Sneakers as Healing: Teaching Creativity in a Decolonized Makerspace

• In Event: Innovating Equity and Culture in Urban Education

Abstract

We suggest post-pandemic classrooms that reflect curriculum and pedagogy that challenge existing norms through more creative and multimodal teaching and learning practices. We suggest as Kaufman (2017) does that creative expression is an inherent feature of contemplative traditions and contemplative pedagogies lead to creative teaching and learning practices that transform classrooms into spaces of healing. The paper describes both the learning space and a sneaker design exercise that allowed students/learners to engage in personal reflection, critical inquiry and multi-modal meaning making. The objective of the paper is to offer a description of a novel teaching approach and exercise/activity that has potential to be learned from, adopted, in other learning contexts.

Authors

• Raaghav Pandya, City University of New York

• Christopher Emdin, Teachers College, Columbia University