Featured Workshops
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Compassionate Communication
This full-day workshop serves as an introduction to Compassionate Communication. It lays the foundation for more in-depth training sessions.
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Compassionate Conflict Resolution
This one-hour workshop addresses how to meet difficult and/or challenging conversations as they arise. It offers opportunities to practice and reflect on using non-violent, compassionate speech to resolve conflicts of various sorts.
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Compassionate Boundaries
This two-hour, interactive workshop is focused on discovering compassionate ways to acknowledge, invoke, and articulate respectful, professional, and personal boundaries for yourself when interacting with others.
Invited Talks/Keynote Presentations
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Woodbridge Winter Welcome, 2023
Northern Virginia Community College, Woodbridge Campus, January 11, 2023
What if we embraced the idea of compassionate syllabi? With this, we don’t mean nice, or even friendly syllabi. Instead, we return to the core definition of compassion (Oxford English Dictionary): “suffering together with another.” Here, we’ll approach the syllabus as a genre of suffering, and explore ways to reconsider common syllabi language, placing shared humanity at the center. Join us in conversation where we reimagine this tool as a foundation for a compassionate classroom.
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2023 Power Up Your Pedagogy Conference
Northern Virginia Community College, January 10, 2023
“From Expertise Back to Inquiry: Using Curiosity, Compassion, and Courage as Tools to Sustain and Transform our Pedagogy”
The Spring semester marks both a new beginning, and also serves as the midpoint for our exercise in endurance. We at NOVA are not new to academia, as we have continually toiled for the good of our discipline, our students, and even our curiosities for decades. How do we balance the need to evolve in light of the changing demands of our positions with the need to sustain our well-being both within, as well as beyond our work life? We believe the keys to this effort might be found in rethinking the nature of expertise, questioning the conventional concept of the growth-mindset, and harnessing the power of the wisdom within us. In this spirit, this closing session will offer space for conference participants to reflect upon the offerings of the last two days. Together we will process our relationship to our classroom in light of our shared learning, our recent experiences, our current needs, and our felt sense of what might be in the future.
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Program Participant Retreat
Community College Initiative, January 10, 2023
From “Me vs. You” to “Us”: Practicing Nonviolent Communication as a Tool for an Abundant Life
Have you ever felt completely baffled by the actions of another? Does it ever seem like others around you are almost purposefully trying to irritate you? Do you wrestle with what it means to earn or even offer respect? So often, we find ourselves in situations with others where it seems like we’re longing for opposite or competing things. In these situations, we often defer to strategies that attempt to “win” or be “right,” rather than focusing on finding solutions that serve both parties mutually. In these cases, often no one truly wins! What if we had an approach that could bring new light to how we see both situations and others in our lives? What if there was a practical skill set that reinforces the concept of mutuality in times of disagreement or tension? In this workshop, we’ll introduce the framework of nonviolent communication, and through the use of different everyday scenarios, practice cultivating connection through communication. Together we’ll explore how we can use nonviolent communication to discover not only a mutually agreeable solution, but also more about ourselves, our values, our needs, and how they arise from what we feel from moment to moment in our lives.
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2022 SDV Summit
Northern Virginia Community College, April 29, 2022
With all that we do to support student success, what tools do we allow ourselves to ensure our own success and well-being throughout our days in the workplace, and also in our lives away from our campus commitments? This presentation will offer concrete tools that can be used to check in, regroup, and resume when you find yourself navigating those challenging times and moments which can activate our impulse to react in ways that might not serve us, our students, or colleagues well.
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2021 Spring Conference on the Teaching of Writing
Old Dominion University, April 16, 2021
Attention to What Is: Mindful Faculty, Mindful Students, Mindful Pedagogy
What does it mean to “pay attention?” Much of what we ask of our students in the writing classroom starts with a call to witness and consider that which is before them. Interestingly, this very question also lies at the heart of what it means to be mindful: what happens when you really pay attention? In this presentation, we suggest that mindfulness can be a tool to transform our classrooms, our students, and ourselves. However, our suggestion comes with a caveat: mindfulness is not the band-aid to overcome a culture of busyness, overwork, and labor exploitation that it is so often made out to be. Instead, we would offer that true mindfulness allows us to navigate the complex causes and conditions of our lives with authenticity and presence. The awareness gained from such practice can then become an opportunity within our classroom and within the relationships we foster, both with our students and our colleagues. In that spirit, we invite you to explore what “paying attention” really means to you. What do you find out about yourself when you do? What happens when you invite your students to pay attention alongside you? And how similar are all these practices in attention to what we are asking our writing students to do every day in the first place?
Grant-Funded Offerings
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College Faculty and Staff
Northern Virginia Community College, 2023 - Funded by a NOVA Foundation DEI InNOVAtion Grant
Our 2021-2022 DEI project, “DEI on the Inside” was built upon the assumption that while it might be easy to recognize the diversity amongst us at NOVA, navigating the internal work necessary to face the way that issues of equity, and thus inequity, surface within our shared work is much more challenging. To that end, “DEI on the Inside” was designed to aid NOVA staff and faculty in their work to actively re-envision, and re-imagine, and re-frame themselves, our students, and our college through an equity lens. Building upon that foundation, this new project moves from the “E” to the “I” in DEI. It makes space to move from seeing issues of inequity as they arise, to actively working toward inclusive excellence. To this end, we will build upon our semester workshop series from Fall 2022, thus producing a year-long sequence. The second semester offerings proposed herein will be developed and piloted in Spring 2023; we will use the Summer 2023 term to expand the reach of our programming by offering a full-day “From Inside to Thrive” bootcamp and also developing high-quality asynchronous modules within Canvas. We will then deploy and support the facilitation of those modules from our positions as co-coordinators of the Annandale Center for Contemplative Practice throughout the 2023-2024 academic year.
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College Staff and Faculty
Northern Virginia Community College, 2022 - Funded by a NOVA Foundation DEI InNOVAtion Grant
Our project, “DEI on the Inside,” centers around the design and implementation of experiences that provide a comprehensive roadmap to guide, assist, and support colleagues who wish to infuse diversity, equity, and inclusion into their way of being. These experiences, including workshops, discussion groups, and guided brainstorming activities, provide the community with support to move beyond the temptation to question the relevance DEI considerations have to their role at the college. This initiative was designed to aid NOVA staff and faculty in their work to actively re-envision, and re-imagine, and re-frame themselves, our students, and our college through an equity lens.
Our offerings were built upon the practices of mindful awareness and non-violent communication. Individually, each of the experiences offered can help bring awareness to issues of cultural conditioning and academic standards that challenge our shared desire for creating a college that serves all in our community. When taken together, this series will provide a framework that can lead anyone, regardless of their role at the college, to a greater understanding and appreciation of the diverse experiences of all of those that we work with and serve.
During the grant period, in addition to a summer pilot we:
1) Constructed and offered the “DEI on the Inside” core workshop series (themed around 4 guiding concepts: pause, reflection, discovery, and empathy)
2) Added a supplementary 3-part Compassion Workshop Series (Compassion 101, 102, and 201)
3) Launched the “DEI on the Inside” Changemakers - an NOVA employee learning group open to all who wish to participate, and
4) Released the Contemplative Passport (online), an interactive way for NOVA employees to engage with a variety of contemplative practices as they feel so called.
Employee Development Offerings
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University Staff and Faculty
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Summer 2022
Compassionate Communication: An Introduction
This full-day workshop serves as an introduction to Compassionate Communication. It lays the foundation for more in-depth training sessions offered on Thursday, June 23, which will focus on bringing compassionate communication into the classroom and sustaining a compassionate consciousness while managing challenging conversations in the higher education workplace. This introductory workshop offers definitions and foundational theories in compassion and empathy. It builds on this foundation with principles of mindful awareness, mindfulness meditation, and nonviolent communication. Together the participants will engage in various awareness exercises and guided meditations. They will practice naming their own feelings and needs, making requests of others, and listening to and articulating the feelings and needs alive in others. Participants will be afforded the opportunity to practice empathetic listening, offering compassionate ears to both themselves and to one another.
Compassionate Classrooms
Compassion can seem like a finite resource that runs scarce as we navigate the academic calendar. Faculty navigate complex demands - some joyful and others onerous - throughout the term. Whether those demands are ones taken on by choice, accepted by grace, or imposed on us by others, the complexity of our lives can take a toll on us and impact how we arrive in our classrooms. How can we show up, for ourselves and for our students, as our best, most authentic, and compassionate selves? This workshop will provide space for educators to gather and discuss the compassion-related challenges they face as they explore the responsibilities they hold for themselves, and for their students. Building on the frameworks modeled in the Introductory workshop on Wednesday, June 22, this workshop will frame opportunities and challenges to living a compassionate consciousness while navigating the demands of the 21st Century classroom. It offers strategies for facilitating a compassionate classroom and tools to use to offer empathy to one’s self as well as exercises to cultivate compassionate communities within our teaching environments. Participants will gain experience designing learning materials that can be used to foster compassionate spaces, in any classroom, regardless of discipline.
Compassionate Communication at Work
Bartleby, the Scrivener, is immortalized in literary history, not for what he did, but for how he stated his refusal: “I would prefer not to,” he so boldly told his employer in reply to a request. What arises in you when you imagine offering a refusal in your own workplace setting? Navigating challenging conversations requires a specific set of compassion-related tools! Whether you’re trying to say “no” to an opportunity, to deliver uncomfortable news to a student, to navigate a misunderstanding, or something else altogether, the framework for compassionate communication can be pushed to its edges when discomfort, fear, uncertainty, and/or anger are alive in us or those with whom we’re communicating. In this workshop, we explore ways to navigate these occasions. Building on what it means to re-see circumstances without judgment, this workshop offers opportunities for participants to practice hearing the needs and feelings of others, while holding boundaries and managing one’s own inclination to react rather than to respond with a caring and present disposition. In doing so, we work to rediscover and renew the joy that brings us to the institution where we are called to serve.
Commissioning the Coalition
For an organization to be truly responsive to the needs that arise in the institution in which they operate, they must first honestly acknowledge the truth of their institutional culture. They must meet the truth of what is the current reality, and be able to articulate a vision for a renewed tomorrow. Simply put: institutional culture must be intentionally cultivated. Although we might find that the pieces of a responsive, functional framework for a healthy and thriving institution might exist in pockets within a community, building a cohesive and sustainable coalition can feel daunting, particularly in large, complex settings. How do individuals interested in transforming the culture of an institution make progress? What does it look like to identify, recognize, and organizationally structure the pieces in a way that creates both local autonomy and institutional support? In this conversation, we will introduce a framework that we propose might serve as a foundation for a commissioning a functioning, operational coalition which not only addresses all aspects of wellness that faculty, staff, and administrators might be in need of, but also, when effectively implemented, creates a sustainable, cross-institutional framework of support for all.
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College Staff and Faculty
Northern Virginia Community College, Spring 2022
Compassionate Classrooms
Compassion can seem like a finite resource that runs scarce by midterm. We are all navigating complex demands - some joyful and others onerous - throughout the term. Whether those demands are ones taken on by choice, accepted by grace, or thrust on us by others, the complexity of our lives can take a toll on us and impact how we arrive in our classrooms. How can we show up, for ourselves and for our students, as our best, most authentic, and compassionate selves? This workshop will provide space for educators to gather and discuss the compassion-related challenges they face. This exploration will entail assessing our responsibilities to ourselves, as much as we do for our students. Together we will brainstorm strategies for facilitating a compassionate classroom. Participants will leave with concrete exercises that can be used in any classroom, regardless of discipline.
Compassionate Communication
How might the ways we communicate predispose what we take from our interactions? How might the very language we use, even in how we think about our interactions, shape how we see our world? This workshop, "Compassionate Communication," is the second offering in a three-part series on compassion practices in the educational workspace. It asks: how might we re-see our shared spaces through compassionate communication. Together we'll ask: what is compassion? And what does it mean to bring a compassionate lens to our communication with others and, more importantly, with ourselves? Join us to explore these questions! May we discover although compassionate communication doesn't always mean that we get what we want, when effective, it can unlock the possibility of novel and creative solutions that we might not have even thought of! Spoiler Alert: It can work equally well both at work and at home. It can even include the use of the word, "no!" True compassionate communication can be used in so many situations, including even those in which the other person in the conversation is NOT communicating compassionately. With a little practice, compassionate communication can become the default mode that we incorporate into our lives.
Compassionate Refusals
Bartleby, the Scrivener, is immortalized in literary history, not for what he did, but for how he stated his refusal: “I would prefer not to,” he so boldly told his employer in reply to a request. What arises in you when you imagine offering a refusal in your own workplace setting? Do you feel you have the agency to say “no” in a way that is compassionate to both your needs and to the requester? A resentful “yes” is no gift to anyone! At times when we hear requests made of us in the workplace, we might interpret them as directives we must abide by. We may feel conditioned to make all requests happen, even at our own personal expense or preference. When the best, most honest response to a request of us really is, “no,” how are we to proceed? Can we find the best ways to investigate the nature of that “no” within us? How might we discover strategies to honestly convey what we need and what will not work for us? In this investigation, we might discover that we can let go of the feeling that we need to do it all. We might discover that we need not make ourselves available at all times, for all who make requests of us. In this workshop, we explore the ways in which we can negotiate the “no,” and discover who we really are when we make the space to consider our own feelings and needs first.
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College Staff and Faculty
Northern Virginia Community College, Fall 2021
Mindful Resilience: An Introduction
Building upon our work in non-violent communication and training in mindfulness meditation, this workshop explores how we might come together as a campus community, occupying shared and familiar workspaces after a prolonged absence. Together with others in our community, we’ll discuss strategies for reimagining our shared work, as we embody and honor what we've learned about ourselves and our needs during the pandemic.
Mindful Resilience: Boundaries in Work and in Life
How might we learn how to say, "no," and what does it take to get there? In this workshop, we reimagine the art of saying no as a practice that involves the cultivation of awareness of self and others, the ability to identify and discern our needs, our wants, and our goals. We discuss how saying "no" can be an act of kindness and compassion to ourselves and to others.
Student Success Offerings
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Annandale Student Ambassadors
Northern Virginia Community College, Spring 2022
Bi-Weekly Group Sessions
Supporting the Student Life office on campus, we host regular sessions with our campus student ambassadors. These sessions are grounded in mindfulness, and offer students opportunities to practice exploring how the tools of mindful awareness might serve them as they navigate their lives as students and beyond. Activities with this group include exercises in empathetic listening, self-compassion, navigating burnout, and making requests to help address what needs are alive within them.
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Community College Initiative Students
Community College Initiative, August 2022
Compassionate Conflict Resolution
This offering is designed to provide the current CCI students with an introduction to nonviolent communication. For this workshop, we will provide the students 1) materials that they can use to guide them through difficult and/or challenging conversations as they arise, and 2) in-meeting opportunities to practice and reflect on using non-violent, compassionate speech to resolve conflicts of various sorts. This workshop will highlight the following points:
1) The importance of self-awareness as a means of navigating conflict;
2) The role of clear statements, and the use of I/I : You/You language;
3) The importance of going slow in times of challenge, and the right to pause.
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Annandale Campus Students
Northern Virginia Community College, Fall 2021
Practicing Awareness as a Way of Being
What if the way we engaged in our everyday lives was one in which our baseline state was one of maintaining awareness of what is happening inside of us, as it happens, from one moment to the next, intentionally, and without judgment? In this workshop, we will learn about, practice, and discuss how we can bring mindfulness awareness to all that we do as students, during the easy times, and during the stressful ones.
Nonviolent Communication
So often in the world around us, and on campus, we hear, and suffer, aggressive speech, and sometimes even contribute to it. In this workshop, we will learn about what non-violent communication is, what constitutes non-violent communication, and we'll practice how we can better take responsibility to reduce the violence in our own speech.
General Audience Offerings
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General Audience
Online Via Zoom, 2021
Weekly Group Sessions
We facilitated a 6-week interactive workshop cultivating the divine states of being known as the Divine Abodes. This group had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with, develop, cultivate, and practice putting these divine states of being into practice. We offered both directive exercises, and community discussions to talk about our practice, share experiences, successes, and challenges, and get some clarity on some concepts if needed.
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General Audience
Online via Zoom
Weekly Discussion Group
We offered a 40-day pilgrimage through the holiday season of 2020. It was simple: we met, we talked, and we turned inward. Together we explored strategies to meet the holiday season with all the grace we can muster. This guided workshop challenge participants to investigate the root causes of the most challenging parts of holidays, and provided a community with whom to safely explore the contributing factors that drive holiday stress and tension… in short, we came together to ask: what really are the causes of our suffering during this special time of year?