Humanizing Pedagogies: Learning In and Through Water Across Educational Contexts

May 1, 2024

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12:00 PM

Water is more than just a life-sustaining material resource. It provides metaphors, stories, and images that can connect ideas, practices, and lifeways across time and space. As such, water serves as a humanizing pedagogical tool in the classroom. Its familiarity provides an entry point for learners and its fluidity allows for discussions to link the interconnectedness of our environments, our histories, and our bodies together. Join us for this conversation with educators that operate in diverse pedagogical sites, ranging from using the sacred waters of Texas to understand Indigenous lifeways, theater-based embodied practice for learners to connect with their own bodies, and learning about water management from past societies to link to our current context.

RECORDING

PANELISTS

Frances Acuña

Climate Resilience Lead Organizer,

Go! Austin/Vamos! Austin

Frances Acuña has lived in southeast Austin for 25 years. She began advocating for the Dove Springs community in 2010 by working with Police Officers in crime and safety. In 2012, she became a Community Healthworker and started getting involved as a community leader and working as a Community Health Healthworker to advocate for healthcare and physical activity in childhood obesity. She also worked with fellow community members serving as first responders during the October 2013 and 2015 floods in Dove Springs. In 2017, Frances joined GAVA as a Community Organizer where she worked to increase access to healthy food and physical activity. Later with continued floods and residents being displaced due to flooding and Infrastructure issues, her priority became Climate Resiliency focusing on efforts to build community power to advocate for flood mitigation and the right to stay in the neighborhoods where residents are most impacted by natural disasters and social disparities. Now as the Climate Resilience Lead Organizer for GAVA, she is concentrating her efforts bridging the communication gap between residents and stakeholders emphasizing response and responsibility where equity and public safety is a mutual priority. When she is not spending her time in the community organizing or meeting with stakeholders, you can find her in her garden or spending time with her family.

Katie Landry-Guyton

Senior Service Hydrologist,

National Weather Service

Katie Landry-Guyton currently serves as the Senior Service Hydrologist for the National Weather Service (NWS) in Houston, TX. Her primary role is to serve as the liaison between the local weather forecast office, the West Gulf River Forecast Center, local emergency managers and hydrologic stakeholders in southeast Texas. In her tenure, she has worked numerous high-impact flooding events such as Hurricane Harvey and Tropical Storm Imelda where she provided hydrologic decision support services to core partners for resource placement, emergency response, and recovery efforts. Prior to joining the Houston office in 2017, Katie earned a B.S. in Geosciences from Mississippi State University in 2012, and worked as a Hydrometeorologist for the Lower Mississippi River Forecast Center in Slidell, LA, from 2012 to 2017.

Paola Passalacqua, Ph.D

Professor,

Cockrell School of Engineering

Paola Passalacqua is a Professor of Environmental and Water Resources Engineering in the Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Genoa, Italy, with a BS (2002) in Environmental Engineering, and received a MS (2005) and a PhD (2009) in Civil Engineering from the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on transport processes along river and delta networks, with particular focus on flooding, river-floodplain connectivity, and coastal resilience. Dr. Passalacqua is the lead PI of SETx-UIFL, a DOE funded Urban Integrated Field Laboratory that focuses on the compounding effects of flooding and air pollution on Southeast Texas communities. Additionally, she is the Chair of Planet Texas 2050, a Bridging Barrier mission at the University of Texas to advance interdisciplinary research on resilience and to co-design adaptative strategies with stakeholders and frontline communities in Texas. Dr. Passalacqua has been honored with several awards including the Bagnold Medal of the European Geosciences Union (2022), a National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2014) and the University of Texas Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award (2017).

Gabriele Villarini, Ph.D

Professor,

Princeton University

Professor Villarini's research interests focus broadly on flood hydrology, extreme events, hydroclimatology, and climate predictions and projections. He has received a number of national and international awards, including the Hydrological Sciences Outstanding Young Scientist Award by the European Geosciences Union (2013), and the James B. Macelwane Medal by the American Geophysical Union (2016). He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (2016). He has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers, including articles in Nature, Science, Nature Climate Change, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the Editor-in-Chief for Advances in Water Resources.

PANELISTS

Katie Dawson

Associate Professor,

Department of Theatre and Dance

Katie Dawson uses the arts to increase equity, access, and belonging in education. She is an associate professor at The University of Texas in Austin and heads the MFA in Drama and Theatre for Youth and Communities program. At UT, Katie is Provost’s Teaching Fellow and received the College of Fine Arts Distinguished Teaching Award, the College of Fine Arts Distinguished Research Award, and the Regents Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award. Katie also serves as the head of Creative Collaborations for Planet Texas 2050. Her U.S. research has been acknowledged by the American Alliance of Theatre and Education with the Winifred Ward Scholar Award and the Creative Drama Award. Globally, Katie is a recognized speaker and trainer on drama-based pedagogy in education. She led multi-year research partnerships with universities in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Australia, and with the U.S. Embassy system in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Poland focused on critical thinking and perspective taking in education. She formally held a two-year appointment with The University of South Australia and The Department for Education focused on pedagogical innovation. Her co-authored, award-winning books include: The Reflexive Teaching Artist and Drama-Based Pedagogy: Activating Learning Across the Curriculum. Open-source resources on her work in drama-based pedagogy can be accessed here.

Marissa Muñoz, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor,

The University of Texas at San Antonio

Dr. Marissa Aki’Nene Muñoz is a Chicana, with ancestry that includes the Esto’k Gna, Coahuilteca, Tlaxcalteca, and Wixairika peoples of what is today called South Texas and Northern Mexico. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching, with a joint appointment in the department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Muñoz’s current research focuses on the revitalization of Indigenous knowledge systems and intergenerational pedagogies in the frontera communities of the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo, honoring water as life. Muñoz draws from her experience as a middle-school teacher, museum educator, and curriculum developer to inform her ongoing research/teaching/scholarship/organizing work. Curriculum projects include interdisciplinary approaches for middle grades learners, critical and sustainable ethnic studies, and the development of American Indian Native Studies state standards.

Marial Quezada

Graduate Student,

Department of Curriculum and Instruction

Marial Quezada is a multi-racial Latina of P'urhepecha and European ancestry, earning her Doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction, focusing on Cultural Studies in Education and Indigenous Studies. She serves as the Tānko Institute Director for the Indigenous Cultures Institute, coordinating ICI's Tānko Institute: Xinachtli Pedagogy for Educators, its affiliated professional learning community called the Tānko Collective, and the Indigenous Arts Summer Encounter. As a doctoral student, she works with undergraduate students training to become educators and she practices, studies, and writes about pedagogies of relationality among Latinx and Indigenous educators, including land and community-centered learning and teaching.

María Rocha

Board of Directors Secretary,

Indigenous Cultures Institute

María F. Rocha is of Coahuiltecan and Comanche heritage and is a member of the Miakan-Garza Band, a state-legislature-recognized tribe of Texas. She is a co-founder of the Indigenous Cultures Institute, a nonprofit organization in San Marcos that preserves the culture of Native Americans indigenous to Texas and northern Mexico and served as executive director for 16 years. She currently serves on the Institute’s Board of Elders. At the Institute, she established the Indigenous Arts Summer Encounter for youth, which uses an Indigenous-based pedagogy and multidisciplinary arts to teach Hispanic students about their Native identity. As part of her teachings for the youth Encounter, Rocha conducts a Water Ceremony created to bridge the gap between the seen and unseen world of Water. She is co-author of “Yana Wana’s Legend of the Bluebonnet”, a play for young audiences that focuses on water as an environmental justice issue affecting Indigenous communities.

Aimee Zivin

Theater Arts Teacher,

St. Andrew's Episcopal School

Aimee’s passion is integrating the arts into academic, outdoor and community settings, and fostering creativity in the learning process. She has taught Drama at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School since 2005, with a primary emphasis on arts integration in the elementary grades. During the summer, she supports arts-based, community education at Ghost Ranch Education and Retreat Center in Northern New Mexico. She was a founding member of Theater Action Project (now Creative Action), a leader in arts education in Central Texas. Aimee holds a BFA in Theater with a double-major in Spanish from Southwestern University, and an MA in Educational Leadership, with an emphasis in Creativity Studies, from Texas State University. She is mom to two adult sons and one Basset Hound. She values family, life-long learning, dancing and a good swim in Barton Springs on a hot Texas day.

RSVPs Closed