When: Saturday, 30 May 2026, 9:00 – 15:00 Central Time
Where: Education Building, University of Manitoba (Online: via Zoom)
The day-long Symposium will feature three panels with time for audience members to engage with the ten panelists and other participants in the themes of the three panels.
Panelists:
- Heesoon Bai (Simon Fraser University)
- Frank Deer (University of Manitoba)
- Claudia Eppert (University of Alberta)
- Thomas Falkenberg (University of Manitoba)
- Fortunato Lim (Seven Oaks School Division, Winnipeg)
- Michael Link (University of Winnipeg)
- Remy Low (The University of Sidney, Australia)
- Kenneth MacKendrick (Department of Religion, University of Manitoba)
- Kathryn Morog (University of Manitoba)
- Blair Stonechild (First Nations University of Canada)
Registration Deadline: 12 April 2026
For details on the event and to register, please visit: https://wellbeinginschools.ca/events/upcoming-events
past EVENTs
To register and receive the Zoom link, contact Trang Pham at phamt8@myumanitoba.ca
What Might Contemplation Offer at this Time in History: Education, Uncertainty, and Activism
Virtual Symposium
Tuesday, April 8, 2025, 3:30pm to 5pm Pacific Standard Time
This time in history is marked with uncertainties. While uncertainty is not limited to our current time, we can recognize a certain global instability emerging from climate change, violent conflicts, and changing relationships between what have been considered allied countries. These troubles can be seen to be rooted in violent ways of being in the world that have long been the subject of critique and forms of activism. What might this all mean for what we are doing in Canadian schools? What might contemplative practice offer?
In this webinar, we engage with Derek Rasmussen in dialogue with David Smith and Heesoon Bai as they engage in dialogue with each other and us about the possibilities for contemplative practice in education in our current time. Moderated by Dr. Jeannie Kerr.
To register contact Trang Pham at phamt8@myumanitoba.ca.
Simon Fraser University
University of Alberta
Simon Fraser University
Negotiating Contemplative Practices in Education: Understanding and Addressing Modernity’s Limiting Assumptions
Virtual Symposium
Wednesday, December 4th, 2024, 3:30 to 5pm Central Standard Time
From preschool to university, the formalized settings wherein public education is enacted in Canada have been directed through the assumptions of Euro-Western modernity. The prescribed ways of knowing, being, and doing in public education have thus been heavily influenced by an emphasis on rationalist forms of thinking as the authorized way to know and make meaning, resulting in constraints on meaningful educational experience. Traditions of thoughts and practice that expand and challenge these dominant education norms and ways of doing/being through practices of embodiment, mindfulness, spiritual resonance, arts, etc. have the capacity to meaningfully redress dominant forms of education.
In this symposium, the Canadian Educational Network for Contemplative Engagement (CENCE) invites you to join us with presenters Frank Deer and Claudia Eppert and engage in dialogue to explore the limits, possibilities and opportunities to enrich forms of knowing, being, and doing in educational settings.
To register, contact Trang Pham at phamt8@myumanitoba.ca.
University of Manitoba
University of Alberta