Begin at the Beginning
The Galactic Cow: Conversations about teaching, the Universe, and everything
Release Date: 04/04/2023
Public Love in Education
The Galactic Cow: Conversations about teaching, the Universe, and everything
If you are an educator, chances are things are feeling pretty grim. And honestly, the educational landscape IS bleak right now, but don't lose hope - this is the time for us to put our imaginations into overdrive and consider what comes next. In this episode, Dr. Pui-Yan Lam joins me to pull on some of last season's conversational threads about love in education, and what the presence of love in the classroom means. Join us for a deep discussion about love in education, what the absence of love has created, and how love as a common good might change education....
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Kindness, Learning, and Higher Ed
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. References , (2024) , Emergent Strategy (2017) and Holding Change (2021) , What It Takes to Heal (2025) Show Notes theme music: composed and performed by...
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Welcome to Season 2: Our Relationship with Learning
The Galactic Cow: Conversations about teaching, the Universe, and everything
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 education?" "Why does accountability matter for educators?" "What is the most difficult aspect of practicing kindness in higher ed?" "Why is higher ed is such an...
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Liminal Spaces: Teaching to Transgress
The Galactic Cow: Conversations about teaching, the Universe, and everything
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. I understand it better, how it connects in so many unexpected and unexplored directions. We are bound by our unresolved trauma, our untended...
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Building Emerging Consciousness Cultures
The Galactic Cow: Conversations about teaching, the Universe, and everything
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 sociologist, tenured faculty at Everett Community College, and a good friend. Most of the episode is Omar answering our prompts, so we've...
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Grief Changes Everything
The Galactic Cow: Conversations about teaching, the Universe, and everything
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 education is almost entirely unexplored, but it inhabits the space completely, and that includes our bodies, hearts, and minds. Neither of us had any...
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Embodied Love in Teaching
The Galactic Cow: Conversations about teaching, the Universe, and everything
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 practical conversation about love in education? How would bringing love and compassion to the front and center of teaching and learning transform our experience and education itself? Join us as we relisten to with in and with on the (E32) for their guidance on love, vulnerability, risk,...
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Boundaries, Embodiment, and Expansion
The Galactic Cow: Conversations about teaching, the Universe, and everything
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 shame and feeling not enough. Join us as we relisten to one of most popular episodes, Boundaried in Love, with . Prentis is one of our...
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Bodies, Shame, and Learning
The Galactic Cow: Conversations about teaching, the Universe, and everything
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 humanity? We want that too! In this episode, emareena & ambar discuss radical self love and how its presence could transform our experience of teaching and learning. What do you think would change if we embraced the necessity of radical self love as educators? Reference material Unlocking Us, with Sonja Renee Taylor: Unlocking Us, with Tarana...
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Nothing Changes Until We Change
The Galactic Cow: Conversations about teaching, the Universe, and everything
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 to learn and teach. Pod relistens: , S1E2 “” and “” Grace Lee Boggs and Find adrienne Book...
info_outlineWelcome 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.
References
“All that you touch, you change
All that you change, changes you
The only lasting truth is change
god is change”
~ Octavia Butler “Parable of the Sower”
"The principles of emergent strategy include:
- fractal
- adaptation
- interdependence and decentralization
- nonlinear and iterative change
- transformative justice and resilience
- creating more possibilities"
~adrienne maree brown “Emergent Strategy”
Production
- theme music: composed and performed by Alden Zac (on the interwebs here, here, here) thanks friend!
- writing: emareena & ambar
- editing & production: emareena (who is relieved this is mostly listenable)
- artwork: also emareena, who loves Galactica very much, and will be occasionally posting on the blog.