Upcoming Events

This workshop invites faculty, instructors, and staff to explore how care can be intentionally designed into teaching and learning practices. Drawing on Nel Noddings’ ethics of care and relational pedagogy, reflect on how to create learning environments that support both students and instructors. Through dialogue and hands-on activities, participants will identify barriers, prototype equitable design interventions, and leave with practical tools to embed care as a foundation, not a response, in their pedagogy.

The EL-Well initiative explores how to better support the wellbeing of Educational Leadership (EL) faculty, particularly those from equity-denied groups who often carry disproportionate emotional labour. This session will share insights from the initiative and invite participants to help shape future activities. Through conversation and small-group discussion, identify barriers and supports for wellbeing, and explore topics such as compassion fatigue, resilience, rest, and equity in teaching.

University educators are uniquely positioned to cultivate what Paulo Freire called “education in hope”, a critically aware, action-oriented understanding of our shared challenges. Yet, in times of uncertainty and crisis, sustaining hope can feel difficult. In this keynote, Dr. Kari Grain examines the concept of critical hope and how transformative pedagogies can inspire both educators and learners. Through creative teaching practices, explore how hope itself can be a form of resistance and renewal in higher education.

Explore how the first few minutes of class can set the tone for care, trust, and connection in learning spaces. Through guided examples and discussion, participants will learn starter activities that foster community and engagement. You’ll leave with practical tools and strategies to create welcoming environments, connect personal experience with pedagogy, and apply effective opening activities that ease learners into deeper reflection and complex ideas.

Kindness-informed pedagogies offer transformative ways to cultivate compassion, critical awareness, and connection in teaching and learning. This session introduces frameworks such as pedagogy of kindness, care, trauma-informed, resilience, embodied, and eco-pedagogies. Through guided reflection and practice, participants will consider how these approaches can foster relationality, deepen learning, and advance justice-based, compassionate education in contemporary classrooms.