Episode 18: Classroom as a Sacred Space and Presence as Radical Respect- Pedagogy Beyond Neo-liberal Narratives and Dystopian Realities with Holly Adler

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Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP adjunct faculty, program manager) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant)

In this episode we speak to EWP PhD graduate and EWP and ITP adjunct faculty Holly Adler from her classroom in Oakland, CA. As a teacher of underprivileged and marginalized youth, Holly discusses alternative approaches to education beyond the mythos and narratives of neoliberal normativity, which aims to help students critically engage with culturally constructed values systems based on commercial production and consumption. Holly shares her approach to an experimental pedagogy based on cultivating the classroom as a sacred space, and she considers experiences of how conscious and engaged presence in their lives can create structures of unconditional support and radical respect, an essential factor in empowering students to reconstruct themselves in their own image based on their own goals of becoming. Our discussion addresses contemporary problems of cultural disillusionment, the role of technology, and the importance of spiritual self-transcendence in overcoming hegemonic regimes of discipline and control. The podcast ends discussing how music can offer alternative models of individual and collective becoming.