Katie Kearns

Toolboxes and Treasure Chests

a fish tank with blue stones at the bottom, a tree branch on the left, green fake plants in the back, and a treasure chest on the right. There's a snail crawling on the tank. There is a fish in the water behind.

On the radio on a drive to pick up dinner last night, the interviewee mentioned having a “treasure chest of responses” in regards to their parenting. Not a toolbox. A treasure chest. That shift in word choice changed a lot about my perspective on the relationship of teacher-student and facilitator-instructor.

Truthtelling

Wonder Woman is standing inside the mouth of a giant lizard or dinosaur with dozens of sharp teeth. She is holding open the jaws.

Parrhesia is an ancient Greek concept of an obligation to speak the truth for common good.
Truth: Say what you know to be true
Frankness: Say all you know
Criticism: Criticize those in positions of power
Duty: Obliged to speak the truth
Danger: Speak the truth despite the risk

Guest post: Collaging as Creative Exploration and Academic Production

cut outs of fruit pictures from the grocery mail insert - lime, orange, grapefruit. Cut outs of words from magazines: I had kimchi dreams, becoming, almost everything, something, a little, fortified, torn torn, don't, break, sleek metal, neat strips, No it won't be too much, leftover husks and small pebbles, light infusion, light sweetness, Let US Take You

Maggie: “I think a big part of why learning to view myself as creative was so difficult was that it required so much unlearning…I had to unlearn what I thought it meant to be good at creating and to be more intuitive and fun with my work. Creative work, just like scholarship, is iterative, collaborative, reflective, and never really finished. ”

Learning Communities: The Golden Ticket to Teaching Centers for Graduate Students

a beach with large boulders in the foreground, a yellow sun rising in the distance. There are light clouds in the sky.

For most people, orientations are likely their first and last interaction with the teaching center. A subset of people take advantage of a consultation or three to talk through a specific teaching challenge, draft a new approach, reflect, and revise. I contend that the learning community is the Golden Ticket™ to your teaching center. If your CTL has one for graduate students specifically, it’s where the really great CTL stuff is.

Cherishing wild things

Three banners go across a bundle of wild flowers; each banner has one word of the phrase "cherish wild things." The wildflowers are different colors, and there are animals among them: snake, turtle, bird, butterfly, squirrel

I should have made a plan for returning to work, both in August 2021 and again in June 2022. Guess what? The work culture hadn’t co-evolved during my leave to align with these lessons. While I had found new values and ways of being during my leave that were important to me, productivity mindsets were still the dominant force. The work detritus tried to bury me again.

Reminders during a Revolution

I’m offering this kindling in solidarity with our collective liberation from human supremacy, imperialism, white supremacy, ableism, capitalism, resource and labor extraction, patriarchy, and power over.

What I learned from Blown Away about my own learning communities

three people stand around a glass installation. there are two men next to each other on the right and a very tall woman on the left. There are glass bell jars over glass objects on the table

Graduate students have heartaches that need care and witnessing as well as successes and dreams. What can Blown Away teach about facilitation of graduate student learning communities?

The parenting manual didn’t include a chapter on pandemics

A yellow flower in the foreground held between two fingers. There's dark purple nailpolish on the thumb. In the background are two shadows: on the left a woman with shoulder-length hair and a dress, on the right a slightly shorter shadow

What aspect of pandemic parenting should we be talking more about? The hard stuff: the reality of human cruelty, Bandaid solutions to bleeding out situations, and relationships that got developmentally frozen in 2020. And also the human capacity for love, acceptance, truth, communication, interdependence, liberation, rest, reciprocity, stewardship, and emergent abundance.

Follow the Bubbles

A photo from underwater. At the bottom, the water is dark and at the very top center is brightest. There are bubbles in the center.

What if, instead of drowning in everyday life of productivity and competition, we did what lights our spirits, brings us meaning and purpose, and puts our gifts in service to others?

Exploring my relationship to grief

A small pink balloon, lit from underneath, is floating about 12 feet above the ground. There is a neighborhood with two houses in the background. The sky is at sunset, light blue with a few clouds.

Like many of you, I’ve experienced a lot of grief during the pandemic. Yet I had convinced myself to keep working at full capacity through these transitions in relationships. I spent some of my leave of absence processing grief.