Isn’t that a funny phrase? Given the events in the past few months, I hear this phrase as: Falling. — Into Place. The past few months have felt like a sort of free fall, a shedding of outdated ideas, a rearranging of my life and schedule, and a re-prioritizing of what I want. Things fell away, and I am right where I need to be.

In place, positioned for the next round of growth using my core competencies of Theater of the Oppressed and popular education to grow community leaders; creative writing and narrative to amplify diverse voices; and participatory storytelling and oral history collection to unify communities and heal from hurts.

For the third year in a row I’m co-designing and co-leading the Little Rock Civil Rights Educator Institute from July 19-24, 2015 . This institute brings together educators, community workers, and cultural activists from around the country to exchange knowledge and experiences, and to learn with and from each other in an intensive week-long learning community.

We will offer popular education approaches and narrative strategies as tools to explore civil rights history and human rights struggles. We will visit two civil rights historic sites — Central High School and the Rohwher Internment Camp — and engage with interpretive, narrative approaches to teaching and learning. The institute is a space to critically engage with issues of rights, struggle, story, and power and introduce new ways of connecting past to present. (Save the Date – 2015 or contact me for info).

I’m also in the adult education classroom again, forwarding the work of Literacy Partners‘. I am teaching a Parent’s ESOL class for immigrant mothers in the Bronx. We learn English while learning child development content to help them figure out how to best support their children’s minds as well as their emotional, social and academic development. We are developing ideas of motherhood as leadership and how to be the best advocates for their children.

And, I’m consulting with the NYC Municipal Archives. I’m supporting them to think about how their collections and public events can acknowledge the history of all New Yorkers.

So what’s fallen — into place, for you? I’d love to hear your good news and how I can help your efforts to develop creative cultural engagement strategies.