MYFest 2026: Browse by Month

These are sessions that center community building. We believe that “building community is to the collective as spiritual practice is to the individual” (Grace Lee Boggs cited by adrienne maree brown), and this is a space for us to get together, get to know one another, and learn ways of building community that we can take back to our classes and local communities.

Can we learn about AI by sparring with it? In this workshop, we’ll try writing exercises that use AI as a foil or opposing force to test ideas rather than generate them, to challenge rather than affirm. These exercises and tools will help demystify the technology and break the spell of anthropomorphization.

The aim of this series of sessions is to create a safe space in community with one another to engage in healing conversations around topics of import to our individual and collective well-being. Topics are intended to address issues common to the human experience in these trying times. The hope is that these sessions invite introspection and dialogue to deepen connection and solidarity, and inspire hope, healing and transformation.
Topic 1: Building community through embracing diversity and connecting with the ‘other’
Topic 2: Centering joy in our lives during trying times
Topic 3: Embracing vulnerability for building connection and belonging

Come walk with us! In this session, we invite you to join Zoom on your phone and take a walk. We’ll talk a little bit at the beginning and set our intentions, and have some moments of quiet meditative walking while honing our senses to what surrounds us, then we will take a moment to share from our surroundings and reflections from the walk. We will also discuss ways you can try an activity similar to this in your own teaching and practice.

Do you feel truly seen and valued in your work, and are you helping others feel that way too? Join us for a six-session book circle exploring “Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose” by Jennifer Breheny Wallace hosted by Theresa Destrebecq.

Relive the IEH Series from May 2024 again – sign up to receive daily tips and activities related to Intentionally Equitable facilitation from June 15 – July 15

In the middle of busy days, even a few moments of stillness can make a big difference. This recurring 10 minute guided meditation offers a space to pause, breathe, be mindful and gently reconnect with yourself. Whether you are new to meditation, looking to build a steady practice or long-time meditator, you’ll be guided through a calming experience designed to reduce stress and help enhance your presence. Come as you are – no prior experience needed, just a willingness to slow down and be.

This session invites participants into a collective exploration of feminist epistemic disobedience through reflective writing, deep listening in triads, and collaborative poetic weaving. It centers affective listening and community-building as practices for reimagining science education. The focus is on opening space for new ways of knowing, relating, and imagining educational futures.

These are sessions that center community building. We believe that “building community is to the collective as spiritual practice is to the individual” (Grace Lee Boggs cited by adrienne maree brown), and this is a space for us to get together, get to know one another, and learn ways of building community that we can take back to our classes and local communities.

Do you feel truly seen and valued in your work, and are you helping others feel that way too? Join us for a six-session book circle exploring “Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose” by Jennifer Breheny Wallace hosted by Theresa Destrebecq.

As generative AI increasingly summarizes, reproduces, and even rewrites the web, what happens to shared knowledge and cultural memory? Drawing on an interactive artwork that shows how AI can rewrite the same website according to different biases, this session explores how algorithmic personalization could fragment public discourse while inviting participants to discuss possible responses and alternatives.

Join me for a short calming and reflective journaling session designed to help you reconnect and recharge. Through thoughtfully written prompts and individual quiet reflection time, we’ll journal about gratitude, self-love, loving-kindness and wellbeing. Whether you’re a long-tome journaler or just getting started, this space invites you to slow down, tune in and leave feeling lighter, clearer and more connected. Bring a notebook, an open heart and come just as you are.

This is a kick-off session to support participants who plan to take the free, online, self-paced AI Literacies Unlocked course.

This session will examine a few purpose built online tools designed to bring some liberatory practice(s) to life. Including a demo of a “troika” tool that can be used asynchronously, the session will explore the different ways we can build community and include liberatory practices when we might not be all together at the same time. There will be ample chances to have a play, have a think and come together and consider what it feels like to learn in community both at the same time and across different ones.

Do you feel truly seen and valued in your work, and are you helping others feel that way too? Join us for a six-session book circle exploring “Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose” by Jennifer Breheny Wallace hosted by Theresa Destrebecq.

During this session, we’ll reflect collectively on our learning in the past month, whether through MYFest or elsewhere, and see what emerges as new needs or interests for the next few weeks. We will also experiment with creative approaches to community reflection that you might want to try in your own courses or practice.

Have you ever considered how students could actively shape the design and decision-making processes of virtual exchanges? In this co-creation session, we’ll crowdsource ideas for student involvement and hold space for networking with potential exchange partners. We encourage you to bring students to the session—their voices are essential to this conversation.

In the middle of busy days, even a few moments of stillness can make a big difference. This recurring 10 minute guided meditation offers a space to pause, breathe, be mindful and gently reconnect with yourself. Whether you are new to meditation, looking to build a steady practice or long-time meditator, you’ll be guided through a calming experience designed to reduce stress and help enhance your presence. Come as you are – no prior experience needed, just a willingness to slow down and be.

Have you met someone in an Equity Unbound space whom you wished you could get to know better? If so, you might like to sign up for a Curious Coffee.

What if every voice and every view were treated as the wisdom it is? Join this online session to explore key methods from Lewis Deep Democracy (LDD), a methodology that arise in post Apartheid South Africa.

Join us for an hour of supporting each other’s writing… quietly… where we will kick off with 5 minutes of inspiration, give everyone about 50 minutes to work on what is important to them right now, and have 5 minutes to celebrate what we’ve accomplished today. This group is dedicated to anyone who is working on a writing project of any kind: you can work on a peer-reviewed paper, grant application, syllabus, even a really tricky email, even your creative work, a poem you want to capture, lyrics for your next song 🙂

Across higher education, conversations about AI have largely centered on policy, risk, and academic integrity, often overlooking the conditions faculty and students were already navigating before AI emerged. This interactive session starts from a different premise: AI may be less a disruption itself and more a signal of existing learning environments, asking participants to explore the question: What issues has AI served as an accelerant for, and why? Through facilitated dialogue and structured reflection, faculty will examine how institutional conditions shape help-seeking, participation, trust, and AI use, while identifying pathways for addressing those conditions in their own contexts.

This workshop explores Pressing Prompts (https://pressingprompts.org/), an open collection of activities, resources, and pedagogical guidance for higher education instructors bringing AI ethics into their classrooms. Participants will access Pressing Prompts’ topics, activities, and resources, and will then build custom “playlists” that can be exported, shared, and incorporated into courses across disciplines and modalities.

Join me for a short calming and reflective journaling session designed to help you reconnect and recharge. Through thoughtfully written prompts and individual quiet reflection time, we’ll journal about gratitude, self-love, loving-kindness and wellbeing. Whether you’re a long-tome journaler or just getting started, this space invites you to slow down, tune in and leave feeling lighter, clearer and more connected. Bring a notebook, an open heart and come just as you are.

Can a musical background and the simple awareness of being “together” transform a solitary work session into a shared, embodied, pedagogically meaningful experience — even through screens? This experiential workshop invites participants to bring their own real task, work for 45 minutes with curated sound environments, and reflect together on what emerged.

Join us for an hour of supporting each other’s writing… quietly… where we will kick off with 5 minutes of inspiration, give everyone about 50 minutes to work on what is important to them right now, and have 5 minutes to celebrate what we’ve accomplished today. This group is dedicated to anyone who is working on a writing project of any kind: you can work on a peer-reviewed paper, grant application, syllabus, even a really tricky email, even your creative work, a poem you want to capture, lyrics for your next song 🙂

What does it take to connect with students from the very start of a course?
This interactive session explores three tensions in teaching: designing for imagined learners while meeting real students; helping students feel they matter without prescribing how they should belong; and balancing care with capacity.
We’ll share ideas and examples, and build a live Padlet together to gather practical approaches from across contexts.

Do you feel truly seen and valued in your work, and are you helping others feel that way too? Join us for a six-session book circle exploring “Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose” by Jennifer Breheny Wallace hosted by Theresa Destrebecq.

Curricular seeds are sessions where we invite participants to share what they do in their own teaching/workshops on a particular theme, and then we take time in small groups to reflect on how we all might apply, adapt or develop activities or resources based on what we discuss in the first half, and how we might support each other going forward via Equity Unbound.

In the middle of busy days, even a few moments of stillness can make a big difference. This recurring 10 minute guided meditation offers a space to pause, breathe, be mindful and gently reconnect with yourself. Whether you are new to meditation, looking to build a steady practice or long-time meditator, you’ll be guided through a calming experience designed to reduce stress and help enhance your presence. Come as you are – no prior experience needed, just a willingness to slow down and be.

Join us for an hour of supporting each other’s writing… quietly… where we will kick off with 5 minutes of inspiration, give everyone about 50 minutes to work on what is important to them right now, and have 5 minutes to celebrate what we’ve accomplished today.
This group is dedicated to anyone who is working on a writing project of any kind: you can work on a peer-reviewed paper, grant application, syllabus, even a really tricky email, even your creative work, a poem you want to capture, lyrics for your next song.

The aim of this series of sessions is to create a safe space in community with one another to engage in healing conversations around topics of import to our individual and collective well-being. Topics are intended to address issues common to the human experience in these trying times. The hope is that these sessions invite introspection and dialogue to deepen connection and solidarity, and inspire hope, healing and transformation.
Topic 1: Building community through embracing diversity and connecting with the ‘other’
Topic 2: Centering joy in our lives during trying times
Topic 3: Embracing vulnerability for building connection and belonging

Have you ever wondered how you might use messaging apps to connect with a group of learners or participants? In this session, we’ll explore how educators are using apps like GroupMe, WhatsApp, and Zoom Workplace to support learning, share resources, and build community—then collaboratively brainstorm ways to use these tools in our teaching and facilitation contexts.

Do you feel truly seen and valued in your work, and are you helping others feel that way too? Join us for a six-session book circle exploring “Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose” by Jennifer Breheny Wallace hosted by Theresa Destrebecq.

Curricular seeds are sessions where we invite participants to share what they do in their own teaching/workshops on a particular theme, and then we take time in small groups to reflect on how we all might apply, adapt or develop activities or resources based on what we discuss in the first half, and how we might support each other going forward via Equity Unbound.

Join me for a short calming and reflective journaling session designed to help you reconnect and recharge. Through thoughtfully written prompts and individual quiet reflection time, we’ll journal about gratitude, self-love, loving-kindness and wellbeing. Whether you’re a long-tome journaler or just getting started, this space invites you to slow down, tune in and leave feeling lighter, clearer and more connected. Bring a notebook, an open heart and come just as you are.

The way students read has changed, and classrooms are feeling it. This session introduces the Biliterate brain as a framework for understanding how print and digital reading shape cognitive pathways differently and what that means for teaching and learning. Participants will leave with practical strategies to improve reading comprehension across both modes and the tools to embed them into their own classrooms.

Do you feel truly seen and valued in your work, and are you helping others feel that way too? Join us for a six-session book circle exploring “Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose” by Jennifer Breheny Wallace hosted by Theresa Destrebecq.

What helps educators stay rooted in their values when the academic landscapes around them begin to change? This interactive workshop explores how the pressures of university life can shape the ways we measure success and understand our place in higher education. Together, participants will reflect on the values that guide their work and consider what it takes to remain connected to those values over time.

In the middle of busy days, even a few moments of stillness can make a big difference. This recurring 10 minute guided meditation offers a space to pause, breathe, be mindful and gently reconnect with yourself. Whether you are new to meditation, looking to build a steady practice or long-time meditator, you’ll be guided through a calming experience designed to reduce stress and help enhance your presence. Come as you are – no prior experience needed, just a willingness to slow down and be.

AI is reshaping education, threatening critical thinking through cognitive offloading. Teachers must redesign tasks to embed iterative thinking, from planning and prompting to evaluating and defending, ensuring students engage deeply with AI rather than surrender their thinking to it. The goal is not to restrict AI but to reposition it as a tool that supports but never replaces student thinking.

Join me for a short calming and reflective journaling session designed to help you reconnect and recharge. Through thoughtfully written prompts and individual quiet reflection time, we’ll journal about gratitude, self-love, loving-kindness and wellbeing. Whether you’re a long-tome journaler or just getting started, this space invites you to slow down, tune in and leave feeling lighter, clearer and more connected. Bring a notebook, an open heart and come just as you are.

Teaching with a chronic illness means belonging to a profession that demands always being “on” while navigating a body that needs constant rest, stillness, and care. This facilitated reflective workshop uses prompted free writing and open discussion to examine that tension honestly and to build practical strategies for teaching with greater agency and resilience. It welcomes educators living this experience and those who want to support them.

In the middle of busy days, even a few moments of stillness can make a big difference. This recurring 10 minute guided meditation offers a space to pause, breathe, be mindful and gently reconnect with yourself. Whether you are new to meditation, looking to build a steady practice or long-time meditator, you’ll be guided through a calming experience designed to reduce stress and help enhance your presence. Come as you are – no prior experience needed, just a willingness to slow down and be.

Can a machine make us feel seen, understood, or cared for? This session explores the psychology behind our growing attachment to AI, examining how technologies designed to respond like humans can activate powerful emotional connections and reshape the way we think about relationships, intimacy, and belonging.

An interactive critical AI literacy workshop that uses the concept of khilafa (stewardship) as a framework for thinking about AI responsibility, guided by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s visionary story “Sultana’s Dream.”The workshop offers practical tools for understanding AI systems while centering values of justice, accountability, and collective wisdom.

You are invited to join a space for collective reflection on inclusive teaching where we also explore strategies for making this work practical. We introduce the Enabling Accessible Blended Learning for Equity (ENABLE) framework and share case studies of inclusive teaching from our South African higher education context. Come curious!

The aim of this series of sessions is to create a safe space in community with one another to engage in healing conversations around topics of import to our individual and collective well-being. Topics are intended to address issues common to the human experience in these trying times. The hope is that these sessions invite introspection and dialogue to deepen connection and solidarity, and inspire hope, healing and transformation.
Topic 1: Building community through embracing diversity and connecting with the ‘other’
Topic 2: Centering joy in our lives during trying times
Topic 3: Embracing vulnerability for building connection and belonging

Join me for a short calming and reflective journaling session designed to help you reconnect and recharge. Through thoughtfully written prompts and individual quiet reflection time, we’ll journal about gratitude, self-love, loving-kindness and wellbeing. Whether you’re a long-tome journaler or just getting started, this space invites you to slow down, tune in and leave feeling lighter, clearer and more connected. Bring a notebook, an open heart and come just as you are.

In this session, we will offer some principles of designing hybrid events in ways that are intentionally equitable and also engaging for both online and in-person participants. The session builds on the IEH praxis of Virtually connecting (which was hybrid). Participants will have opportunities to reflect on the best and worst hybrid experiences they have had, and reimagine a particular upcoming event as intentionally equitable hybrid.

In the middle of busy days, even a few moments of stillness can make a big difference. This recurring 10 minute guided meditation offers a space to pause, breathe, be mindful and gently reconnect with yourself. Whether you are new to meditation, looking to build a steady practice or long-time meditator, you’ll be guided through a calming experience designed to reduce stress and help enhance your presence. Come as you are – no prior experience needed, just a willingness to slow down and be.

These sessions will be thematic and bring together 2-3 emerging scholars (i.e. somewhere between proposal stage of a PhD and recently completed it) to share their research in 10 minutes, followed by a discussion that is focused on questions the scholars themselves pose for the audience (e.g. requesting feedback, etc.)

This session shares our journey of writing a book chapter (under review) entitled: A Praxis of Emergence and Intentional Adaptation at Equity Unbound. We will share our full autoethnographic narratives ahead of time, and during the session share excerpts from them and share with participants key insights we gained from our writing. We will then invite participants to share with us how they think IEH may transfer to other contexts, and the challenges they have faced or expect to face when trying to apply it in different communities.

Join me for a short calming and reflective journaling session designed to help you reconnect and recharge. Through thoughtfully written prompts and individual quiet reflection time, we’ll journal about gratitude, self-love, loving-kindness and wellbeing. Whether you’re a long-tome journaler or just getting started, this space invites you to slow down, tune in and leave feeling lighter, clearer and more connected. Bring a notebook, an open heart and come just as you are.