How we come together is as important as that we come together. Aptly, Contemplative Community in Higher Education: a Toolkit encourages educators to “move our academic institutions and spaces toward integrity: aligning stated values and goals with the actual practices, attitudes, and atmospheres that define the lived and living experience of an institution and its individuals.” The UMass Amherst Contemplative Pedagogy Working Group (CPWG) acknowledges participants’ humanity by valuing authenticity, messiness, passionate engagement, divergent perspectives, discomfort, and compassion. In this way, the CPWG makes room for our multiple identities, our true evolving selves, to emerge from shielded protection. Group members will share reflections, stories and artifacts from the CPWG -- how the group evolved, what continues bringing us together, what it means to co-create an authentic contemplative community in higher education, and what more we would like to dream into being.
