The Galactic Cow: Conversations about teaching, the Universe, and everything

Seeking or offering kindness in higher ed can feel, at best, incredibly risky.  But for those of us feeling despondent about teaching and learning in such unkind spaces, Dr. Cate Denial has words of wisdom and encouragement.  Kindness is a missing element in almost every area of higher ed, but turning toward each other, imagining and creating different experiences of teaching and learning, is one way we counter that unkindness.

If you are interested in our relationship to learning, and how that relationship impacts our lives, and humanity as a whole, this is the podcast for you!

This season, emareena hosts a series of educators and practitioners in talking about our relationship with learning, and how it impacts our lives. The conversations dig into so many juicy questions, including "What is generosity in teaching?" "What are trauma-responsive principles...

In Fall 2023, I gave a talk at the second annual Higher Ed in Prison conference organized by the Tennessee Board of Regents, as part of their work with the Tenneesee Higher Education in Prison Initiative.  This was the first keynote I gave outside of the Pacific Northwest region and I thoroughly appreciate the experience.  

I am learning that each time I am asked to stretch into something new or unfamiliar, my work gets stronger.  ...

Welcome to Episode 8, the final epsiode of Season 1!  Our hope this season has been to start a different conversation about what learning and teaching might be, and we think that is happening.  But as often as we say we don't have any 'final' answers, we also want to know how practitioners apply these ideas to how they already teach, or bring them in as fresh perspectives. 

This episode features our interview with Omar Marquez, a s...

Of all of the topics we considered for this first season, grief was not one of them.  It didn't become a contender until a few days before we started prepping the episode.  The Abolition X pod had been in the back of my mind all season and it would not go away, so I asked ambar if we could talk about grief, instead of the topic we had on deck.  We started researching and writing, and the episode just...took us over.

Grief in educat...

Are you feeling alone and isolated at the front of your classroom?  Disconnected from your students, your colleagues, maybe even yourself?  

Teaching has become a pretty isolated place and connecting with students feels more and more difficult.  But what if we could have a practi...

We are finally dropping an episode about the thing no one wants to talk about - boundaries in teaching! 

If you are like me, boundaries are confusing enough in my personal life, let alone in the classroom, and there is almost ZERO info on setting boundaries in higher ed (or really any classrooms)!  As teachers, we are constantly being bombarded by demands to set better boundaries or to not be so rigid, and it can bring up issues of...

Are you tired of being a brain in a jar?  A content dispensary?  Do you long for a different way to teach and learn, one that welcomes and embraces you and your students in all your full, radiant humanit...

Welcome to our first relisten pod!  We're not quite exaggerating when we say we kind of started this podcast so we could relisten to some of our favorite and most influential thinkers, dreamers, and visionaries, and adrienne maree brown was always going to be first ♥  In this episode, we discuss two of her interviews and how her work applies to transforming teaching and learning.  Join us and explore your own vision for a new way t...

This is our second episode talking about language and the last before we start our podcast relisten series.  This week, we're discussing ability to learn, change/transformation, and practice, connecting all of these our hope for creating a new vision of teaching and learning.  We know part of that work is a different way to relate to education, and that can’t happen without a reshaping of how we vision, define, and embody teaching ...

Welcome to our first full episode!  For this ep, our guiding questions are "How are we defining ‘teaching & learning’? How are they different from (organized) education?"  In this episode, we're discussing how we define organized education, teaching, learning, and emerging consciousness.  Talking about new ideas means new language, or old language used in new ways!  If you like what you hear, make sure to Like, Subscribe, and Share...

we recorded this mini-episode to answer the question "why are we here?" but only for the podcast, not to cause an existential crisis!  we liked the idea of introducing ourselves separately, so here we are - it was just that simple.  emareena and ambar are both adult educators and are interested in how teaching and learning need to grow and expand, just as humanity needs to grow and evolve. 

we started our work together as part of...