I am a researcher and educator with enormous energy and passion for deepening my understanding, and engaging with others, about the impact of violence on learning. I include the ongoing violence of racism, sexism, classism, ablism and so many other systemic injustices that foster ever more violence in a single life, and the ways that impact is passed on from generation to generation. l focus especially on ways to address these impacts to support learning for all of us at any age and in every setting.
I have been an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto, a visiting fellow at the University of South Australia, taught courses in graduate and undergraduate programs, participated on panels and juries for UNESCO, and given presentations, workshops, and courses, in many parts of the world. I have been a teacher in elementary and secondary schools and an adult literacy practitioner, as well as designed and delivered training to educators in a wide range of settings. I have worked with teachers’ unions, qualification authorities, and adult education organizations on three continents.
I have been a part of the adult literacy community in England, Sierra Leone, and then Canada, and I continue as an activist, educator, and researcher working with students, practitioners, administrators, and researchers in adult upgrading and literacy in colleges and community programs.
Through my work I have learned the importance of bringing our whole selves to learning. and have come to delight in becoming more fully present in the moment and in the world and to enjoy creative forms of expression. I am deepening a Vipassana and engaged Buddhist meditation practice (in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh), exploring photography, mosaic , felting, and other crafts. I love to find new beauty in old relics. Smashed china and junked furniture can become beautiful mosaics. Broken and worn items can be glued, plastered, refinished and made into something new. I love the richness of metaphor in these creative endeavours!
Nobody and nothing needs to be discarded, or simply fixed, however badly it has been damaged by mistreatment, everything and every body can find new life and beauty with curiosity and nurturing care. I am a lifelong gardener delighting in the opportunities for new growth each spring. I want to nurture community, creativity, wellness and peace – the potential for learning and change – in our hearts and on this land.
In all my endeavours I am an activist working towards a more peaceful, sustainable and equitable society for all of us to enjoy, only too aware of the ways that our identities, and wounds shape how we all walk in the world, and contribute to the ways we so easily re-wound and are re-wounded as we live in this damaged world. As much as I can, I try to live as if the world I dream of already exists, acknowledging my missteps, and beginning again. As a community builder, I love to connect and collaborate with children and adults. I am always looking for new allies in this life work!
Will you join me?
