Course applications now open below
Beginning in late July, Seeds of Peace is offering a series of related online mini-courses and webinars to support American educators and the interested public.
This online initiative is designed for those actively engaged with the current challenges confronting Americans at this moment in time: Coronavirus and the fallout from it; systemic racial injustice; environmental catastrophe, a divided society, a dysfunctional media landscape, and a broken political system. Drawing from our international community of educators, we’ll explore how educators might address these issues as challenges that must inform how we approach our work.
Attending the series makes you eligible to earn professional development points from Lesley University. To apply for PDPs, contact caps@lesley.edu. The cost for PDPs is $150/10 hour workshop. Please note you will need to provide documentation of attendance: a registration form and an email from the instructor confirming your attendance.
Four week-long courses
View timeline and themes for the mini-courses, forums and salons ››
This initiative is divided into four one-week mini-courses that compose an arc of learning. Each week will start with a Monday forum that presents the week’s theme; it will end on Thursday evening with a salon. Forums and salons are open to the larger community.
During the week—on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays—we will offer workshops, peer discussions, practical tools, and thematic and regional meetings for educators who are able to commit to that week’s mini-course. While each mini-course stands on its own, our hope is that some participants will stick with the mini-courses for several or all of the four weeks.
Sessions will include interactive opportunities to engage with educators from across the United States and around the world to work across racial, ethnic, religious, gender, and class identities; across systemic racial, economic, and social inequalities; across geography and generations; between metropolitan areas and rural ones; with countless differences, and with so much that is common, too.
Instead of offering a predigested curriculum, we offer an ethos—a framework of best practices that encourage empathy, creativity, a rooted sense of self, intellectual curiosity, social awareness, equality, human dignity, life skills, and the active self-government that makes it possible for individuals, communities, and democratic societies to survive and flourish.
Because this initiative is dynamic and “co-creative,” what unfolds will grow from the group. As we move through the four weeks, we’ll collect and share relevant educational materials and educator stories as resources for the larger public.
Seeds of Peace offered Educating In a Diverse Democracy in 2017 as a pilot course.
In the following weeks, we’ll update this sketch with additional details. In addition to the planned online events, we’ll offer mini-course participants time to work on individual projects and connect with Seeds of Peace faculty and with one another.
Pay what you can
Because we want to be as accessible as possible, we are not charging an admission fee, though we do ask those who can afford it for voluntary donations to help us to defray the costs. Thank you in advance.
If you are interested in participating in a mini-course, please fill out a brief application; priority will go to those from the schools and communities where Seeds of Peace is building “critical mass.” Space in the mini-courses is limited; for Monday and Thursday forums and salons there is no limit. This summer we invite you to be part of this initiative and learn together.
Questions? Contact Daniel Moses.
2020 Course Application