A Magnanimity of Spirit: Resiliency and Inner Development for Progressive Educators

Date: Monday, March 3, 2025

Time: 8:30am–12:30pm Hawaii, 10:30am-2:30pm Pacific, 12:30-4:30pm Central, 1:30-5:30pm Eastern

Location: Online Via Zoom

Cost: $75

Paulo Friere wrote that “The teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students. What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.” In order to support students in shaping themselves, it is critical that educators engage in inner development and reflection so they can be available to the relationship needed to support students in self-construction. In a time of teacher burnout and an attack on the profession by those who would seek to eliminate progressive education, it is more important than ever that educators care for their own wellness to be fully engaged with the relational work of progressive education. This session will explore approaches to inner development which aim to transform individuals and schools through collective reflective practice. Participants will be invited to engage in reflection, resilience building, and an examination of equity in their unique school contexts to continually transform themselves as progressive educators. The goal is to develop school communities which regularly examine their paradigms of teaching and learning to be able to better foster human flourishing and positive development for all involved: students, teachers, and families.

When educators focus on their well-being and personal development, they are able to bring their full selves to their work, engage their students through an equity lens, and better serve the students in their care. This session will be highly interactive and will invite participants to generate collective knowledge and partnerships with peers which will extend long beyond the workshop. We are not in search of easy answers. Rather, we are looking to uncover critical questions which empower us to deepen our practice in an engaged community of practitioners.

Workshop Participants: This workshop is designed for educators of all levels, both in K-12 and higher education, as we will be examining the inner preparation of the teacher which is critical to education across the age span.

Workshop Objectives: Participants will be able to:

Build reflective practice skills and habits to humanize teaching and learning.
Create an intentional community with other participants to lift each other up.

Workshop Agenda:

Part 1: What does it mean to do our “inner work?” (1 hour)

Opening up with a Warm Data Lab which interrogates the question: “What does home mean in a constantly changing world?”
- This is an inroad to bring the unique backgrounds of each participant to the forefront in small groups with others
- More information about Warm Data Labs: https://warmdatalab.net/warm-data
Review of the humanizing framework and how our inner work dictates our pedagogy
We will begin by co-developing a definition for progressive education and discuss the required dispositions for progressive educators
- Participants will engage with texts from key progressive thinkers as they grapple with these definitions in small groups
- Participants will co-construct responses to the following question: What are the critical dispositions of the progressive educator to sustain a humanizing pedagogy?

Break (10 mins)

Part 2: Engaging with Wellness Partners (1 hour)

In considering the importance of examining inner paradigms, participants will be guided in the Wellness Garden protocol, which is designed to foster a non-hierarchical, supportive community for educators to safely engage in inner reflection and be comfortable with vulnerability
- This protocol was developed by Andrew Faulstich and others at the Hakuba Forum 2024
We will spend 10 minutes to review the protocol, and then participants will be paired to engage in conversation using the Wellness Partner protocol. They will have 20 minutes for each person in the pair to be the focus of conversation.
Once all groups have completed their conversation, we will meet for a 10 minute debrief as a whole group to discuss the reflective process and the possibilities of implementing this strategy/protocol at the schools where the participants work

Break (10 mins)

Part 3: The importance of context (30 minutes)

Participants will share in groups their unique context, focusing on two questions
- What aspects of your work promote your own inner development and alignment with the critical dispositions (defined earlier)?
- What aspects of your work hinder your own inner development and alignment with the critical dispositions (defined earlier)?
Working in small groups, participants will create a collective document which lists these aspects which promote or hinder inner development.

Break (5 mins)

Part 4: Building collective knowledge, resources, and lasting connections (1 hour)

Participants will go back into groups to choose one aspect identified in part 3 (something that promotes or hinders inner development) to engage in a design sprint to find a response to that aspect which would enhance inner development for all involved (30 minutes)
Participants will write their solutions on a collaborative Padlet, and we will spend 10 minutes engaging with others ideas, writing comments, questions, and expansions of those ideas
We will then open breakout rooms and ask each participant to choose an idea that they want to implement in their practice. Each participant will share their contact information and create a plan to implement and work with their colleagues to iterate on what they designed. (10 mins)

Part 5: Wrap Up (5 mins)

Brief share out of takeaways and feedback (if time permits)
Each participant will be asked to complete a survey about their experience before leaving the session

About the Facilitator:

Andrew Faulstich believes in the potential for education to be transformative for all students. He has worked across K-12 and higher education in the U.S. and China. He is the Co-Founder of the Enlightened Educator Project and the Curriculum and Pedagogy Coordinator and Humanities Guide at the Oneness-Family Montessori High School. He holds a Masters in International Educational Development from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, a Bachelors in Anthropology from the University of Rochester, a Montessori Adolescent Certification from the Association Montessori Internationale, and a certificate from the Phillips Exeter Humanities Institute.