What do we need to learn to save the planet? Tina and Lucia discuss climate crisis, ecopedagogy, and liberatory teaching about environmental justice with critical pedagogue Greg Misiaszek.
What happens when Theater of the Oppressed meets the prison industrial complex? Wende Ballew, Executive Director of Reforming Arts, shares their work to bring arts-centered liberal education to women who must make their lives in and through contexts of state carceral control. We discuss how Wende came to this work, institutional tightropes they walk, and what intentional space for creativity and critique can make possible (hint: a lot, but this isn't an it-gets-better story).
Our June 2021 episode features two accomplished leaders in the movement to decolonize higher education. Graduates Leah Trotman and Catherine Morkel share their work to establish a more anti-racist, decolonial liberal arts curriculum at Agnes Scott College,. We analyze institutional responses to student leaders who demand that institutions make good on their surface commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion. https://nothingneverhappens.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/NNH-5-7-2021-redo-1.mp3 ...
Our April 2021 guest is Jodi Melamed , Associate Professor of English and Africana Studies at Marquette University. We spill tea on gestures of liberation that are not liberative, institutional multiculturalisms, and practices of anti-racist pedagogy. About our guest: Jodi Melamed is Associate Professor of English and Africana Studies at Marquette University. Her first book Represent and Destroy is a devastating analysis of how powerful liberal and neoliberal institutions have responded to the d...
This month we welcome Prof. Felicia Rose Chavez , award-winning educator and author of T he Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom . We dig into the history of writing programs, a vision of decolonized writing classrooms, intersections of activism and teaching, specific pedagogical strategies, and more. https://nothingneverhappens.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/NNH-03-172021.mp3 About Our Guest Felicia Rose Chavez has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the Univers...
Our February 2021 episode features Theresa Ronquillio and Tikka Sears, who joined us for a conversation about using Theater of the Oppressed across pedagogical medium. They offer insights on fostering embodied practice, social change, and community building in virtual spaces. https://nothingneverhappens.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/15-01-2021-NNH.mp3 Through these theater pedagogies, Tikka and Theresa welcome participants to bring their whole selves into the learning process. Both make real Au...
We are ringing in 2021 in style with a podcast featuring Eleni Schirmer , a scholar of labor, social movements, and the political economy of education. We talk about the debt crisis in higher education as it affects not only students but institutions; the history of teacher unions; how to bring democratic practices from the street and the organizing committee to everyday classroom pedagogy. https://nothingneverhappens.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/NNH-13-01-2021-Shirmer.mp3 A PhD candidate in t...
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Our December 2020 podcast features Professor Maha Bali , Associate Professor of Practice at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. Part 1: On Nurturing Student Agency Part 2: On Dismantling Oppression Dr. Bali is the author of many articles and blogs that push the boundaries of pedagogical theory and praxis, and in particular online teaching and learning. She is an editor at Hybrid Pedagogy and editorial board member of Teaching in Higher Education, Online Learning Journal , Learning, Media an...
Our November 2020 podcast features Dr. Jan Willis, acclaimed teacher of religion and author of the lauded memoir Dreaming Me: An African American Buddhist Journe y. We talk to her about how engaged Buddhism shapes her pedagogy, the models of teaching that have influenced her, what transformative responses to racist violence look like, and much more. https://nothingneverhappens.org/feed/podcast/ About Jan Willis Jan Willis is the Professor Emerita of Religion at Wesleyan University, where in 2003...
Our October 2020 podcast features fearless and visionary co-directors of Project South , Emery Wright and Steph Guillod . Founded in 1986 as the Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide and based in Atlanta, GA, Project South is firmly rooted in the dynamism and creativity of the Black freedom tradition. It is a center for political education, grassroots organizing, legal and rights support, and movement support and solidarity. Steph and Emery tell us about the history of Project So...
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Our September podcast features Jesse Stommel and Sean Michael Morris, whose voices in the field of hybrid and digital pedagogy have been beyond clutch for many of us thrown into this field by the pandemic context. In Act 1, we talk to Jesse and Sean about how they came to the work of critical pedagogy, … Continue reading "No Tricks: Critical Pedagogy for Hybrid Teaching" The post No Tricks: Critical Pedagogy for Hybrid Teaching appeared first on Nothing Never Happens ....
In Act 1 we talk to teacher-organizers Martha Baumgarten and Renee Ridolfi about their pathway to becoming teachers and how they ended up at Acero Charter Schools in Chicago. Commenting on the broad problems with charters and with the broader privatization of education, they reflect on what they have learned about practices of anti-racist solidarity … Continue reading "Out On the Line: On Charter School Unionization and the Chicago Teachers’ Strike" The post Out On the Line: On Charter School Un...
Our July 2020 features the UC Santa Cruz wildcat strikers, who are fighting for a cost of living adjustment (#COLA), and for higher education that is premised not on wealth-hoarding and austerity, but on critical praxis toward transformative justice. The post #COLA Now: A Conversation with UCSC Wildcat Strikers appeared first on Nothing Never Happens ....
We delve deeper into the status of critical pedagogy in hybrid and online teaching. The transition to remote modalities raises many issues: surveillance of students and teachers, the reproduction of capital for private tech corporations, issues of course adaptation, and the accessibility of online formats. What does a concept like “radical hope” actually mean in … Continue reading "Stories for Better Futures: A Conversation with Kevin Gannon, Act 2" The post Stories for Better Futures: A Convers...
Tina and Lucia talk to Kevin Gannon in June 2020, on the heels of a spring term in which we saw a mass pandemic-fueled shift to online teaching. Kevin describes the experiences and histories that led him to the field of critical pedagogy and introduces his hot-off-the-press book Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto. He talks us … Continue reading "Hope in Pandemic Times: A Conversation with Kevin Gannon, Act 1" The post Hope in Pandemic Times: A Conversation with Kevin Gannon, Act 1 appeared first...
For our April podcast, Lucia and Tina interview Wayne Yang of UC San Diego. Prof. Yang writes in A Third University is Possible, “To be very clear, I am not advocating for rescuing the university from its own neoliberal desires but rather for assembling decolonizing machines, to plug the university into decolonizing assemblages.” In Act 1, we … Continue reading "Of Decolonization and Its Metaphors: A Conversation with K. Wayne Yang, Act 1" The post Of Decolonization and Its Metaphors: A Conversa...
The University of California San Diego is on Kumeyaay land. The chancellor’s house is on an indigenous burial ground. How do universities move beyond guilt and toward a rematriation of the land? How do we teach, and train teachers, in these places with such violent history? How do we live and teach sustainably on this … Continue reading "A Third University Is Always Happening: A Conversation with K. Wayne Yang, Pt. 2" The post A Third University Is Always Happening: A Conversation with K. Wayne ...
Prof. Shirley Steinberg speaks with us amid a global pandemic. For some of us, this pandemic has exposed what we already new about neoliberal higher education: the proliferation of the banking model of education, top-down power relations, undemocratic classrooms and departments, etc. In her work in critical pedagogy, Steinberg has long been challenging and resisting the … Continue reading "Teaching as Bricolage: A Conversation with Shirley Steinberg, Pt. 1" The post Teaching as Bricolage: A Conv...
In Act 2 of our April podcast, Shirley Steinberg talks further about the Freirean foundations of her education theory and practice. She calls on teachers and students to live out righteous indignation in our educational systems and how to create resistance and change. “We have to be in stealth,” says Steinberg, and shed light on how … Continue reading "Righteous Indignation for Change: A Conversation with Shirley Steinberg, Act 2" The post Righteous Indignation for Change: A Conversation with Sh...
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” — Frederick Douglass In Part Two Scott describes ways of integrating the community (university, city, state, nation) with the classroom. Students are citizens, with power, who have the knowledge and tools to change public policy. Students determine the issues they want to … Continue reading "Educating for Democracy: A Conversation with Scott Myers-Lipton, Act 2" The post Educating for Democracy: A Conversation with Scott ...
Our March 2020 episode features Scott Myers-Lipton from San Jose State. We talk about sustainable and just community engagement. The post Teaching Change: A Conversation with Scott Myers-Lipton appeared first on Nothing Never Happens .
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Act 1, Young People as Citizens Tina and Lucia speak to Dr. Beth Corrie, Associate Professor in the Practice of Youth Education and Peacebuilding and Director of the Youth Theological Initiative (2007-2019) at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. We talk about her transformational work on the page and the classroom and in mentoring … Continue reading "Young People as Citizens: A Conversation with Beth Corrie" The post Young People as Citizens: A Conversation with Beth Corrie appea...
“Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” Karl Marx In Part Two Randy Stoecker takes us further into his understanding of community-based research as critical pedagogy. He offers a challenge to the “careerism” approach that is plaguing many institutions of higher education. Using participatory action research and … Continue reading "Changing How the World Works: A Conversation with Randy Stoecker, Act 2" The post Changing How the World Works: A Co...
Liberating Service Learning, Act 1 For this January 2020 podcast, Lucia and Tina spoke with Randy Stoecker, Professor in the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, with a joint appointment in the Center for Community and Economic Development. Stoecker works in two spheres, the university and its extension program. Some … Continue reading "Liberating Service Learning: Conversation with Prof. Randy Stoecker" The post Liberating Service Learning: Convers...
In Part Two we talk more with Angela about her place-based pedagogy in Hawai’i. Angela describes her pedagogical approach for her intensive course: “This land-based intensive class is grounded in the engaged theory of bell hooks, and structured in Parker Palmer’s knowing, being, and doing framework. The classrooms’ radical space of possibility expands to encompass … Continue reading "Decolonizing Knowledge: A Conversation with Angela Yarber, Act 2" The post Decolonizing Knowledge: A Conversation...
The Radical Space of Possibility, Act 1 “The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.”—bell hooks Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ‘Āina i ka Pono (The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness) (quotes from Dr. Angela Yarber’s “Holy Women Icons: Embodied Ecofeminism and the Arts” syllabus for a … Continue reading "The Radical Space of Possibility: A Conversation with Angela Yarber" The post The Radical Space of Possibility: A Conversation with Angela Yarber appeared first...
Participatory democracy requires students who are able to transform their knowledge to solve problems in community (The Algebra Project is one example). Apple examines the keywords of democracy, power, and freedom and the need of educators to reassert their control over these words. Apple is optimistic that educators, in collaboration with unions and grassroots movements … Continue reading "What Does a Democratic School Look Like?: Part 2 of a Conversation with Michael W. Apple" The post What Do...
