Dr. Potvin's work focuses on employing design-based implementation research and co-design to collaborate with practitioners in ways that value their expertise and experiences and support their professional growth. She employs qualitative methods to study educator agency and teacher learning, as well as teacher-student relationships and caring and inclusive classrooms and schools. Dr. Potvin is also interested in teachers’ roles in scaling and sustaining curricular innovations such as project-based learning. Her most recent scholarship focuses on educators’ application of compassion within schools and classrooms and cultivating humanizing co-design spaces through attention to affect, compassion, and dignity.
keywords
teacher professional development, teacher learning, design based implementation research, participatory design approaches, project based learning
EDUA 5019 - Compassion and Dignity for Educators: Awareness and Intention
Primary Instructor
-
Fall 2021 / Spring 2022
This course explores the ways compassion practices and a focus on the dignity of educators and students can contribute to the wellness of schools, supporting educator retention, student learning, and community wellness. Educators are introduced to compassion foundations and connections between compassion and leadership. Educators will reflect on their experiences, and identify barriers to compassion, including implicit biases and pity grounded in deficit views based on social identities.
EDUA 5020 - Self-Compassion and Dignity
Primary Instructor
-
Fall 2021 / Spring 2022
This course focuses on developing concepts of dignity and self-compassion and teaches leaders to apply self-compassion as an antidote for burnout and as a resource for well-being and positive relationships. Educators will imagine ways of developing self-compassion that can help them practice leadership daily. They will construct affirmations that facilitate self-compassion in difficult situations, including situations of social suffering (e.g., racism) that affect all people, but are experienced differently by different persons.
EDUA 5021 - Compassion In Fullness
Primary Instructor
-
Spring 2022
This course focuses on compassion for others, through concepts of common humanity, equity, and justice. This course addresses the ways structural inequality creates suffering and the importance of attending to everyday suffering. Educators consider skillful responses to pain as they begin to develop strategies for creating more compassionate schools and for bringing compassion to relationships. They consider the ways cultivating compassion leads to more robust leadership where others feel safe, valued, and recognized with dignity.
EDUA 5022 - Compassion In Action: Capstone
Primary Instructor
-
Summer 2021 / Summer 2022 / Summer 2023 / Summer 2024
This course focuses on compassion in action as leaders plan for cultivating more compassionate environments and explore the ways compassion can contribute to the wellness of educators and schools. They will apply compassion practices to investigate assumptions they make about students, relationships, and schools. Educators will identify ways to use/adapt existing policies/procedures/routines as they develop action plans, bringing compassionate leadership to school communities and sustaining their work in today�s increasingly precarious climate.
