer Session Chair & Facilitators
Chair
Dr. Yuria Celidwen is of Indigenous Nahua and Maya descent from the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. As a scholar, she works on the intersection of Indigenous studies, cultural psychology, and contemplative studies. Her research across Indigenous contemplative traditions of the world is on the interdisciplinary approaches to the experience of self-transcendence, its embodiment in contemplative practice, and how it enhances ecological and prosocial behavior (ethics, compassion, kindness, reverence, and a sense of awe, love, and sacredness). Her thesis on the “ethics of belonging” was ground-breaking in bringing Indigenous epistemologies into the contemplative studies field. Her work as an activist emphasizes the reclamation, revitalization, and transmission of Indigenous ways of knowing and the advancement of Indigenous rights and the rights of the Earth for social and environmental justice. She co-chairs the Indigenous Religious Traditions Unit and is a member of the Contemplative Studies Unit steering committee of the American Academy of Religion. Learn more at YuriaCelidwen.com.
Facilitators
Dr. Valin S. Jordan is an academic and social justice educator. She is a longtime educator beginning her career as an elementary special education teacher in her hometown of New York City, and eventually moving into higher education supporting the development of pre-service teachers and faculty towards more socially just practices in classrooms. From 2017-2020 she was an Assistant Professor of Diversity Education at University of Louisiana at Lafayette. After leaving UL she joined San Jose State University as the Associate Director of Teaching and Learning in the Center for Faculty Development. Dr. Jordan has recently started a new role as the National Director of Learning with a non-profit called Sponsors of Educational Opportunity. Dr. Jordan’s scholarship and teaching uses self-inquiry and contemplative practices as a tool for examining issues of oppression and marginalization as a way to move closer towards equity and social justice. She has publications in the Journal of Contemplative Inquiry, Perspectives on Urban Education, Research in Contemporary Education, and the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies. Dr. Jordan recently published a book chapter entitled, “‘It’s Like Boiling a Frog’: Experiences of Deintellectualization, Devaluation, and Dehumanization through the eyes of a Black Woman Academician in the Deep South.” The book, Critical Perspectives on Teaching in the Southern United States, is available now.
Dr. Jordan also founded an organization called Yoga4SocialJustice® in 2018. Through Yoga4SocialJustice® she provides workshops combining a yoga practice, which is a practice of embodied and spiritual learning to social justice work to support people in their continued efforts towards transformative change in our society. Dr. Jordan also produces a podcast called Being Social Justice, each episode focuses on the connections of mind, body, and spirit practices as it’s connected to the commitment of social change and justice – the podcast is available on Anchor, Apple, Google Podcast, and Spotify.
Jonathan H. X. Lee, PhD, is professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. His family survived the Cambodian genocide and arrived to the United States in 1981 when he was 5 years old. He identifies as Chinese-Vietnamese-Cambodian American. He received his doctorate in religious studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2009. He has published 16 books, and numerous articles and essays on Asian American histories, folklore, cultures, and religions. Currently, he serves as editor-in-chief of Chinese America: History & Perspectives, a peer-review journal published by the Chinese Historical Society of America. He is dedicated to anti-racist pedagogy in education and has been invited by several Silicon Valley corporations and public institutions to speak on equity, inclusion, and diversity issues.
Currently living in Iqaluit (Nunavut), Devora Neumark, PhD is an interdisciplinary artist-researcher, educator, and community-engaged practitioner with over 30 years of contemplative practice. Neumark is also a Yale School of Public Health-certified Climate Change Adaptation Practitioner. Neumark was a faculty member in the Goddard College MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts program from July 2003 through May 2021, where they co-founded the Indigenous and Decolonial Art Concentration in Port Townsend, WA. Their Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s-funded research-creation PhD titled Radical Beauty for Troubled Times: Involuntary Displacement and the (Un)Making of Home was an inquiry into the relationship between the traumas associated with forced dislocation and the deliberate beautification of home. Neumark is developing two new bodies of related artwork: one engages wellness and the cultivation of joy as radical practice; the other is focused on environmental trauma and mainstreaming climate justice. As a Canadian federal employee, Devora is working with the Department of Justice’s Secretariat for the implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Registration Fees & Financial Aid
| ACMHE Members | Non-Members | |
|---|---|---|
| Regular Rate | $250 | $300 |
| with Access Grant | $125 | $175 |
The regular (non-member) registration fee for the 2022 Summer Session is $300 (all amounts are in USD). This rate can be reduced in two ways:
- Access grants reduce the regular rate to $175. 10 access grants will be available by application for participants without institutional support who would otherwise not be able to attend. Access grants are awarded on a rolling basis and preference is given to those at HBCUs, HSIs, MSIs, TCUs, community colleges, and state schools. If an access grant is available, we will issue you a discount code to be used at registration. Apply here for an access grant.
- ACMHE members receive a $50 discount on all rates. This discount can also be coupled with an access grant. When logged in as a member, the discount will be automatically applied at the final step of registration. Join ACMHE.