Holistic Educators Saturday Meetings in Toronto 2008 - 2010

The Holistic Educator’s Group meets Saturday mornings from 10am - 12 noon approximately every two months from September through April. The meetings are open to all who may be interested in holistic teaching and learning and are not exclusively for those who are associated with studies at OISE/UT. We have a number of captivating workshp leaders each year who join us to lead the sessions which tend to be interactive and participatory. Meetings also provide an opportunity to network with those who have common interests.

Our meetings are at OISE/UT, 252 Bloor Street West between St. George and Bedford on the north side of the street. There is a notice board near the elevators where the room number for the meeting is posted. The main floor coffee concession is sometimes open on Saturdays or there's a Tim Horton's just east of the building on Bloor.  Parking on Saturday under the OISE building is fairly reasonable. Of course TTC is always a good option (St. George Station on the Bloor line).

Saturday September 11 - 10am - 12 noon   Room 5-280

Educating for Wisdom

In this workshop Jack Miller will share his understanding of what constitutes wisdom and then explore ways that we can develop a wisdom-based approach to teaching and learning.  The workshop is based on a chapter in book that has just been published that Jack co-edited entitled Spirituality, Religion and Peace Education.

Jack Miller  teaches courses at OISE in Holistic Education and Spirituality in Education and is author/editor of more than a dozen books in these fields. His most recent books include the aforementioned and Whole Child Education, which being published this September by U of  Toronto Press.

April 17, 2010 -  Room 5-260

Featured Speaker: Dr. Njoki Wane, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education (SESE), OISE

Topic: Making Spirituality Visible in Research, Learning and Praxis

There are many ways of defining, interpreting, applying and practicing spirituality.  By weaving spirituality into learning and knowledge creation discourse, educators as well as learners can foster spiritual growth while strengthening the connections between the learner, knowledge and the process of schooling.
In this presentation, we will discuss the following questions:
1.  What is spirituality?
2. What has been the impact of separating the spiritual aspect of our research, teaching and learning from the intellectual development?
3. How can we make spirituality visible in our research, learning and practice?
4. Why has spirituality been silenced and marginalized?
5. Is spirituality necessary in the Academy and if yes, what is its role?
6. In higher education, we are trained to distance ourselves from our research subjects to avoid subjectivity, please share your views?

I start my presentation by sharing with participants some of my experiences of evoking spirituality in my research, teaching and learning.

This will be interactive workshop where participants will be encouraged to share their experiences in making spirituality more visible in their research, teaching or learning or their work.

Njoki Wane is a professor in the department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education at OISE/UT.  She has recently been appointed Head of the Office of Teaching Support at OISE.  She has written articles and books in the following areas: gender, indigenous knowledge practices, black feminism and anti-racist education.  She teaches courses in these areas as well as a course on Spirituality and Schooling.

Creating Mindful Spaces: The Arts and Young Children

How do educators create mindful spaces in the classroom? How can children be empowered through artistic engagements that provide opportunities to explore and understand self and others? These are some of the questions we will explore in this workshop. Participants will locate their own understanding of “mindful” spaces in learning environments and their journeys in understanding self and the children they work with. Activities and discussion will be based on a short research presentation and DVD that shows a project engaging children in the process of art-making through creating quilts and writing I AM poetry. It is our intention that this interactive session will provide the inspiration for participants to explore these ideas with the young people they work with.

Dr. Marni Binder is an Assistant Professor in The School of Early Childhood at Ryerson University, Toronto Canada. Twenty-three years of teaching in the inner city has shaped her passion for arts- based education.  Marni’s holistic philosophy of education is demonstrated in her research interests covering: early literacy, child art and literacy, arts-based inquiry and multimodal forms of expression as transformative literacy practices.

Sally Kotsopoulos has an Early Childhood Degree from Ryerson University and a Masters in Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. She is the Manager of the Early Learning Centre at Ryerson University, Toronto Canada, where she leads a team of eight full-time teachers in four classrooms from Toddlers- Kindergarten. She has 30 years of experience in the early childhood profession in the greater Toronto area.

Explorations with  Music-Based Meditation

We will explore various ways in which music can support meditative practice. Music is often used to enhance concentration, focus or relaxation, to improve our well being or to unleash creativity. We will experience several types of meditation with spiritual music from various cultures. Each meditation will have a different focus and purpose.  Participants will record and then share their experiences with partners. Whole group discussion about participants’ experiences, and about possible applications in one’s life and in the classroom will follow.

Rina Cohen is an Associate Professor in the CTL department at OISE/UT where she belongs to the Holistic and Aesthetic Education focus group. She has been utilizing various holistic learning approaches, such as integrated curriculum, meditation and guided visualizations, in her courses. Her current research focusses on helping elementary teachers overcome math anxiety using a variety of holistic approaches.

Karen Csoli: Understanding Spiritual Experiences

Karen's workshop will allow participants the opportunity to focus on their spiritual experiences and the meaning these have in their lives. The foundation of this workshop will be Karen's doctoral dissertation, in which young women discussed how during their own spiritual experiences, they connected with their selves, spirit, nature, others, and community.

Karen Csoli has just completed her PhD in Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at OISE. The title of her dissertation is Understanding the Spiritual Experiences of Young Women: A Qualitative Inquiry of Inner Knowing, which combined her interests in spirituality in the curriculum, female spirituality, and youth spirituality. Karen also teaches study strategies to university students with learning disabilities.

Anne Dhir: Perennial Pedagogy

The timeless and boundless perennial understanding, commonly known as ‘the perennial philosophy’ has been a part of the wisdom traditions for centuries.  This philosophy can significantly contribute towards deeper and meaningful lives if brought into the educational milieu.  Anne refers to such an education as ‘perennial pedagogy’.  Her passion lies in facilitating workshops and seminars on mental well being which she has been involved in since 2001. This workshop is an experiential approach to perennial understanding.

Anne Dhir completed her Ph.D in the area of Holistic Education at OISE/UT under the blessed guidance of Dr. Jack Miller in 2008. Her research explored the theoretical and practical foundation of an education and society at large that is grounded in the perennial understanding.

Spiritual Intelligence and Holy Listening - a workshop presented/facilitated by
Anne Mulvaney EdD. and Natalie Hemraj, B.A. , presently completing a thesis on Spiritual Intelligence at York University

This two hour workshop provided an explanation of the topics and a personal experience of Spiritual Intelligence via the path of Holy Listening.  You were invited to participate in an exercise where silence speaks and consciousness shifts as we connected with our True Selves in response to one another (I-Thou).

Anne Mulvaney Ed.D. : (OISE, 1994) Anne teaches Meditation, Psychosynthesis and is a Spiritual Director. Also, she currently facilitates Holy Listening groups.  She is completing training as a Hospice volunteer. She has facilitated many 4 day workshops, the latest being:  “Goodbye Ego, Hello True Self”  based on Eckhart Tolle’s “The New Earth”.

Natalie Hemraj is presently completing a Master’s Degree in Education at York University full time. Her interest in the field of spirituality developed during her undergraduate years at York, while concurrently studying Philosophy and completing the Bachelor of Education. Natalie is the facilitator of meditation workshops at her placement school, is currently a spiritual mentor/coach, and is an occasional teacher for the YCDSB. Her main focus in her thesis is the significance of spiritual intelligence and wisdom within education. Her Masters of Education is the stepping-stone to complete her PhD in Education.

 The Creativity and Wellness workshop involved self-reflective activities to promote personal growth and wellness.  Participants had a chance to co-create by drawing, mind-mapping, journalling, and sharing stories. The workshop was interactive and fun!

Solveiga Miezitis is professor Emeritus at OISE. She has taught in the School Psychology Program in Applied Psychology and more recently in Adult Education and Counseling Psychology at OISE, as well as in the Psychology Dept at the University of Latvia. Her main research work is in the area of Prevention of Depression published in Creating Alternatives to Depression in the Schools. Her current interest is in promoting wellness. During the past decade she has conducted longitudinal studies on risk and resiliency factors in first-year student adaptation at the University of Latvia focusing on factors related to Positive Psychology.

For the Saturday session they covered the following topics about Whole Child School:

-- rationale for starting a new, alternative public school with a holistic focus on learning and teaching (Stephen)
-- a brief summary of the process they went through to start a holistic school in TDSB (Stephen)
-- how they will offer a holistic curriculum and at the same time follow the Ministry Curriculum Guidelines (Deborah)
-- an overview of WCS holistic approach to education (Deborah)
-- questions

-- participants are encouraged to visit the website prior to the session http://www.wholechildschool.ca

Deborah Adelman
Deborah is presently an elementary school teacher at Hawthorne Bilingual Alternative Public School.She has a Master's in Waldorf Education and taught at the Alan Howard Waldorf School for five years.  She is a founding member of the Whole Child School and she has been working on this initiative for almost three years.

Stephen Davies
Stephen is a public sector management consultant and facilitator with 20 years of systems thinking and enterprise design experience.  He works with senior leadership and their organizations to reveal their strategic futures and to accelerate the realization of those futures on a collective level.  Mr. Davies is co-chair of the Whole Child School Organizing Committee and led the establishment of the WCS Advisory Board.

Workshop: I am the book!, says Everychild.

This workshop looked at the reflective nature of children's and young adult literature. How do these artful texts help young people to consider and reconsider their own values and behaviours, to move beyond comprehension questions to thoughtful and heartfelt interpretations of their own lives?

David Booth is Professor Emeritus at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. He was educated in Ontario, and completed his graduate work at Oxford University and Durham University in England.

For over forty years David has been involved in education,as a classroom teacher, language arts consultant, professor, speaker and author. He has written many teacher reference books and texts in all areas of language development, early literacy, reading, writing, speaking and listening, boys and literacy, drama and media.  As well, he has written many award-winning picture books for children, including Boldprint Kids, a series of graphic texts for children.

A popular international speaker, David Booth has addressed educators and parents in every province of Canada, throughout most American states, and in England, Germany, Asia, the MidEast, New Zealand and Australia. He has participated in hundreds of conferences, speaking and presenting workshops in all areas of language learning, and has won several awards for hisclassroom teaching, for his contributions to the teaching of reading, and for his books for young people.

Our first meeting was in part a networking meeting to renew existing friendships and to meet those who are new to our group. We talked about our work in progress and ideas for the future. All were invited to attend.  We met from 10 am to 12 noon.   Networking started at 10 and we took part in Isabella's workshop.

Our leader for this session is the talented Isabella Colalillo Katz

Workshop information: Creativity as Soul Work: Visualization and Creative Writing

This workshop is based on Isabella's popular creative writing classes and workshops which use holistic principles and visualization exercises to facilitate natural writing. Visualization is a dynamic tool to access the Innate Creator, our creative Self, the source of our creative imagination.
You will sample the principles of natural writing though several visualization exercises that tap directly into the imagination (The Innate Creator) to produce vivid, powerful writing that expresses ideas and visions that are ready to be communicated through the most appropriate genre for that idea.

Isabella Colalillo Kates  Ed. D, who writes under the pen name Isabella Colalillo Katz, is a writer, poet, editor, holistic educator & storyteller. She has published two volumes of poetry, Tasting Fire (1999), And Light Remains (2006) and an award winning children's audio tape, Carob, Crocket and Crystals: The C3 Trilogy. Her creative writing appears in journals and anthologies and has been heard on CBC radio. She had led Creative Writing and Creativity classes and workshops at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies, Centennial College and in private workshops and public seminars internationally.

http://www.holisticlearningconference.org

To be on our mailing list please contact Cheryl Clarke  cherylj.clarke@utoronto.ca

Dr. Selia Karsten
September 2010